What I Learned | Fall 2022

I’m staring down the last week of the year with so much yet to do and not much time to do it. This has been a stressful season and I’m trying to move through it with little steps and grace, but it’s been hard. The lesson I’m learning is that I am only capable of a finite list of tasks in a day. I’d like to think that I’m Wonder Woman and have the ability to check everything off my calendar, but I am burning the candle at both ends.

I, then, sit back and wonder why I try to do so much. Why do I have the drive to complete meaningless chores that don’t amount to any real success or happiness? Why am I always competing with myself and trying to maintain my streaks? These are questions that I’m going to ponder as I head into 2023 and hopefully, I’ll find some peace in letting go of what doesn’t bring me joy or fill my sense of purpose. For now, I’m going to focus on the positive. It is the holidays, after all.

Here’s what I learned this fall:

I have to accept my limitations.

My partner and I had planned a nearly two-week vacation in the Pacific Northwest in early December, and I was excited about it, but also very, very stressed. My contacts in medicine have all warned about a hard flu season and I’ve read that COVID infections are, again, on the rise, along with other lovely illnesses of the respiratory and gastrointestinal system. I’m always a little more alert during flu season because of having a weakened immune system. In the past, I’ve isolated and worn a mask when I do need to go out.

So, it was a struggle to balance my excitement for a trip to one of my favorite regions and also remain vigilant about keeping myself safe and healthy. Sadly, my anxiety got the best of me and I went into a flare early in our holiday. It was so bad that, after just a week, we changed our plane tickets and came home. I felt guilty for not managing my mental health better than I did and causing my partner’s vacation to be cut short. He works so hard throughout the year and really enjoys getting time away for some R&R. He was incredibly understanding and wouldn’t have been anything other than that, but I still feel that I’ve “ruined” the trip for him.

The one thing I’ve struggled with the most, when it comes to having a chronic illness, is accepting my limitations. I like to think of myself as a perfectly healthy person and set very (much too) high expectations for what I think I should be able to do. I’m always hard on myself for not meeting those lofty goals, and that, in turn, sends me on a mental health downward spiral. I’m blessed to have a partner that always encourages me to get plenty of rest, not to push myself, and to speak up when I need accommodations. Being a better advocate for myself and my needs is going to be a big focus for me in 2023.

Planning for the future is a necessity.

I remember in all of the financial books I’ve read, the author pressed the idea that everyone needs to prepare for the future. Not just retirement, but specifically how you will pay for long-term care if you need it. We are currently experiencing this with a family member and it’s challenging. Nursing facility charges are exorbitant and a lot of insurance companies don’t cover them. Even signing up for services like Medicaid can have serious financial repercussions, like the possibility of losing your home, if you own it.

I’ve always been a planner and had my medical power of attorney and other documents prepared many years ago, but I’m learning firsthand that will not be enough. It’s really important to have a plan in place in case you aren’t able to live out your years in your own home or without the assistance of full-time home health specialists.

I am not my trauma.

I recently watched a really interesting conversation between Debbie Millman, Roxane Gay, Saeed Jones, and Chanel Miller, and they were talking about trauma. A lot of people have hot takes when it comes to trauma, but most of the time, it’s just common sense advice or a quip that shames people that struggle with their demons. I appreciated this discussion so much because they shared that having been through some kind of trauma doesn’t mean you can’t still have beauty and joy in your life. We contain multitudes, and we are not the things we’ve experienced, good or bad. We can honor the experience without indulging in self-pity, while still holding a sense of purpose and intention.

It’s my responsibility to ensure accessibility when others won’t.

I have become an advocate for making sure that content that is shared online is accessible to all. I haven’t always been this way but was encouraged by the words of a friend, who is deaf. They were sharing how frustrating it was to be on social media and seeing all these videos, stories, and reels, but having no idea what was happening in them because there weren’t captions. I’ve also experienced this myself when, two years ago, I relied on image descriptions to understand some photos because I had lost most of the vision in one eye.

It’s easy to upload a piece of content on social media and just press “publish,” but I always try to think about who might be engaging with it. Even if you have a private personal account, you still might have a follower that relies on accommodations to understand what you’ve shared. When managing social media accounts for brands that I work with, I try to think of it as my responsibility to make sure that the post is accessible for all, and that means ensuring that all videos have captions, all photo or graphic posts have image descriptions, and that I use appropriate inclusive language.

The U.S. Constitution might need some work.

This autumn, I started following the National Constitution Center podcast, called We the People. It basically takes a point from the U.S. Constitution and investigates it with discussion from people who sit on all sides of the political table. This podcast, in particular, was extremely interesting. It was looking at the idea of rewriting the Constitution, or rather, updating it. There were three teams, the conservatives, the progressives, and the libertarians, and each drafted a new document, then compared them to each other. These were the proposed Amendments that were agreed upon, and to a political amateur, they all sound timely and needed in this country. It made me realize that a document that was written over 200 years ago, in a world that was very different than it is today, might need a little updating.