Credit Where It’s Due

I’ll start with a haiku for my body (my body is the you of the haiku).

Credit where it’s due
I have asked a lot of you
I should be proud, too.

In thinking about my health struggles so far this year, I’ve largely been framing what’s going on as a case of my body rebelling, letting me down, not performing as well as it ‘should’. But then, on Friday after work, I for some reason decided to write a list of just some of the key things I have asked of my body so far this year. Suddenly, it became clear to me that I haven’t been giving my body credit where it’s due.

The year so far has, in fact, been quite a lot. And as I came into it in a struggling body, I’m not really sure why I expected my body to perform in a way that would, in hindsight, have been something of a miracle. It also shouldn’t be surprising to me that the combination of a struggling body and a lot on my plate has led me to feel pretty consistently stressed so far in 2024. This of course doesn’t help with how my body feels… it’s a vicious cycle.

Here are the main components of my year so far.

Adopting Willow

I love her, but it’s also been more difficult than I expected having her in my life.

• Changes to daily and weekly rhythms, additional labour – of the things in this list, this was the one thing I actually did expect, however I made the decision to get her when I felt I had the energy and capacity to absorb these changes and additional labour. My health has not been the best the entire time I’ve had her, meaning the changes to my rhythms and additional labour required have been quite challenging at times. Then, in addition, there have been the following items in this list.
• Two veterinary procedures – I’ve only had the girl three and a bit months, but already she’s needed two veterinary procedures which have meant several vet visits (going in pre- and post-op in addition to going in for the procedures), monitoring her post-procedures to check she’s healing, adding medication into our daily rhythms etc.
• Ouchy foot– despite one of the procedures being to remedy this, Willow has had persistent issues with one of her feet leading to intermittent lameness and a need to only take her for walks on soft surfaces (ie grass).
• Wee wees – I’m unfortunately having increasing issues with Willow weeing inside when I’m out which creates a lot of clean-up work. It also means I feel worried whenever I’m out what I’ll return home to and makes me wonder whether I’m doing something wrong. Possible causes and solutions are still under investigation.

Work

None of the things in the list below are negatives in and of themselves, but they’ve combined to give work a reasonable level of intensity so far this year.

• Supervising a new graduate – this started in February, which meant I had a new person to prepare for, induct, get to know and generally support. As enjoyable at it has been having this grad on board, it’s also taken effort on my part.
• Leading a recruitment process – this has been ongoing over the year so far and it’s the first time I’ve led a recruitment process. This means the whole thing has been a learning experience and learning experiences are always more draining than simply doing the familiar. Leading the process has included getting the Statement of Duties for the job approved and the job listed, forming a panel, organising a scribe, shortlisting applications, organising interviews, chairing interviews, leading panel deliberations, completing referee checks and finalising the selection report.
• New colleagues – the people themselves are not the issue here, they are all lovely, but in hindsight it’s clear that the presence of new people, who I knew would be forming assessments of me as they settled in, made me feel like I needed to be at the top of my work game – present in the office on all scheduled days, super responsive and onto everything and so on, even if wasn’t really well enough to be those things.
• State election and senior staff movements – both of these have created a generalised uncertainty at work and thrown spanners in the works for some of the things I work on.

Board

Board-related things have kept me pretty busy and, unfortunately, quite stressed at times over the year so far. I put my hand up for additional responsibilities such as Vice President and two Sub-Committees based on an assumption my health would be similar to how it was last year. Since that’s not how my health has turned out so far this year, it’s been tricky juggling all these responsibilities in addition to my paid work, Willow etc.

• New CEO – our new CEO started at the start of the year, which has been exciting, but has also meant additional meetings, correspondence and, unfortunately, stress as the transition occurred.
• Secretary – I have continued as Secretary, meaning I am responsible for meeting minutes and the actions register, so I always have a task to do after meetings.
• Vice President – I am now also one of two Vice Presidents, meaning I am sometimes called on by the President for advice.
• Two Sub-Committees – being on these bodies means additional meetings, correspondence and documents to review.
• Radio interview – I did a radio interview for ABC RN’s Life Matters program in January which I spent quite a bit of energy preparing for.
• Governance training – I am doing a governance training course which started in March and continues until the end of April.

Two trips away

Both these trips were in many ways lovely and much needed, but they also put their share of strain on my body.

• Hiking trip to wukaluwikiwayna/Maria Island – this was wonderful, see my March Favourites for more, but I did hike 54 kilometres in four days and 23 of those kilometres were with an over 10 kilogram pack.
• Family and friends trip to Naarm/Melbourne – this was also wonderful but I did work from home some days while I was there and caught up with friends most days which meant it didn’t provide as much downtime as perhaps I needed.

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I’ve already written about how over the past few months of struggling with my health, I managed to drift away from acceptance back into a resisting and denying mindset. I think it’s this mindset that has caused me to be blind to the reality that, actually, I’ve asked a lot of my body this year and, for the most part, it has done what I’ve asked of it. Sure, it’s been a struggle and there’s been fatigue and pain, but that’s entirely consistent with what I’d expect by combining the list I’ve just shared with flaring fibro. I just hadn’t realised it.

It’s an interesting reframe to see my body as performing not failing. It’s a reframe that still doesn’t feel entirely comfortable to me, but I see its logic: those lists + flaring fibro = a sore, fatigued body. Duh. I so often, so easily fall into expecting my body to be like other people’s, to be always at its peak, to respond consistently to my daily and weekly rhythms, while also knowing so many truths that make these expectations ludicrous: chronic illness is not static, in fact it’s in constant flux; I can’t control how my body responds to what I do; for there to be ups, there have to be downs. But these are hard truths to accept. Much easier to deny their veracity, to live in some dream world. But it’s actually not, because the dream world clashes violently with reality and causes so much suffering. Which brings me, inevitably, back to acceptance, again. Nothing could be less surprising.

I’ll end with the haiku I started with.

Credit where it’s due
I have asked a lot of you
I should be proud, too.

Love, hope and peace from Emma.