The Hidden Gifts of Rest

I was pretty sick for about a month this winter, as many of you know. It started on December 23, while traveling, and lingered too long into January. It included two infections, losing my voice and hearing, going on antibiotics and steroids, and having to extend deadlines in early January due to being sick.

It’s not lost on me that my ability to communicate effectively was temporarily suspended. And I think it’s a key to how this illness ended up working its restorative magic on me.

It was hard to rest. I wasn’t raised in a household that rested much; it was seen as laziness, not necessary or virtuous. My mom, who I adored and respected for her fastidious kitchen dedication, napped religiously but was otherwise busy from dawn till dusk caring for 5 daughters. We didn’t live overscheduled lives (it was the 1980s, Atari and MTV were the wow factors) but we did have a lot of commitments and structure to our weeks.

So when I say it was hard to rest, I mean it. The Catholic guilt sits there right next to me the whole time, telling me I should be able to get up and prepare dinner or get that email out. I resisted the urge for probably 2 weeks. It was the most rest I’ve gotten since perhaps my second was born over 14 years ago.

I started to feel completely better last week, over a month later. But when I did start to feel better, it wasn’t just that I felt better. I feel like for the first time since my dad’s passing in July 2021 I tapped back into my creativity.

Looking back, I have felt burnt out, unoriginal, tired, behind in creating unique content, and generally exhausted by social media since 2020. I know you’ve heard me discuss this before, but I hadn’t given myself any real time off except for a day here or there. But in the back of my mind I was always trying to come up with the next post, even on those days off. And my posting and my creativity is very in-the-moment. Even this writing. I don’t schedule posts, not even here, because that’s not in keeping with how my creativity works.

And 2021 was a difficult year personally. I finished editing my book and it went to press, but not before we laid my dad to rest. Most of the year I was really focused on his care and treatment and coming to terms with his mortality. We also rebuilt the garden, had an epic drought, and because of his illness I was gone for many weeks at a time throughout the year, which resulted in weeds, less photography, and even more chaos than normal.

After his passing, I stopped seeing my photography, the garden, and even my writing as interesting or beautiful. I would take photos and think there was something worth writing about, and then by the time I saw the images on my phone I had no words. Like, literally zero words. And if you know me and read my posts, there are more words than there need to be most days.

My mind was blank. My tank was empty. I wasn’t enough anymore, because I had given too much away.

Then came 2022, the year I became an author. It was a monumental year. We also moved my sweet mom out of our family home, cleaned it out and sold it, and had a lot of other major life events scattered about. I weathered all the firsts without my dad that year. I also focused on creating this new community and seeing how this new space would or wouldn’t work. It was a magical year, and I worked hard to shed that grief-shaken haze from my heart and mind, but it persisted throughout.

So, you see, this illness was a gift. To start 2023 laid up and going practically crazy and bored streaming The Great Pottery Throw Down (it was actually some of the best reality TV I’ve seen in years!!. This forced rest somehow managed to burn it all down, release the tension I was holding, accept and transform the grief into something beautiful, and rebuild my drive to create and be creative.

I feel like maybe I am finally ready to be the person I am meant to be after losing my father. It took about 18 months to arrive.

The most surprising twist of fate is that I recently reached out to my publisher to start talking about another book. Surprised? Yeah, me too. I have about 5 different book ideas, though I’m not sure they would all make great books. Some require a few more years of research and growing trials, while others would need travel and interviews to pull off. All have merit, so I’m excited to talk with them soon. I don’t want to commit to writing the book until next year, so it wouldn’t publish until 2026, 3 years from now, but I’ve started the conversation. All because of that forced rest.

But if you had told me I’d be extending myself like that this winter, I’d have laughed at you. Something in that required rest transformed, released, and opened my heart and soul to this next phase of life. And the way the past few weeks have gone in our personal lives, I’m intimately realizing this rest was all part of the larger shift that is happening around me and with those loved ones in our life.

All this to say, I really hope you have created or found some real rest this winter. Maybe it’s a ritual. Perhaps it’s a social media detox, or a long weekend where you just shut your phone off and cook great food. Maybe it involves partying with your best friends, or binge watching some light TV or reading books all weekend. After this completely cathartic month, even if I don’t get sick next winter, which I sure hope I don’t, I will try my best to replicate this fundamental rest.

I have a suspicion the years just get harder and harder, and we need to be as balanced and open to what lies ahead as our hearts can manage, so we can be our best selves for our favorite people, including to ourselves.