I guess the day had to arrive when I was due to write a Wellbeing Insight blog, and I am not well! The obvious solution, for one whose personal manifesto contains the sentence: I replenish myself and navigate all that life presents with love, including self-love, is perhaps not to write this one, to allow myself a break from this shared weekly task.
My unwellness is of the physical kind – a heavy head cold which has morphed into a spasming cough and a many-days-long lack of energy. Uncharacteristically, I have not even managed to take my daily walk for the last few days. I have gone to ground, deciding that the best approach to what I first considered was ‘just a cold’ and has become more debilitating, is to put life on hold – as much as possible – begging the understanding of all those around me for broken intentions.
Someone such as me, the me you know through my words of our book, My Manifesto, has to work hard at allowing myself to rest, to take the time to become well again, and to not beat myself up. Quickly, my physical unwellness becomes mental unwellness, a slump into a you’re weak, you’re not good enough, mentality.
Maybe some good can come out of this! What occurs to me first, is evidencing, to you, another of the sentences of my personal manifesto: I am a human being with all the complexity and flaws of every other human being, and to practise the second part of that sentence: I release myself from trying to be more. The life I have chosen to lead in my personal manifesto, is the one that I want and need for myself; it is not just an exercise, it is a daily commitment to try.
What occurs to me next, is the empathy that I can deepen in myself. There are so many people, of you, who live with far more challenging and debilitating conditions than the one I am experiencing. These conditions may be even life-long and have become a part of who you are. Yet, you cope, and even flourish. You practice self-love and you share your love with others. Bravo!
As I hunker down for what I hope is only a few more days, permit me to offer my admiration and my love to all of you who like me, on a daily basis, attempt to live your best life, to ‘play the cards you have been dealt’ with as good a grace as possible.
Willingness to try is all I ask of you and of me.