Bold Journey into Burnout
I was working in the Palliative Care Unit at Vanderbilt when the pandemic hit. Palliative Care is a specialty in medical care that focuses on treating the symptoms of a disease that cannot be cured. Sometimes it leads straight into end of life care in a short period of time. I had been doing this work for the past 7 years and found it rewarding and that it was my calling.
Food for Thought
Everyone is on their own journey. And all I know is that mine is complex. I still have an inner shame voice if I eat what I deem in the moment as ‘too much’ or if the waist band on my pants feels a little too tight on any given day, or if I see a photo of myself and immediately think I look fat. This voice amplifies itself multiple times a day and is reinforced by not so subtle advertising everywhere.
A pretty good year
When you look back, what impacts you the most in your own life? Do you lean on traumatic events that shaped you, or do you revel in happy times? Do you remember when you were less aware and compare to times where you can’t unknow things anymore, and realize that is the rub? I know I do.
Pies for Xmas
I must move more slowly, because I want to. I want to savor my conversations with you like they are precious mini pies eaten with spicy cocoa. Like the first morning snow. Like the string section in the Nutcracker Suite. I ask, how can I be of service, how can I love more, how can I exude peace when Kroger is crazy? I believe in it. I believe in small acts of kindness. I believe in mini pies. Dutch apple, chocolate ganache oreo, cheese graham cracker, ricotta custard and whatever else my ingredients lead me to. xoxo happy holidays,
Springin forward
there is something ingrained in me about how much I'm 'supposed to work' every week and then I come home and do my other job - being a creative - or is that 'for fun?' In the culture of addictive processes we find ourselves telling each other that it's good for us to be jammed up all the time, but I don't think it's healthy! There is so much talk around 'self-care' and 'work life balance' but damnit they just become buzzwords that we end up resisting in lieu of proving to ourselves we need to be superheroes instead of mastering resting.
Intermission
OH PLANS!!! I’m still making them, just more and more cautiously and less frequently. This week I felt depressed for a few minutes because I didn’t have anything to do requiring advanced amounts of my brain or talent of any sort. I wanted to rejoice that I’m now planning ‘resting,’ and I’m finding it but not without some despair. I want to be useful. “What am I doing with my time?” I am called to be of service in my life, yet right now I must serve me. It is a mysterious ride to be on, and I feel like I’m going around and around with i
the in-between state
2 weeks prior to starting chemo when I was hearing my diagnosis for the first time, I had a conversation with myself about my drinking. Though I drank less than I used to, it seemed to be the right time to choose to be alcohol-free for the duration of my treatment. After all, booze has shown to increase estrogen in the bloodstream and HELLO I have an estrogen receptor positive cancer. Truly sounds like a no-brainer to me!
A New Way to Be
I was on the way to work a night shift when I learned I had ‘a cancer’ in my breast. I really thought it was the hospital calling to tell me I had to float to another unit or that we were overstaffed or something, but it turned out to be the results of a recent biopsy I’d had. Of course, having the biopsy alerted me to the possibility of such a situation but I had tucked it away as something I’d ‘hoped was wrong.’ But ‘I knew all along.’
I worked my shift that night with that new knowledge, and I couldn’t even speak of it because I would have fallen apart. I took care of my patients that night extra carefully and in the downtime googled reasons why I might have given this to myself. I had a hard night. I couldn’t call anyone. It may have been the longest night of my entire life.