When your body tells you no

Like so many of us, I'm busy. Busy, busy, busy. I flit from work to hobbies to social occasions and home, from connection to connection, task to task...Frequently for long periods, without a pause.

It's been that way all my life.

I learned how to be in the world from my mother and father, both hard-working individuals. In the seventies, when I was a kid, my mum combined leadership of four different community action committees with co-owning multiple cleaning, pest control and auto-valet businesses with my father. She was the area resettlement officer for Vietnamese refugees in Masterton New Zealand, with a busy social life squeezed between bursts of parenting four, then five children.

I remember later in life, after I'd moved off to foreign pastures, my younger siblings related a story to me; one day Mum had been swaying with exhaustion in front of them as she told them, "Tiredness is a state of mind."

Somewhere in my young, forming brain, that message took hold.

"You only have one life," I frequently tell people as they marvel at the sheer number of places I have been in the last year, or even two weeks. The stuff I've done.

Recently, I've developed a growing awareness of how hard I push myself. I have attempted to make adjustments, to pair things back. However, I am frequently fighting my own nature. Those Pan Pacific Games medals I could win! That Belly Dancing concert I could perform in! Those young people I could help get their learner permits. All of these activities emit their enchanting, siren calls. I can't help falling trans-like into a state of dreaming, "What could be? What could be?" smiling, as visions of glory and fulfillment dance in my head. Whispering, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

And so it was that I returned from said Pan Pacific games, clutching two shiny new medals, one bronze, one gold, and rushed to pack up my home.

You see, two dear friends and I have moved in together. It's the culmination of a long-held dream to live together. The chosen home is beautiful, it has a pool and a spa and gardens as lush and beautiful as any I've ever seen. I keep hearing whirring gamer noises in my head and the phrase, "Welcome to the next level," every time I think about the place.

But, and it's a big one, this move came on top of one of the busiest pre-Christmas seasons I have ever experienced.

I had been over to New Zealand to participate in my mother's combined wedding/80th birthday celebration/inaugural Punch and Judy puppet show just a week and a half before the PanPacs games, my head was still spinning from the veritable cornucopia of stories that swirled around the events.

Then I was off again, to Broadmeadows to facilitate some young people into the driving world, to Boronia to provide driver supervision, and then two hours north of Melbourne to the gorgeous town of Seymour, to support a group of community members in getting their Learner permits there.

It was in Seymour that disaster struck. The program I was conducting was finished. Everyone had passed and was glowing with satisfaction and possibilities.

I should have returned home.

However, there were tables to put away, a classroom to return to order and in my exhausted but happy state I decided to help. One of the wheels of the table I was pushing locked and the point of the table came crashing down on my left foot.

I am not a screamer or a gnasher of teeth, but when I tried to put weight on the foot and couldn't I thought, "Oh dear, that's not good."

Two hours later, after some kindly attention from the school staff and the local emergency room, it was determined that my foot was not broken. I had sustained a soft tissue injury.

And so, because it was "ok", I drove the two hours home with my foot on the dashboard and went on to dance in my Belly Dancing concert matinee and evening performances two days later.

I then went to the Russian Orthodox wedding of two dear friends. I then spent the next four days moving. Loading my car with heavy boxes climbing up and down stairs, getting into the attic and shuffling things around, arranging the furniture in my new room...

Following that, I went to a 21st, did early Christmas with some beloved family members and hopped (literally) into our new spa.

Needless to say, my foot became infected. I also fell down the stairs trying to hurry and could feel the bruises developing on my right hip, thigh and calf.... So, I got some antibiotics and carried on.

After a week of antibiotics, my foot was still not healing, so I got some more and hopped (literally) onto a plane bound for New Zealand.

Needless to say, that was a painful trip. When I arrived, I was hobbling like an old woman. My body had literally given up the ghost.

I wanted to visit friends, attend my daughter's Magic the Gathering get-together and do all the things I normally do. But I simply couldn't.

As I tried to jump into the car to visit my wonderful girl, (after taking forever to help my brother make dinner at his home), I discovered it was too late, I was moving too slowly to fulfil my self-imposed appointment.

I rang my daughter, admitting the pain I was in.

"What I'm hearing," she replied judiciously, "is that you need to rest, a lot. How about we don't make any plans until Monday?"

I reluctantly agreed and proceeded to snooze and read in my brother's very comfortable downstairs bedroom.

This type of "laziness" is completely foreign to me.

I will occasionally spend a day in bed if I'm too sick or exhausted to get up, but a collection of days? It's unheard of!

However, as I rested and the bruises from my fall blossomed like dark reminder notes, I realised that I had driven my body into a wall, like an out-of-control race car driver. I had crashed. I was a wreck.

As I lay there, I realised I hadn't written for at least two months, I'd been so busy.

The idea for this blog dawned on me like the sun in the stillness. I took a photo of my now- healing foot and started to write.

I realised that I was exactly where I needed to be.

My creativity peering out from under the covers was a symptom of my return. I was coming back from the ledge I had lived on for the past few months. The overworked gears of my mind and body had been greased by sleep and begun working properly again.

My amazing, hard-working body finally said no. And it did it so emphatically that I had to listen. I'm really glad I did.

Ever pushed yourself too far? Click on the links below for some helpful tips on creating balance in your life.

https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/work-life-balance

https://www.mindful.org/guided-meditation-scripts-from-the-powerful-women-of-the-mindfulness-movement/