Something I have learned to embrace during the journey of healing I have been on is that some days are low energy days. I never, in my previous life, allowed myself low energy days. The concept of “fake it until you make it” or “acting changes everything” powered me through any day that I might feel low. These are wonderful techniques to apply when you don’t feel like doing something. I mean, did I want to go to chemotherapy for eight hours on a beautiful summer day in 2020? Nope! So, I used the approach of faking it or ACE (acting changes everything) to get myself dressed and in the car to go to the cancer center.
But now, as I am experiencing remission and needing to be more mindful about how my body feels, I am allowing myself to feel the low energy days. Also, the idea of feeling the vibrations of your soul have become of interest to me as I move slower and take more time for reflection.
On a slow day, my mantra is, “slow and soft, be nice, give grace.” Today’s post will be about slow and soft.
I allow myself to start the day slowly. If it is a morning I have my online yoga class, I find my way to the floor next to my bed and participate in class. On those low energy days, I allow myself to crawl back into bed for extra snuggles with the dog or to wrap back up in my cocoon of blankets and soft pillows and sleep once class is over. If it is a non-yoga morning, I wake up slowly and linger in bed. As I am in bed I am able to check email or work on blog posts. There is so much that we can do now from our phones that slipping slowly into productivity is easily achieved. For years, I attempted to be a person who embraces mornings. There was a lot of guilt when I could not sustain the 5am wake up and “girl boss” mentality to start my day in my pre-cancer life. I pushed and pushed myself but then would end up giving up and feeling like a failure because it just felt to icky to be fighting with myself so much! Then I would make another plan, goal, bullet journal habit tracker to do the early morning rise and grind. Repeat the cycle again, I just am not a spring out of bed kind of person…and now I accept that!
By putting these demands on myself made it so I didn’t even realize my body was shutting down. By the time we realized the cancer was overtaking my body, it had infiltrated my blood, muscles, bones, liver, and kidneys. I often wonder if I had been going slower, would I have realized something was really off sooner. What I did do was tell myself I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t strong enough, fit enough, thin enough, tough enough, or smart enough to deal with how I felt. The message I told myself was that something was mentally wrong with me which was why I didn’t “feel” good enough to do all the things. But now, instead of doing everything I possibly can, I am more intentional with what I do.
My next key for a low energy day is to keep everything soft. I plan my outfits out for weeks at a time and have an OOTD (outfit of the day) complete with earrings and shoes planned. However, sometimes I need something that is softer than what I planned so I keep a set of outfits that are easy to wear, predictable in how they feel on my body, and SOFT. This is another area that I gave myself grief about earlier in my life. If I didn’t want to wear the planned outfit, then I mentally beat myself up. I possessed no grace for myself if I didn’t wear the clothes I thought I should. Taking into account how my body felt was a perceived sign of weakness.
My feet have been sore since I was sixteen. Whether I tried to wear flipflops or heels, my feet would ache. Most athletic shoes caused fallen arches and I even lost toenails during one painful period of time. When I went to a pediatrist in my twenties I was told to lose weight but working out after teaching all day was hurting my feet so badly and I wasn’t sure what to do. Fast forward twenty years and now, in my 40’s, I have embraced my style and found ways to do so while honoring my sensory needs from day to day. As a teacher, if I had a student needing their tag cut out of a shirt or wanting a softer place to sit, I would have done what I could to accommodate them. I guess needing so many accommodations during 2020 taught me that it is truly okay to embrace what we need. For me, some days that means a soft dress with leggings and my favorite Nike Zoom shoes, which I have in about ten colors! Other days it means I can rock the suit complete with chunky necklace and dress shoes without giving myself grief for either outfit. Both are professional and allow me be taken seriously as a teacher in my college classroom or during a day full of meetings. Monday was a low energy day and luckily I had previously planned for virtually teaching my class this day and creating curriculum from home. My soft clothing choice was in the OOTD lineup already so I did not feel like I was hanging out in my lounging clothes all day. I wore lightweight easy to wear earrings, black joggers, a teacher specific t-shirt, and my Oofos recovery sandals. In my classes we are having a superhero spirit day so I am excited to see what my students decide to wear. Side teacher note: this was a practice I picked up during teaching in the pandemic online- host spirit days when teaching virtually to get students to turn on cameras and participate!
What are ways you allow yourself to go slow? Do you favorite soft clothes?
mindful art by mw 