Warrior Weekly: Rest, Recovery & Re-rooting
Back after 2 months away.
Monday – last day in Malaga visiting a friend who I met at a hen do ten years ago. We’ve become very close in recent years having bonded over the complexities of chronic illness. This was the first time we had met again in person since the wedding! She’s been the first person to subscribe to Healing Through Writing and has her own page on here too,
shares her journey of infertility and grief as a result of living with endometriosis. I half read the book she gave me on the flight home: “Finding Peace with a Devastating Disease” by Amy Corfeli. It’s a brilliant read, have you read it? I’d love to read more books like this on patient stories – please share any you’ve read in the comments.Tuesday – arrived home at 2am. Chill day before going back to my own home tomorrow after 2 months away. Catch-up and walk with a local friend at lunch. Tea at R’s mums.
Wednesday – The country park I live in reopened over the weekend, moved back today. 1st world problems for sure but 2 months is a long time to be away from your own home. Been sitting with my privileges recently and having a home to return to is one of them.
Energy feeling pretty peaky. On some level I’m tired and yet the resistance to rest is there. I feel distracted… with my phone, with the mess from having had moved back surrounding me. My home needs a good clean. Did a meditation on “soothing our system through acceptance” shared by
instead. I’m finding her 15 or so minute meditations are taking me on little journeys that unfold in the days passing. It was our conversation that sparked my deeper reflection into privilege (a blog on this topic coming soon).Read some more of the book on Finding Peace (learning so much about endo). Distracted myself a plenty. The sunset walk was a spectacular welcome home. I’m looking forward to driving so slowly in and out of this place, I set an intention to use it as a practice to slow down again. Wrote and typed 3 blogs – one on effective rest. A question that came up over the weekend and one I’ve started to ask others: what does effective rest mean to you? The 2nd was inspired by a photo of my Dad “6 years on” and the last one I’ve been asked to write about by
on the topic of honouring my true self.
Thursday – its been a shock to the system returning home to no central heating but today I am used to it again. Attempting to reinstate a tech free zone for 12 hours overnight. It’s a boundary I have that hasn’t yet quite become the habit I want it to be. The space this opened up to me allowed me to connect with an old pattern of internally beating myself up. I spectacularly stained a carpet several weeks ago (then removed the colour from the carpet in the stain removing process). No one has made me feel bad about it and yet I spent time in bed stewing over it. “This is an old thought pattern, an old behaviour, a story I no longer repeat” I kept reminding myself “I have new neural pathways now and this isn’t one of them”. A question came out of nowhere that I started asking myself “what can I do to create ease in my body?”. No answers immediately came but a question I want to gently keep asking myself, nonetheless. It feels like I’m guiding my body to some place new.
Friday – breakfast out with a friend. Still no cleaning and tidying done. My energy is nudging me to “Please go slow. Go gently”. To the best of my ability, I am listening. How have your energy levels been this week? A client friend arrived this afternoon to Retreat With Me and so the cleaning that I did was all at snails pace. I put the clutter in the spare bedroom to be dealt with another day. “Mind if we end with your treatment in the morning?” I asked when she arrived “My energy levels aren’t great today and its best if I take my time”. How do you honour how you are feeling?
Saturday – early start with an epic bodywork channelling and facial treatment. The heel of her foot has been given her a lot of discomfort when walking recently. We traced it to her lower back and feeling a lack of support, unearthing some enquiry. What does support look like/feel like to you? In what ways do you support yourself? How do you identify and navigate the support you need? What measures have you put in place to meet support needs? (An example in this particular case, work adjustments such as working from home/half day finish on a Friday. Early nights to bed. Creating space and making the bedroom a sanctuary of rest) What help and support do others reach out and ask you for? Could you open up to the prospect of reaching out and asking for the same in a similar way? Thoughts, feelings and behaviours came to the surface. Low level anxiety, a prickly feeling. Feeling angry, annoyed. Headache/migraine at the onset of period. Like it’s a pain in the ass. How do you feel at the onset of your period? In what ways do you support how you’re feeling? Because I feel in some ways similar (less so than I used to), connecting with the client’s body in this way triggered pain in my head and I was in bed all afternoon and puked twice at teatime ☹
Sunday - feeling as dark and wet and wintery on the inside as it is outside today. As part of the circle facilitation training I started last month, we’ve been invited to attend the circles of the last cohort who trained. I’ve found myself craving connection this week, needing spaces to be seen, heard and witnessed. Thankfully, I’ve created many of these spaces now both online and in person. I can only spend limited time in spaces where I don’t receive this or have this need met. This circle today was wonderful and I’ve come to realise this week, how fortunate I’ve been in the spaces and circles I’ve found myself in over recent years. I haven’t had anyone give me advice, tell me what to do or not do, had anyone question my beliefs about my health or make me feel unwelcome. Have you attended or immersed yourself in circle before? What experiences have you had?
Space for reflection
My greatest passion is to help others who live with chronic illness find their voice. Part of the work I do around this is to ask thought-provoking questions. There are way more than I normally share (its been a while and a stack came through in a treatment) so remember to choose one or two below and let’s chat about what’s come up for you in the comments?
Have you ever had a vision come to life? What vision do you hold for yourself at the moment? Or would you like to envisage for yourself?
What does effective rest mean to you?
When you sit with it, how does the question “what can I do to create ease in my body?” settle and land with you? Any insights? Or will it take time and practice like it will with me?
How have your energy levels felt this week? How do you honour how you are feeling?
What are the stories you tell yourself? What are the thought patterns running through your mind first thing on a morning?
What does support look like/feel like to you? In what ways do you support yourself?
How do you identify and navigate the support you need? What measures have you put in place to meet support needs? (An example in this particular case, work adjustments such as working from home/half day finish on a Friday. Early nights to bed. Creating space and making the bedroom a sanctuary of rest)
What help and support do others reach out and ask you for? Could you open up to the prospect of reaching out and asking for the same in a similar way?
For those of us who menstruate: How do you feel at the onset of your period? How do you support how you feel?
Have you attended or immersed yourself in circle before? What experiences have you had?
I’ll bring these prompts to our Healing Through Writing space in the morning for those occasions where we need inspired ideas on what to write about. Here’s what to expect when you join us.
I want to speak to menstruation here because as I write this I am at the tail end of my bleed so it is really easy for me to answer that question. I start to feel the effects of my period a week before where I am exhausted and generally functioning on very limited energy. This is not ideal as a Mother to 3 with a lot of stuff to manage. I often sit with the guilt of wanting to return to the GP to get birth control so I can just switch off my period again - I have been off birth control control for 7 years now - it brings up all sorts of nonsense such as it would be so much easier to take birth control and then I could join the others who can continually produce and do - just like I used to. The world is not designed for rest and pause and so having at least 2 weeks of a month where I am unable to function like a “normal” person is a constant reminder of how there is the opportunity for me to fall into the feeling that I am failing. Failing because I can’t do and achieve all the time. Logically I know this is conditioning and most of the time I am okay with it, but as you asked it led me to think actually it would be lovely if more tolerance and acceptance for people’s differing needs existed 🙏🏼💖💖💖
Really appreciate your support and your general life mission. Looking forward to more! Also beautiful pictures ;)