Be Kind to Yourself

I wanted to share this email that I recently sent to a friend - I think it may be helpful to others - I know it's helpful to me:

I think it's important for you to remember that you have received quite a few serious shocks to your physical, emotional, and thought-systems in the past few months. In a weird way, physical shocks are easier to deal with than the other two - illness and injury to the body are 'real' and we can point to 'evidence' and we can attempt to 'fix' it and bring those problems back to some kind of 'normal' or 'balanced' state.

Emotional and thought shocks are more difficult - what do you point to? How to even express it? And in this culture, we don't have much compassion for the process of life that brings constant change, large and small, into our experience. In the year after Stephen's death, I wished we still had the cultural habit of wearing only black to express the fact that we are in mourning, that our behaviors could be … not excused … but understood and that we were given the time and social space to figure out who we were in this new phase of life.

The only break we give ourselves now is if our bodies take over and shut us down. I have a feeling that part of the reason that I'm experiencing so much physical pain and weakness, the experience I get to label as "lupus flare", is because I don't have the time/space/support to express the emotional pain and the intellectual confusion that I am also experiencing. Some of us even create physical damage to show evidence of the emotional/intellectual damage that we feel. When JT and I were breaking up … it took us well over a year … we had moved into separate places, but still were in the same workplace. He would flirt, agressively, with the women around us, and often go home with them. He would often then knock on my door at 2 or 3am and ask me to let him sleep on the couch because he didn't want to drive all the way home. (and … it was on the couch, I at least had that much sense!). Some days at work, I would watch him, and it would hurt my heart so deeply … I had no skills when I was so young to deal with those raw feelings. I used to go in the back room and literally bang my head against the cement wall so that I had some physical damage to point to. I imagine it must be similar for young people who cut themselves, or do some other damage.

So, we are left to defend our selves and our vulnerable hearts and minds … often feeling quite alone. Along with dealing with illness and heartache, we also have to defend the walls of who we believe we are. We have to make the effort to protect our time, our space, our feelings. No wonder you feel tired.

I urge you to be kind to yourself. To allow yourself the grace that you don't often allow others to show you. I urge you to care for the tender parts of yourself. This caring in no way negates the rest of who you are: brilliant, powerful, effective, funny, and respected by the people in your community and in your field.