Just When You Thought I Was Out ... I'm Back, Bitches!

I’m not dead, I’m just tired

That’s the alternate title of this post, suggested by a friend. Yes, it’s be a loong time since I’ve written anything. You probably forgot about me, and I don’t blame you.

Self Care

But a big part of happy, healthy living is taking care of yourself. And sometimes that means shutting down for a while.

I had a really hard year. And I’m not going to apologize for saying that. Too often we say that everything is fine when it isn’t. Why? Because we don’t want to bother people. We don’t want to seem like we are whining or complaining. Or we think they don’t want to hear it. Or because we feel like our struggles don’t compare to really difficult things that other people are going through and we therefore don’t have a right to be upset.

Well, your struggles and how you feel about them are valid. And if you try to reach out to someone and you are dismissed or met with platitudes, don’t let that negate those feelings. You haven’t felt things wrong, you just reached out to the wrong person.

Feel Your Feels

When my son Christopher was first diagnosed with autism, I was reluctant to talk to one of my good friends about it. She had just completed cancer treatment, so all of those things I mentioned above. I didn’t want to bother her or seem like I was whining and I didn’t feel like I had the right to talk about what I was going through when she was going through so much. But she quickly set me straight.

She asked me if I got promoted at work and then she won the MegaMillions, would her news negate my happy feelings about mine? Would she have taken away my right to be happy because of her happier, bigger news? The answer is NO. And therefore, didn’t I still have a right to be sad about things in my life, despite the struggles of others? Of course she was totally right (she has actually given me lots of brilliant tidbits over the years).

So listen up! Our feelings are not only valid when they are put up against the feelings of others. What we feel is valid – and we need to honor it, and give ourselves what we need.

So that was a really long story to explain that I had a difficult year. I needed to emotionally recover. So, I basically spent the summer hibernating. I relaxed – body, mind, and spirit – and let myself heal. It was important to me to spend time with good friends, to reconnect with my husband, and to play with my kids. And, though this is still very much a work in progress, I made a conscious effect to cut a lot of the negative energy out of my life.