The PAUSE

As I write, yet another health “challenge” is working on pulling the rug out from under me, in different ways, each day. At 48 years old, married, with a 4 year old and 8 year old, running a nonprofit and my own business too, there are days when I just do not want to get up - but also do not have the ability sink deeper into that comfy memory foam and cover my head with the fluffy duvet. At least not all day long. 

For years, like 10 of them, I've been thinking about writing about my health journey, planning it. Making notes about it. Beating myself up about it. But I still haven't started. Until now.

When I was in grad school, I became very ill. Had to leave school without my penultimate degree, with student loan debt, and a host of health issues that have affected me ever since. Chronic fatigue, Hashimotos autoimmune thyroiditis, insomnia, anxiety, depression, insulin resistance, migraines, problems with medication, extreme weight gain, depersonalization, and later, gestational diabetes, and postpartum depression. 

I'm not necessarily an "everything happens for a reason" adopter. But, in practice, it gives me hope and purpose to flip the script on challenges that totally rock me and try to use my experiences and what I have learned to help others. Talking about it so that others don’t feel alone (or cRaZy), sharing what has worked for me (often learned through trial and error of unfairly expensive doctors who don’t take insurance), and working to create a sense of community where we are all in this together - that action keeps me from feeling so helpless and wallowing in self pity. Even if it’s a self-determined “mission”, I’d rather be on that, than letting myself sit around depressed and getting sicker. I’ve done that and it’s not a place I like to hang out in. 

But, I also have a more than an occasional bout of imposter syndrome. Doubting that I am the one who should be speaking to an issue, or I wrap myself up in such a cloak of perfectionism and don’t spit the words out, so that maybe you've never heard from me, in an organized way, on any of the matters I've considered raising.

Letting go (for now) of all that grad school context and illness from 2006-2014 (I’ll get back to it), I am going to start this long overdue work during this new challenging phase: the perimenoPAUSE phase. If I can muster the energy and clarity to do the work at hand, there's not a lot of filter or room for caring too much what others think! 

But, why capitalize the PAUSE? Because the pause is what I wish I had known about all those years ago. Learning the pause is what ultimately helped me help myself. Teaching the pause is what I do in every yoga class I lead. Does that mean it’s easy? Nope. Definitely not! But it is worth learning and practicing.

Am I stoked to have a new, super disruptive health challenge foisted upon me by age and virtue of being female? Also nope. I suddenly have a host of symptoms that I just didn’t see coming. But I am not going to sit here and let them take over and define me. I am going to work through this with you, and teach you about the pause along the way, as I practice it, and get myself through this the best way I have learned how, employing all the things I wish I knew last time and that I have been meaning to share so that others don’t have to suffer as I did.

Let’s see how this goes, shall we? Stay tuned, we are just getting started.

Miami, 2011 (35 years old)

I was really suffering from a combination of thyroid disease, depression, stress, poor lifestyle, and a sense that I had to do it all, not understanding how I was making things worse for myself, my health and my career. I really thought that what I was doing was more important than anything, including how I was taking care of myself. I could “get to that later”. Almost didn’t make it…

Antibes, France, 2023 (47.5 years old)

Years of learning about, and working with, the power of the pause. That doesn’t mean I am always good at it, but it’s worth coming back to all the time. Off of all meds except one, and I continue to be able to lower that dosage annually as my body heals. Most importantly, I know my body and myself. And if something feels off, I let go of the doing, to immediately try to address it. Then I can pick back up whatever it was I was working on, better and stronger than before.