I am not one of those people that takes getting sick all that well. Growing up, my father’s response whenever I got sick was: take a knee, drink some water, you’ll live. As a nurse, I am exposed to all kinds of germs, but with all the patients I have seen, I have never been so sick so often than I have with children. My personal policy about calling off from work: if I am still standing upright after a shower without a fever, boogers or no, I am going to work. These days that seems to make my co-workers cringe. Sorry guys, we are super short and I have ZERO sick leave to spare for myself. In the last month I have had to enforce that policy, aside from testing positive and being asymptomatic. My daughter ( I believe it was her) gave me the most godawful cold/ sinus infection I have had since…last year when her brother gave me a germ so bad I got my first ear infection ever and lost my voice for two weeks. Being so sick I was unable to run or even do yoga for almost three weeks! I felt…well, a myriad of things: fat, disgusting, exhausted, bloated, boogery, headachey…The point is, I would have done more harm than good to my body I had a pushed myself and did more than just making it through a stretch at work and keeping up with kids and chores on my day off. Part of my brain knows this, my body knows this in part as well, however, that didn’t stop the evil part of my brain from making me feel godawful about sitting around on my duff blowing my nose all day.
As a nurse I know that rest does more for your body
sometimes than any medicine out there, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking
myself lazy and fat. This is were learning to give myself grace comes in. I
have been in therapy for years. Therapy is an ongoing process for a lot of
people. Some people only need a few sessions to get them past a hard time, some
people go for a while and stop and then go back, and others find it a never
ending process that helps them grow. I am part of the never ending process
group. Its not that I have a serious mental health problem, I mean I have some
post partum right now, but therapy helps me put things in perspective that my
brain has a hard time processing. It gives me skills and ways of coping or
handling situations that I would not have thought of on my own. One of those
things is learning to give myself grace.
What I mean by this is: learning to give myself a break. I
am constantly pushing myself to be a better nurse, a better wife, a better mom,
a better sister, a better friend…and when I feel like I fail at these tasks,
which I do, I beat myself up for days. Sometimes when I am super anxious I relive
the mistakes in my head and re-beat myself up. I have to learn to accept I am
human and I will make mistakes. There will be days I fail as a mother or a
nurse. During this year long journey to the Fairy Tale Challenge there will be
days where I fail at my run, where I will go through stretch where I just don’t
have the time or the energy to even do a simple 10 minute yoga lesson, but as
long as I stay focused on my goal and make a genuine effort, I can count it as
a win. I don’t have to be perfect, I just have to finish, even if I crawl across
that line. (But I am going to seriously try and run most if not all of it, don’t
worry y’all this goal is happening.)
The picture I am attaching to this post is a picture I took
of myself after a particularly windy and defeating run. My body just wasn’t
into it. The wind was in my face and up my nose the whole time, it was frustrating
and I cried. But two days later I ran the first 5K I have run since my mid-20’s.
Give myself grace. I can do this.
That being said I have seriously been the slacker lately, I am not being hard on myself this time, I just have been lazy, plus I have had to work night shift last night and tonight...work messes everything up. Not to mention the wind here has been HORRIBLE. I hate running on the treadmill. It hurts. Any advice on how to make running on the treadmill easier, I am open to suggestion.
Look at me making excuses. I can do this. I really can. Alright anxious rant over. I will layer up and run tomorrow. Its happening. Even if I make it only a mile.
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