At 4:50 am today, Mom texted me, saying she needed help. I rolled out of bed to sharp, burning pain in my left foot. I could barely put weight on it. God, it hurt.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Somehow I had managed to rack up 17,357 steps on the holiday.
In fact, this was the fifth consecutive day that my Fitbit had congratulated me for leaving 10,000 steps in the dust.
Yeah, congratulations. I had aggravated the arthritis in my left foot and my right knee, along with the mysterious pain in my right hip that an x-Ray says is not arthritis.
My self-talk kicked in immediately:
Maybe if I lose 20 pounds, this joint pain will go away.
How am I going to hit my exercise goal this week feeling like this?
I gotta get Mom’s breakfast.
I gotta get some coffee and breakfast so I can get some Motrin in me.
What’s on my to-do list today?
Then a moment of clarity:
I need to rest today.
Rest. I so obviously needed it, but the thought of it kind of freaked me out. Because the truth is, I don’t really know how to rest.
What would a day of rest look like for me as a caregiver to my mother with heart failure? What would I do with all of my “I gottas?” Where would I park my feelings of guilt about taking a break?
I thought back to all the inspirational quotes about rest that I’ve shared on Facebook. Like this one.
And this one.
And of course this one.
Sharing a graphic on social is one thing. Sitting my ass in a recliner for a day and not checking my Fitbit is another.
It was so clear to me today that “doing” is still deeply ingrained in me from all the years it worked for me in my career. I thought I had made progress with this. I even blogged about it: 4 ways to relax when you don’t know how. But here I was slamming up against it once more.
All I knew for sure is that I would be writing a blog post about this mental tug of war because it shouldn’t be so difficult to just stop and rest.
I did rest a little today by watching birds in the backyard with no camera and no goal. I just sat in my $17 chair from Ollie’s and watched a tufted titmouse hammering away at the peanut wreath and a hairy woodpecker discovering a fresh block of sunflower suet. It made my heart happy. It was so good to feel no pain—only peace—for about 20 minutes.
But that’s the only time I truly stopped. My compulsion to “do” overrode my need to “not do.” I just did things more slowly.
Who else out there has trouble resting? My gut says it’s a female thing: we do and do and do for others until we lose ourselves. But maybe I’m wrong about that. If you’re a person who has mastered the art of resting, how did you do it? How do you turn off the self-talk, guilt and compulsions?
I really want to know. Because it’s 9 pm. The Fitbit says I have 8111 steps. 800 mg of Motrin wore off hours ago. My left foot hurts. How long will rest be a work in progress for me?
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