Breaking the Cycle: Navigating Chronic Illness in a Success-Driven World
Waking up every day is like a roulette. Will I have the sunny disposition of a younger version of me, not yet disillusioned by life, or will it be her again? The person who no longer trusts. This body, successes or failures, relationships, my fellow humans, life herself. Doubting what I thought and felt I was here to offer—not just professionally but to this planet. And what is even the point, when the receiving has been so blocked, the sabotage strong, feeling little gain?
Yet more often than not, these days surprisingly, I am met with neither of them. But a new version, a truer version. Suspended in the liminal between harsh dichotomy and wholeness. Integrating the wisdom of becoming. The consciousness that knows, descending into my bones. It’s the slowest part of evolving, the material world, it feels so dense but also so comfy, actually me. Sometimes I still shut the blinds, it helps to feel like I am creating a barrier between myself and the guilt. The fact that everything is still happening out there, even when I need to be still, in here.
Beyond Status and Ambition
This body still feels like a prison some days. Invisible bars between potential and reality, desire and capacity. How can I be useful if I am inconsistent? Why do I even think being useful is the most important thing? Perhaps I haven't grasped the lesson yet, or properly purged systemic mindsets of worth through relentless productivity.
Perhaps it's an ongoing warning… against turning away from myself, and towards serving ambitions derived from versions of me long expired. Dissolving, reducing down as each mask comes off to reveal my truest desires in a delicious jus. The ones that came long before the world got to me. Remembering viscerally the innocent dreams that meet me within this slowness, this reconnection.
The truth is I am no longer enamoured by fame or wealth. I value the freedom money provides, the generosity it allows for, the ease. The ability to take care of myself and others. To have fun and adventure, eat nourishing food. I used to be more taken by the status of it all—being adored and seen. My Leo South Node hanging on for dear life in my 20s... A spectacular fall from grace, one crisis after another, a body breaking down, lessons in exile from myself. Caught up in attempts to create safety at all costs—health, wealth and freedom and then blowing it up in a fit of unworthiness. Cute.
Prison of Potential
I wake up desperate to prove that I can do it. Body says no. I watch as seemingly everyone whizzes by me, with energy and stamina I have never known without a spectacular burnout ensuing. How much of my life I feel I have wasted in this cycle, and now I am breaking free. The pace is unbearable. On days when I can't think straight for the cotton wool in my brain, and the aches and exhaustion in my body bring pure rage. It feels like betrayal. “I AM READY!!!” I internally scream, but there is little point. These are the consequences of unconscious action unraveling, it will take as long as it takes.
The relationship I have with this vessel is fraught—has been my greatest challenge. But also where I find liberation, time and time again. To move with the slowest part of me feels so foreign, yet so loving. I am reminded each and every time of the wholeness of this experience of life. That whenever we fracture off, leave any part of us behind, it is felt profoundly, and often in ways we don't see or experience the effects of until many years later.
This is the most of me I have ever walked forward with, and it's slow as hell. I remember my best friend in high school, her Mum one day seeing me walk to school and laughing that I am the slowest person she’s ever met. She was right, that is my deep pace. I am big tortoise energy, yet have lived a life in drag as the hare.
Walking at Tortoise Pace
The unencumbered parts are ready to race, go for it—not used to having to wait for the scared parts, the tender ones, the sensible, measured, and grounded. What is required to sustain does not exist solely in my mind, as much as she loves to convince me. And as novel as all this is, it feels so correct at the same time. So kind, loving, and patient. So divorced from the panicked rush of the modern world, the competitive nature of capitalist society, and the scarcity it feeds us with its big shiny spoon. The exact recipe that becomes a kind of distorted Ouroboros of shame, productivity, burn out and creation, life again. But only momentarily. Conditionally.
I have been dead broke before; I have had money too. I have somehow thrived through it all, often more so when hovering on the poverty line. The motivation of a meal (or a man—a white knight more specifically, that I painfully believed would be my ticket out of struggle), were great ways to bust through procrastination, ADHD, limerence, trauma, and other challenges. Stress and unworthiness moved me into action, whether my body and psyche could hold my demands or not. But this cannot be and is not my motivating force anymore—the thing that literally nearly killed me through a mutated cellular manifestation. I have to find other things that rouse this kind of motion, besides pressure or performance; it is wholly unsustainable.
In this reclamation of my truest needs, essence, and self, I have found so much contentment that it feels frustrating to have to leave here, even momentarily, to meet the demands of the world again. I have never felt safety like this before—peace, the genuine desire to get up and meet the day. There have been times in the past, but nothing that felt as settled as it does now. I want to just sit here for a moment, take it all in. Be able to truly sink into the feeling of gratitude and pride in myself that I made it. That I have been able to get out of survival mode finally and have a chance at stability, connection, creativity, and joy.
Finding Freedom Beyond Survival
Yet, every day I wake to the reality that bills will keep coming. I have just lost a solid year or two of income to make up. My peers are rising up around me, touching their goals, their dreams, and realising, expressing their potential. And there I am, limping behind them (as it feels to me). Some kind of white woman ‘Eric The Eel’ situation, except undoubtedly not as inspiring. My astrology chart has late bloomer vibes all over it, yet I fought to pull myself out of the oven early, as if it weren’t my felt destiny to let it cook.
