Know Your Worth (even when you're sick)

Here we are another week and a life altering head cold to kick me in the ass.

This post certainly wasn’t planned but since my life got hijacked by what some are calling “a sign”... it’s all I can think about.

A mom's reaction of someone not feeling well immediately imparts a need to give them encouragement to get better, and to take time off to lesson the amount of overall down time. Because of the common understanding of someone's worth being higher when they are feeling 100%.

Thanks to Khalid we can have a sweet tune to remind us Khalid - Know Your Worth

I’m writing this so I remember how ferociously I would take care of myself, when sick, while having a child under my care, so when she is grown and gone I don’t just let myself deteriorate.  I don’t believe in self love - of any kind. 

Or maybe I should say, I don’t know how to practice it, justify it, or incorporate it into my life.

I will forgo and forget any level of self care most times.  

I have vitamins, never take them; have great natural soaps, don’t use them; have nice PJ’s, can’t find them; have lotions and a humidifier and tea’s and chill music playlists, soft socks and a yoga mat - don’t regularly engage in any of those luxury’s… Until I’m at death’s door.

ESPECIALLY, when illness always lands on me with a pile of work to accomplish and presentations to prepare along with having my daughter to care for and ensure she doesn’t get sick.

I rarely get sick.  I’m fairly certain I’m sick more often than I think but just keep going.  Geez, I made it through the past 14 months without being sick and now I get it?  What the Hell.

In hindsight this week I should have taken a day and told work to go somewhere.  I didn’t.  Instead I went to bed earlier than usual (I'm usually a midnight renegade) and didn’t work at night, trying desperately to sleep and let my body do what it needed to do.

My Oura Ring at least gave me a back pat showing my efforts were paying off.  

My routine the moment I feel a tickle of something different occurring in my body....

(also, Non-Permanent Life is not sponsored by anyone or thing and does not get paid should you click the links in any of our posts) 

1. Zicam Rapid Melts

2. WATER with WATER and WATER

3. Non-caffeine herbal tea Gypsy Cold Care

4. Sinus Rinse Neilmed Sinus-Rinse (also have a version for kiddos)

5. HOTTTT shower

6. Eucalyptus (I’m kinda loving essential oil for under my nose and hanging a bunch in my shower) Eucalyptus Bundles

7. Clean sheets, towels and Jammies

8. Nutrient busting food and a lot of it (unless I have a temperature which hasn’t happened in YEARS - knock on wood).

9. Oranges

10. Sanitize the entire house and inside of my car Thrive Market Cleaning Vinegar

11. Bronchial support Gaia Herbs Wellness Syrup

12. Inhaler

13. Mucinex

14. Sips of an Old Fashioned - even better when you can get it with a take out order of a veggie burger from your favorite restaurant

 

Most times I have to modify the process and hybridize because I’m on the road for work when it starts kicking in (the worst). 

I do want to go back to my first comment on how some have said this illness was a “sign”.  

I burn the candle at both ends.  Always have.  No one ever told me this is what was needed from one job to another.  Or no one told me that when I start working I should deplete myself to nothing at the end of each day, not even the week.  I know that HOW I do things is very unhealthy and recently my body has been screaming at me.

Not the screaming of aches and pains of a workout, or yard work, or stress, or age.  My literal organs are showing me who’s boss… turns out I suck at managing myself.

I wait till it’s too late to put in the effort.

I see, feel and hear all the notices, warnings, and heads-ups and I always say (while I sit on the toilet, weep in my bed, or dangling my legs off the edge of an exam table with a hospital gown tightly wound around me) “Yes, I know, I get it, I have to make myself priority/ relinquish some items to make life easier/ set boundaries/ eat,sleep,work better.  I’ll work on it.”  Pants up, Roll over and out, Peel myself off a paper sheet and get dressed - and I’m back on track with my “regularly scheduled program”.

I hustle.

To be clear, that hustle is for other people’s gain.

I should be hustling more for myself.  I can be baller with a job and give energy to projects that I love that also financially benefit me and NOT deplete my ability to be healthy.

It also really pisses me off to get my ass kicked with a sore throat and sinus infection for 5 days.  AND the realization that there are a fuckton of other things that happen daily that I should be REALLY PISSED about - not a damn cold virus.  We will break this down more in a later post.

This 2021 late spring cold has brought a new view to my lenses.

• Own my shit and ask for what I need.  When colleagues on video conference calls keep saying “you don’t look or sound good, feel better” I should just say, oh wait… I just shouldn’t be on the call - it’s not that important.

• Get a little more routine on self-care everyday.

• Organize, so when I am sick a bomb of stuff-and-things doesn’t seem to go off in my home.

• Let. People. Help. Me. - stop the bullshit of saying “no it’s ok” to everything.

• Drink more water.

• Amp up my endurance training - so when my bronchials are fucked I have a standing chance.

Here’s to all the sick moms still moming.  To the worker bees coughing through a conference call on mute.  To the hustlers that are working to get noticed and to make the bank.

When all else fails… Doing a Sinus Rinse will dislodge a lot of shit you don’t need!

                                        -virtual chest bump