#Reverb15: Day 4
How can you replenish your (physical, mental, spiritual and/or emotional) resources? What do you need most of all at this moment?
I am not a good self-replenisher. I never take a break. I am an excellent person to turn to if you need help replenishing but I am a terrible person to take a time out and replenish myself. I will wear myself out and burn every single candle I own at both ends. I will exhaust every resource available in order to fulfill my obligations and then I will begrudgingly give in to whatever illness overwhelms me that will then force me to stay in bed until I recover.
I am a bad girl.
It wasn’t until this later this summer when I was afflicted with a kidney stone for over a month that I recognized that this was really a horrible way to live. And while I had already begun the process of slowing down and being kinder to myself, the kidney stone forced me to speed up that process. A kidney stone, if you have never experienced one, is nature’s way of telling you that you’re insides need to be torn to shreds by broken glass but since broken glass isn’t available to your internal organs it’ll just use whatever it has available and make rocks instead. And then once your internal organs make a rock they’ll then try to shove that rock down your ureter because everything inside of you have turned against you. Or they’ve been possessed by Satan. Either way the pain is so bad you don’t even care. This lasted a month.
Regardless. I learned from this whole experience that there are recoveries I can’t rush. I had no choice but to rest and to take time off from life. To take a break. The other issue I have to consider is my various mental health needs. Because of my anxiety and depression I need to be kinder myself and practice better self-care. I recognize that if I stack my schedule to deep or my personal expectations become to unrealistic I will set myself up for mental exhaustion and will end up in bed for several days. Worse, if I force myself to do things I am not emotionally ready for in terms of my agoraphobia it will do more harm than good. When it comes to my mental health I need to be more protective of myself and not care so much about offending other people if I can’t show up at events or do something for them.
Physically I need to focus on my weight and personal health — is this not so many people’s goals for a new year? However I need to change my perspective from it being so much about weight and more about health. My children need a healthy mother, not a skinny mother.
My personal resources are valuable. I weigh them each carefully because of the potential of how it will impact my kids. If something will take me away from my kids then I need to know that the long term value is worth the short term loss of time from my family. This has worked well for me in weighing the options and I plan to continue this in the future.
When I think of what I need most of all at this moment, however, I think many mothers would agree that a housekeeper would be the most helpful. People can volunteer in the comments.
This prompt is part of the Reverb15 reflective writing challenge. You are welcome to dive in at any time! If you’re catching up, you can check out all prompts so far in the Reverb archive.
Published by ShadowTeamsNYC and represented by Lisa Hagen Books
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