Amazingly, I wrote the post below on Tuesday night, intending to finish up and post it on Wednesday morning.
And then I developed norovirus during that very night, and am just starting to feel human again, 3 days later. Didn’t expect being proven right in such a… way.
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Only three weeks of January and that has been proven to me a few times already!
First, it feels like the challenging day I had two weeks ago, mental health-wise, has had its after-effects felt since, so focusing and doing the things I want to do, that I know are good for me, is still a challenge these days. At this point it might be too much laisser-aller on my part, and there is definitely a will to do better for myself. Just gotta… do it.
On Monday last week, it was discovered that my mom’s last remaining sister, whose cancer remission had left her in great pain, only had a few months left ahead of her. We lost my dad less than four months ago, so this is quite a hard hit for my mom. My siblings and I are doing whatever we can to be there for her, but grief is grief. We cannot, and should not, shield her from it.
This has of course occupied a great deal of my mind and consumed a lot of energy, not just in worrying for my mom and for my aunt’s comfort, but also empathy for my uncle and my cousins, having gone through something similar quite recently myself.
The psychotherapist I had started seeing also turned out not to be a good fit for me after only two sessions, which left me a bit stressed. While I’m not giving up on therapy at all, I will be waiting to see how things are shaping up around my aunt’s care before I make new plans for regular therapy sessions.
Writing this, I realize that those things are probably more of an explanation to my difficulty to resume my best habits than laisser-aller might be. Always exercising self-compassion, but currently it’s gotten to the point where actually and actively starting on recovery is probably going to be the right choice. Going to gently nudge myself towards doing the right things for myself to start that positive cycle..!
(After I fully recover from norovirus now..!)
(Don’t forget to wash your hands thoroughly!)