Healing is Work

So I don’t know how things are where you live, but here in LA there’s a nasty bug going around. I’ve had it for eight days now; I thought I was feeling well enough to go back to work a couple of days ago, but after teaching three classes, I crashed again and am writing this post prone on my couch. I talked to a TA who was down for nine days. My dad got it and was in bed for ten. Is it the flu? I don’t know–the symptoms don’t exactly match up. But this thing is BAD.

I’ve written before about the depression I’ve struggled with for most of my life. Depression can have different flavors. You have your major crashes, where things get so bad that you can’t think straight. Those are the really dangerous times. But you can also have days or weeks of lowness, where you’re exhausted and numb all the time, every little task feels overwhelming, and the slightest injury makes you cry. It’s not that you want to lie around watching TV all day–it’s that you literally do not have the energy to do anything else. People really underestimate what a physical experience depression can be.

When I came down with this bug, it was right on the tail of a few days of lowness. My husband had already been covering a lot of childcare duty for me. I felt guilty for being a shitty mom. I hated hearing the two of them laughing together up in my daughter’s room while I refreshed Facebook for the millionth time. The apartment, of course, was a horrible mess. Then, just as I started to get a little energy back, I got sick and we started the cycle all over again.

To say our relationship to healing is messed up is an understatement. We think it’s normal to force people with the flu to go to work and touch our food. Even if you do have paid sick leave, you often have to ration it out (especially if you need to stay home to take care of a sick kid or other dependent) and you usually need to go back to work the moment you’re able to move. Before I realized that I wasn’t as well as I thought I was, I took an “extra” day off of work to make sure I could get back to 100%. I spent the whole day swimming in guilt. If I was strong enough to make myself some soup, wasn’t I strong enough to work? How dare I bum around the apartment as if I were dying?

What I had to tell myself was this: healing is work. The part of you that’s conscious and self-aware might be watching your 10th episode of 30 Rock, but all the other parts of you are working hard to get well. Taking time to heal does not mean that you’re obligated to do twice as much housework when you get better (I had to repeat this mantra to myself when I saw the state of the kitchen). Taking time to heal does not mean that you should apologize for not checking your work email–that would be akin to working two jobs at the same time. If you’re sick over the weekend, then you did not get a weekend, and you’re still entitled to relaxation time. Healing is work. When you are healing, you are working.

Imagine how powerful our healing magic can be if we really understand this concept.