permission to be

In 2017, I had what I nostalgically refer to as the “Year of Fitness”.  It was an unexpected glimmer of good health in the midst of what has been an otherwise less than great 10-year struggle with chronic illness. I spent nearly every moment of those days of oasis attempting to prove to my body the goodness it was in fact capable of…hoping to jump the health rut I had been stuck in and to carve a new and better path. And it worked…for a while.

I worked out twice a day, pushing limits and building a strength I didn’t know I could possess. I was up before the sun and filled with purpose to make the healthy days count because they’d proven themselves inconstant in the past. I fueled my body with the healthiest foods, meal prepping with intention and care. My brain worked effortlessly and in ways that made me feel confident and clever—that made me feel able and like myself. I actively engaged my curiosity to learn more about education and the world and my role and responsibility in both. I wrote with ease in those days, challenging myself to write more and to explore where that work could carry me. I went to conferences. I traveled. I read. I enjoyed my family. And over time, I fell into new habits of mind that did not begin with calculating the risk of vertigo, migraine, or other maladies. My gratitude for the richness of those days honestly never faded, but my fear for their cessation did. I grew comfortable.

It was a good year. Like, a really good year.

I haven’t come close to a health streak that since. But I never gave up fighting to find my way back—even if “back” was a shade of what that year was for me. 

And then Long Covid signed its name to my chronic illness roster and where once I would have fought, particularly when it came to writing, I now acquiesced. My brain didn’t (and still doesn’t) work the same; my writing didn’t sound the way it had; the work felt impossible. And instead of persevering as I would have in the past, I quit. I walked away from the one thing that has carried me through all the other things in this life. I was too exhausted to fight for it, but more than that, sitting down to write had become such a confrontational act. In writing, I had to face with certainty how different things had become, and I had to sit with knowing how much no one knew about the possibility for future wellness. In writing, I had to work through the anger and frustration and sadness I felt about all of it, and that too strength I just didn’t possess. In writing, I had to face my own embarrassment about how hard it was to put words together at all, let alone in a way that felt familiar.

I am a resilient human who fights for others with perseverance and who, until this moment had also fought for herself. 

But you know, I am not a confrontational person. And I walked away.

Over these last few years, I have not been able to see this departure as an opportunity for a clean slate or a fresh writing start. I didn’t recognize the moment as one to further shape my voice or even to redefine it in a way that respected who I was becoming. In part because I really wasn’t ready to accept that reality. I didn’t want to be a part of the adventure that is transformation because I was so actively focused on who and what I was losing along the way.  I couldn’t create any narrative for my circumstances that named positive possibilities. And maybe allowing myself that space to just walk away for a bit was a kindness—maybe in order to rediscover myself as a writer and in general, I had to leave for a while. Maybe it wasn’t quitting, but instead a gift of grace, of self-care.

Regardless, my aunt asked me at Thanksgiving where my writing had been. And I gave my current litany of excuses. Knowing me as she does, she didn’t take any of that and reminded me, just as I would remind my students, that even getting down a few words would be a start. That the words and the effort would matter. Somehow, in that moment, light peaked through into the wilderness. The days won’t always be good. I won’t always feel up to writing. The work may sound different than it used to (scratch that, it will sound different). All of that is okay. It is time to try again. And so here I am, fighting for myself. Rested and ready to find a way forward on a path that includes struggling for the small pieces that fill me up.

I’ve always loved Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “my dreams, my work, must wait till after hell”. I realize now that I have been waiting for the health hell to abate entirely before returning to my “little jars and cabinets”. I see now that I can “resume/ On such legs as are left me, in such heart/ As I can manage”. I know that I have not “turned insensitive/To honey and bread old purity could love.” My dreams and my works are right here, ready for me in any capacity I am able to approach them. I just have to give myself permission.