Lessons Learned from Being Sick

Two days ago I came down with a really bad cold. I'm still pretty sick today, but I'm doing better. I have a very weak immune system, so I tend to get sick both easily and often. Normally, when I'm sick I mope around and complain about how miserable I feel and how much I hate my immune system.

But this time, it's different. As I've been working on my gratitude, so that I can spend more time feeling blessed and less time miserable, I realized that gratitude applies even when I'm sick. So today I'm going to point out the highlights of being sick:

1. You get the best sleep of your life
2. You realize how important being healthy is
3. You make time to feel good, relax and take care of yourself
4. You remember the value of doing nothing. Lazing around in bed for six hours only partially concious can be quite luxurious.
5. You eat really good food. In order to get healthy again as quickly as possible, you probably restricted your diet to healthy, nutrient-dense foods that made you feel better like broth, juice and oatmeal. You don't overeat because that will make you more sick, and you don't undereat because that will make you weaker.
6. You have time to simply be still. This is almost like meditation, but not quite. It's a few moments to turn off your mind, ignore your body and just simply exist in the vast space of our universe. When you're sick, you probably did this a lot - too ill to even think, to awake to sleep you just sort of float in the nothingness.
7. You realize how much people love you. When you're sick, you probably had some people wish you better, maybe someone even helped take care of you, and when you get back a few people probably told you how much they missed you. For me, that was my mom and my friends. My mom has an awesome bedside manner, and she knows exactly what foods will taste good and make me feel better. My friends are an awesome support system - they littered my inbox and facebook wall with "get better" messages. And when I got healthy and could hang out again they welcomed me back with loving arms.
8. You have time to think about...
1. What's really important.
2. What's truly a good use of your time
3. What you're really passionate about
1. You probably laid there in bed thinking "If I felt better, I would be doing _____ right now".
9. You're careful not to overdo it. When you're healthy you probably overexert yourself way too often. But when you're sick overexertion only makes things worse, so you're more careful not to push yourself past your limits.
10. You're more in tune with yourself, more mindful. You notice minute changes in your body, like my lips or chapped, much more readily than you do when your body is solely a method of transportation for your head. You're also more aware of what you're doing, because it takes so much effort and you can feel your entire body working.
11. You're very grateful for small things like fresh air, chicken broth and fluffy pillows.

Wouldn't it be great to live like this when we're healthy? We'd probably never get sick!

Here's some ideas to get this kind of self-love going when you don't have a runny nose:

• Just like you schedule a business meeting or a doctors appointment, schedule your sleep. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time for a good, deep sleep. And like any important appointment, you'd never be late, right? You'd schedule the rest of your day around it, instead of scheduling your sleep around your day. Sleep is the most important appointment you will make every day, and unlike popular belief, you can't catch up on it or make up for lost sleep.
• Pay attention to how food makes you feel. If it doesn't make you feel good, you shouldn't be eating it.
• Drink plenty of water
• Make time to relax. For me, it's Sunday. I don't do anything on Sunday's that I don't want to do, that doesn't relax me. I go to church because it is relaxing and it does make me happy. If you get stressed really easily, you might want to fit in some downtime every single day instead of doing one big day of relaxation. My mom relaxes for about an hour every night and writes. It helps her immensely.
• Eat foods that improve your health, like:
• Yogurt
• Fresh fruit
• Celery and peanut butter
• Soup
• Whole grains
• Nuts
• Smoothies
• Remember how important it is to be healthy, and how good it feels. Make it a priority. If you're too exhausted or stressed to take those steps to get healthy, get rid of those stressers and exhausters until you can make yourself healthier.
• Don't overdo it. Burnout is never a good thing. "Slow and steady wins the race".
• Remember there's always something to be grateful for, to be happy about.

What lessons have you learned from being sick?

Healing Rituals

My father was violent, he was mean. He abused my mother on a regular basis, and it wasn't until just two years ago that she finally escaped. When she left, she fled to a Woman's Shelter. We stayed there for almost two months with several other woman and families.

And despite the fact that me, my two younger siblings and my mother shared a small 12x12 bedroom, and all the other complications of familial community living, and the pain that all of us were dealing with there, it was also one of the best, most positive experiences of my life.

I've moved 21 times, and in a few months it will be 22. And out of all of those places, that shelter is my favorite. And it's not for any reasons like I liked the paint colors or the tv was nice, it's because of the memories, the feelings, the people.

For people like me who have gone through a traumatic situation, whether it was only a few moments or several years, healing is essential. Not only is it essential, but it's hard, difficult, arduous. It's a long, up-hill climb. Sometimes it feels like you will never fully recover.

That shelter healed me, in so many ways. And I felt it would be important to talk about how it healed me. So that you, or someone you love, can heal too.

1. My "home base" was full of people who didn't judge me, or each other. No matter how hard the real world got, I could fall back to Home Base and recover.
2. I had proof of peoples love for me. When I got sick, someone bought me popsicles. When I was scared, someone talked to me. I was hugged, kissed, touched and generally loved. There were what I call Spontaneous Expressions of Love in which I was surprised with gifts, trips to the movies, and cooking lessons.
3. "Be still and know that I am God." Every morning, all the woman and I would get up early before the small children, go out and sit on the back porch and drink coffee in the silence. We would watch the sun rise, listen to the birds, smell the wind blowing through the pine trees as we cuddled up in our fluffy blankets and just breathed. Like meditation, but not quite. It was just existing in only that moment, in the silence, being completely still.
4. We took care of each other, and we took that job of caretaker seriously. No one flaked out on cooking dinner. The toilet was always clean. We could depend on our needs being met. There was no fear of being abandoned, even such a small way.
5. We ate dinner together. Every single night, no matter what. We never missed a night.
6. We supported eachother. In some cases, it was through formal support groups. But in others, it was more casual, but much more meaningful. It was talking about our dreams and our hopes. Giving each other advice, and holding each other while we cried.
7. We focused on filling our lives with happiness. We followed our dreams, stopped caring what other people thought, and were let free. We were all given freedom for the first time, and we took advantage of it.
8. We had coffee. Everyday started with the most simple ritual, but it was something we all clung too and took comfort in because it made us feel better. And it was important to start every day off with something that made us feel good.
9. We ate good food. We ate to feel good, instead of look good. Which means while we never pigged out on junk food, we weren't obsessing over low-fat milk. We ate real, whole foods like berries. We ate warm comfort foods like homemade mexican soups and stews that I don't even know the name of, mac and cheese from scratch and fresh-baked bread.

While some of this you may not find applicable to your life, I hope at least some of it will be.

How do you heal?