VOL II MUSING - Deep rest and slowing down

Post-cancer fatigue

Photo by Anna Meshkov on Unsplash

I think I’m as tired as I’ve ever been. I used to be ridiculously fit and super-strong. Now sometimes walking the dogs around the block is exhausting. 

It feels like chronic fatigue - I think the medical definition of ‘chronic’ is something that lasts longer than 3 months and where sleep doesn’t help and exercise makes you feel worse. Tick, tick, and tick. 

You can listen to this article here…

If you’ve read my book you’ll notice that all through treatment I tried to carry on as normal as much as possible. I kept working, writing a book, and training for powerlifting - not to mention there was the additional stress of managing the various lockdowns. 

That carrying on as normal is the response of a person who’s very much a product of her generation and her times. Those of us who were brought up in the 80s and 90s didn’t take a day off sick and we kept going no matter how ill you were. You couldn’t show weakness at work particularly if you were in a competitive workplace or you were a woman trying to compete for a senior role in an organisation. It was the times we grew up in, you just kept going. 

So keeping going was my default reaction, even to cancer. 

Thinking back on the whole time, I would also say that the mania of it all, the intense mania, becomes a kind of physical addiction to living in a heightened state. In using the word addiction I’m not saying that we like this state or that we want it, but the body becomes addicted to stress and all the hormones that stress produces under pressure. It becomes hard to step away from the situation even when you’re exhausted. 

But now I know that stress is a major factor in keeping your immune system healthy, and that the immune system plays a major role in fighting cancer - would I do the same now? 

The answer is I would do the exact opposite. 

I would stop everything. 

I would rest and sleep and love myself. 

I would surrender completely into what was happening. 

When I look back on the parts of the book and see how hard I was trying to hang on to my old self and my old life it just makes me feel very very sad.

What looks like bravery was denial. It was my ego flexing - look at what I can still do even though I’m in chemo! 

I’m not saying that keeping going isn’t a very valid coping strategy - it is. And so is denial in certain situations. All human emotions have their place and their use. 

My point is that there is a time be smart too - to recognise when facing reality is a better strategy. 

But I didn’t know cancer at the time and I didn’t know what was coming. 

Deep rest is a radical act in this world. 

I chose the word deep because what I’m talking about goes way beyond having a massage or allowing ourselves an afternoon nap.

From the moment we’re sent to school at 5 years old we’re in training to be worker bees and consumers, inculcated in the Gods of Productivity and Consumerism. For those who chose the career path, there is decades of having our activities and achievements monitored and measured as if it was only in these things that we have value. The idea of the ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ is woven deep into the values of our societies and economic systems - being busy is a virtue and being lazy is a ‘sin’. And in the last few decades stress and busy-ness has became a way of life for many of us.

There’s very little room in all of this for stillness, peace, rest, just enjoying being alive without needing to do anything else. 

And so we don’t know how to do it any more. We don’t know how to rest, how to stop - because our sense of our own value is so enmeshed with our productivity, our achievement. 

Our being has no value, only our doing.

But after breast cancer - all illness really - when we’re so exhausted we can barely speak it’s so important to rest. 

And to rest deeply. 

I’ve given myself the winter - to fall apart and to not have to achieve anything, to sleep mostly, and to not care if my hair is washed or if I wear the same clothes all week. The only things on my to do list are things that are essential for keeping life ticking over. 

Even though I know I need this rest I struggle sometimes with how unproductive it all feels.

I bought a pile of books in preparation for this winter of rest - but honestly I don’t want to read any of them, I want to mainline Netflix for 4 hours at a time and that’s ok. So far they’re all unread. 

I got in the bath at 4 in the afternoon the other day and I heard a voice say you can’t get in the bath it’s only 4 o clock. And then I thought I bloody well can if I want. And so I did. 

I’m learning that sometimes staring out of the window for hours is self-care.

And then there’s money. For many of us cancer has huge economic consequences - and I’m no exception to this. My whole life, the way I earn money, has been turned upside down and I have no idea what my future holds. But I also know that if I don’t rest and allow my body to recover there might not be a future. So for now, I’m doing my best to let all these worries go and trust that I’ll work it out somehow. Even if I have to get a job in the local chip shop so be it. 

I’m having to let go of all the internal programming that says I should be DOING SOMETHING and that my value is in my work. 

In its place I’m installing new programmes. 

We all have our own wisdom from the cancer experience, and what’s coming through loud and strong for me is that I didn’t survive this thing to just get right back on the productivity train.

I can’t prove it but the way I was living before has in some way contributed to the cancer - I was too much, too hard, too fast, all the time. So much energy spent rushing around, doing so many things, competing at work, trying to win in a system where there is no winning, looking for approval of who I am - from who I don’t know. My old life seems quite bizarre to me now. 

I’m realising I don’t enjoy rushing around any more. I like slow. It’s more peaceful. But it means I also get to really experience life in a way you just can’t when you’re ticking things off your to do list. 

My priorities are more esoteric now.

I want to know what it feels like to be me - all of me, to express all the bits of me I didn’t dare to be before. 

I want to know what it feels like to be completely and utterly alive. 

And I want to just love being alive. 

If any of this resonates and you’re tired too, here’s some questions for you to ask yourself…

• What does your central nervous system need? Your CNS is the bit of you that feels fried, stressed, burnt out. 

• What does your physical body need?

• What do you need? When I say that I mean what do you really really desire?

• What are the stories you have that are preventing you from surrendering to what’s happening? And to just doing what you need and what you really deeply desire? 

Sending love as always 💜💜💜