I have struggled yes, but I have lived too— a tight fishtail braid of these energies. I never let myself collapse fully, or open fully. Walking the knife-edge of emotional control. Life has been full of beauty and laughter and family and friends and creativity and travel. And yet survival will permeate, obstructing the desire to be fully present. Nagging safety concerns hovered above, or the heaviness of illness created a thin layer of distortion to the experience, parts of me remained suspended there always. I couldn’t give myself to the moment. This joy will not last.
And the nature of life is that it usually doesn’t. I am okay with that now, the ups and downs. But not the lingering heavy pervasiveness of being constantly kind of, medium down. Unable to quite push through the invisible ceiling of my limitations. In coming out of this reality and into a new one of my creation, where these limitations are seen, accepted and embraced, alongside my gifts and talents and my humanity. I am changed, I feel it.
No longer running the same malware designed to halt progress. I sense the lack of snags, the abundance of resistance and, in the same breath, the tools I now have to be with that resistance with grace. I had become almost too comfortable in the struggle, too used to being motivated by resilience. Each day I am pivoting, and what gets me going are my animals, my garden, my connections, and my art. None of which make me money, but bring me the kind of deep joy that long evaded me. A new driving force, from the heart, fuelled by love and not fear.
A beautiful friend sent me this quote today that I feel is too perfect not to add here, Joy is the matriarch of emotions, and she won’t visit you until all of her children have been welcomed. - Joe Hudson. This is true in my experience, I didn’t even have to reach for it in the end. She bubbled up when I finally lost control, let it all come up and out and surrendered to the reality before me. I found myself giggling and singing in the shower randomly one day, and I haven’t stopped.
Yielding to My True Nature
I sense this frustration as it is visiting today as a kind of liminal space or a natural state of flux, a rhythm threaded through life. Probably a bit of both. Also very much tied to where I am in my cycle—I write this from bed, day three, so it checks out that this theme is alive in me right now. The cyclical nature of a woman's body and life cannot be minimised. Especially when the pace of a society built for men's bodies, alongside my cortisol levels, have created the kind of hormonal imbalances that make bleeding akin to going to war. “I get two good weeks a month”, my friends and I will laugh with each other, knowing full well it’s not actually funny.
I don't have the answers except to speak in idealistic terms, but I do know that I will not die so I can stay in the rat race. And for me, it is that serious unfortunately. I don’t have the constitution for it, and its taken 35 years to yield to that fact.
I have hit the limit overriding my system again and again to actual breaking point, the machine says no more.
It can be frustrating and uncertain moving away from unhealthy motivators and coping strategies, but I know for sure it will be worth it. The great rewiring continues, and I know it starts with the individual—not as a singular unit but as a link in the chainmail of our communities. I make the choice to be slow, honour my needs and body, navigate the very real financial consequences of that, and accept the hit to my ego as I feel "behind" within metrics I didn’t make up and don't even agree with.
The Choice to Be Slow
Within this choice, I battle the voices: "You are selfish, lazy, entitled, privileged, how dare you, other people just get on with it, socks up, head down," etc. I get it. It is not a utopian world; and I am those things on some level, sure. We all are. And I am also self-preserving like the rest of us and truly didn’t used to be at all. I am figuring out that balance—when it is appropriate to push through, and when it is best to fall back and fill the tank before proceeding. I am intentionally moving away from harmful man-made systems, and back in sync with those of the earth. Not always easy when the salmon are pushing hard up the hierarchal stream.
Today I was completely unmotivated, exhausted, barely seeing the screen for the brain fog, but at least I could write. Like so many of us, I want this to be among the things I do everyday: write, speak to the trees and animals, share skills, knit, potter, cook, imagine beauty, ideas + interiors and execute them. Live, share, protect what is innocent and vulnerable, to enjoy what it is to be human. I hope for a world where more people can get closer to doing what lights them up, get out from under the knee of oppressive structures, and find their unique gifts—who they are and what ignites their passion.
Building a Life Worth Living
It feels unfair that I know myself, and that I can start to build now a life I know I will continue to love and be challenged, initiated by. But then I think about what it took to get here. The many intentional choices and sacrifices I have made. The choice to keep going for the life I want because we’re all out of here eventually, so may as well try and spend the time we have wisely.
We all fight invisible battles, and I wish nuance was a more routinely applied position in the general public, but judgment and projection still seem to reign supreme. I get it. Part of sharing and being seen is feeling misunderstood; I am okay with that now. I know for myself, though, that a big reason I need to get right with my own energy is that I will be using it for good. I have plans for community and places to put myself and my cash where it will be truly beneficial.
So today, I write and I rest. And I thank the voices telling me to do business posts on social media, to plant out the garden while it’s raining, call my people, take on more work that I cannot yet handle, to do everything now, to attend to everything with urgency and perfection. Thank you, I hear you; your vigilance is appreciated but not necessary anymore.
It is a daily battle, but I can see and feel the subtle redirects and changes are working. My system is trusting more and more my "no" and my "yes." Getting on the same team. No longer being my own betrayer, and no longer feeling betrayed in return.
