My "tell" that a fibro flare is coming is this dull achy hand and wrist pain. So uncomfortable that I can’t wrap my fingers around a glass or even hold my phone without making it worse. I quickly calmed myself with the reminder that I hadn’t had a flare up that lasted more than a few days in over three years. Whatever I was doing, meds, supplements, diet, exercise-ish (being honest here), was keeping my symptoms at bay! For the rest of the day I took it easy on my joints and tried my best to stay calm.

Later that my evening my shoulders and neck started to ache but again I reminded myself that it should all be over soon. I thought about how lucky I was to be taking vacation days right now over my kids’ winter break, and enjoyed some Netflix and a book, being careful to take breaks from holding my Kindle when it triggered pain in my hand.

Living with a chronic illness, especially one with vague symptoms and a reality that waking up feeling 85% healthy was a "good day" did not help my pandemic anxiety nor my susceptibility to illness anxiety. If you google Fibromyalgia symptoms, and I strongly suggest you don't, you will find hundreds of them. This is not, however, a blog post about living through a pandemic with an anxiety disorder and a predisposition for hypochondria, though I'm now realizing that one of those will be coming soon.

What I really want to talk about here is the inflated sense of importance we as moms use as an excuse to not take care of ourselves even when we are struggling with our own physical or mental health. Because mental health is health.

During these first few days of my flare up, lines from Camille Pagan's essay, "While I Was Sleeping," part of Zibby Owens' brilliant new anthology, Moms Don't Have Time To Have Kids ( https://amzn.to/3zCLm8l) started to pop into my brain. In this relatable essay Pagan writes about her experience having Covid and having to isolate from her family for ten days. In the first moment, before she takes the time to worry about her own health, she panics at the thought of how her family will survive without her for such an extended time. Bullseye! Any time I have even a sniffle, I tell myself to be strong and soldier on, because just like Zibby would say "Mom's Don't Have Time to Be Sick." This is such a universal mom fear that Zibby dedicated a whole section in her latest anthology to discuss this phenomenon.

Monday finally came around and the kids finally got out of my personal space and went to school. This was a joyous occasion because as you all know I love my kids but don't always like them and it was time to get back to our normal programing. I reviewed my calendar for the week and it was jam packed, as expected after two weeks off.

During my second week of time off I had made a decision to start to carefully schedule in an hour or two of breaks throughout my long work days that often stretched from 8 am to 8 pm (stepping away here or there to taxi a child somewhere, though that doesn't count as time off). I pre-scheduled these breaks as a preventative measure so I didn't revisit the burn out depressive haze I found myself in mid-December. I was trying to make "boundaries" the magic word for 2022.

I took my break time early that day. When my mind and body slowed down I noticed that my achiness was much more pronounced, my tonsils felt swollen, my head was pounding and I was pretty sure I had a fever. I ended up taking more than a 2 hour break that day. I asked my husband to drive the kids to activities and to pick up my oldest from an after-school meeting. I bravely ignored his moaning and under his breath protests when he reluctantly said yes. I mention this not to give Jeff a hard time. It's totally normal and even expected to moan when your day implodes on you due to illness and you have to quickly shuffle meetings around. I’m including this because I was proud of myself. In the past I would interpret that moan or two as evidence that he was mad at me. Then I would think, maybe he should be mad at me, I'm supposed to take care of the kids at all cost... and thus would start a cycle of resentment and burn out. Instead, I ignored these expected protests and rested while Jeff played taxi driver for the afternoon. Strangely, when I looked at Jeff and the children at dinner no one appeared harmed by my extra day off. I went to bed early, proud of myself for prioritizing my health, confident that this difficult step would assure that I felt good as new the next day.

Later that afternoon I had four therapy patients scheduled. I would have never considered altering these appointments, due to the fact that I had just been out of the office for two weeks. I treated some high needs individuals and most of them came to me weekly for therapy. Setting the boundary of two weeks with no available appointments, so that my time off could align with the kids' break, was already a major win for me and I felt that cancelling and skipping a third week of treatment could have been considered unethical. Something odd but not all that uncommon happened that afternoon: two out of four patients cancelled. Something else a bit odd happened. The two patients who kept their appointments were fine, more than fine, they were doing great! They had enjoyed time off from school and had used their techniques learned in therapy and took great care of themselves during my time away. That evening I found myself so tired from those two sessions, and the effort it took to "put on" a healthy face during teletherapy, that I was too tired to sit at the table with my family and spent the rest of my evening in bed.

For the second time that week I had cancellations. Interesting that the patients I wouldn’t entertain cancelling on, cancelled on me…

Later that evening as I was reflecting on the day I realized that I had decided that those two patients couldn't safely reschedule. I made this assumption without any indication of an emergency or an increase in symptoms reported by them or their parents. In fact I told myself a whole story that wasn't rooted in fact. I had decided that it would look weak and unprofessional to my internship supervisor if I had cancelled appointments because of illness so soon after a long vacation. I even ignored the fact that when I told my supervisor and the practice exec director that I was cancelling most of my meetings and taking time away from my social media and marketing long term projects, they had responded ONLY with concern about my health and the suggestion that I cancel all of my appointments.

I realized that week that even though I valued my professional impact and felt proud of my parenting (well most of the time) that I wasn't so da-- important that I should consider ignoring my health and jeopardizing my own well-being. The very week that I worried that my patients and family would fall apart without me, four out of seven of my clients prioritized something else and cancelled on ME. My husband, who never seemed to have the flexibility I had to leave work in between meetings and shuttle the kids around, did it, and no one got left somewhere or didn't make it home. He may have grumbled about it, but why did I care? Wasn't that allowed and expected? If I couldn't grumble about #momlife I wouldn't have anything to write about.

As I still struggle to regain my strength and determine what happened that led to a combination fibro flare and virus, I am now looking at the week ahead and building in longer breaks knowing I am still healing. I have cancelled anything that could be postponed and instead of taking on last minute patient appointments anywhere there were openings, I closed my availability a week in advance knowing that 75% full was more appropriate when I was only expecting to be 75% better. Each time I did one of these things or built a boundary I found myself spending less and less time justifying the decision. My body had taken care of that for me with its unwillingness to go back to my typical energy level. Anytime I do fall down the rabbit hole of guilt with taking more time off or potentially disappointing a client I try to remember that while I'm pretty great at what I do, it would be way more detrimental to my clients if I continued to take such lousy care of myself that I became so ill that I could no longer practice or work! It would be way worse for my husband and children if I let my health get so bad that I couldn't ever drive them to their afternoon activities, instead of taking a day or two or five to recover. I realized that I was important, just not in the way I thought. After all, when my kids grow up and move away and reflect on their childhood, do I want them to remember me as unraveled, sick and struggling or happy, healthy and present (most of the time, no self-care regimen will make me perfect)?

Are you having trouble slowing down! Check out my individual and group psychotherapy services especially for parents, coming soon in May of 2022. I provide a customized goal oriented approach to therapy for busy and overwhelmed Parents. Let me support you on your parenting journey.

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