What three words best describe your year?
- See-sawing – as you’ll see reading through my reflections, 2022 had its fair share of ups and downs.
- Challenging – 2022 challenged me in many ways, forcing me to do a lot of things that made me uncomfortable like going back onto antidepressants and back to seeing medical specialists, letting go of the pretence of being a ‘normal’ person at work, staring down the reality of having an illness/disability, being more assertive about my needs as a person with an illness/disability etc.
- Developing – wrestling with the challenges 2022 threw my way brought about a lot of personal development, growth and maturation. I learnt more about and hence got better at managing my illness/disability, I started talking about my illness/disability more, I worked towards accepting my illness/disability, I got better at advocating for my own needs etc.
What are you most proud of?
- Making the decision to switch to four day work weeks
- The work I’ve done on accepting my illness/disability
- My resilience
- Some of the writing I’ve done this year:
- The diversity of the books I read
- How my garden is coming along
- My advocacy work with A Fairer World and Beyond Blue
- Being elected to a Board for the first time, especially since it’s the Board of an amazing organisation I already volunteer with
- The way I’ve been able to support friends who are dealing with their own challenges (hopefully friends reading this agree I’ve done a decent job of this!)
What are you most thankful for (person, event, achievement)?
This is a long list but there’s still so much more I could write. These are just the things that sprang to mind:
- The privilege of living on beautiful muwinina country in lutruwita/Tasmania as a settler who does not belong here
- Owning my own home (of course this home is on stolen land over which a claim of ‘ownership’ is problematic, but the security home ownership offers is wonderful)
- Having a stable, interesting job with a supportive manager and colleagues
- My increasingly productive and beautiful garden
- The beautiful natural environment of lutruwita/Tasmania
- My incredibly supportive family
- My wonderful friends, both in nipaluna/Hobart and further afield, especially the friends who are managing their own chronic illnesses/disabilities and generously share their wisdom and experiences with me
- The people I volunteer with at A Fairer World, Vinnies soup van and Beyond Blue
- Practices which help me to manage my physical and mental health, notably writing, yoga, hiking
- Having a dedicated space in my home for my yoga practice
- Anyone and everyone who reads what I write
- Everyone who has listened to me tell my story through the Hobart Human Library or Beyond Blue
- All the authors whose work I have read this year, especially those whose words have provided solace in the difficult times
- Being recovered from my eating disorder and able to enjoy food and movement
- Finding a pain specialist and from him a physio who have helped me to manage my chronic illness/disability
- My GP and psychologist
- The sit-stand desk I purchased for my home in the middle of the year. It has made working from home better in three key ways:
- It allows me to alternate between sitting and standing which is much better for my body than sitting all day;
- It means my work equipment has its own spot instead of taking up one end of my dining table; and
- It is located right next to the heater so it’s nice and warm in Winter.
What new things did you learn?
- From work: so much about so many things, which is one of the reasons I like my job! Notable things I now know a lot more about include Federal Budgets and Australia’s National Energy Market.
- From a library book: how to macrame – I don’t know all the techniques, but I have taught myself enough to be able to make plant pot hangers which is fun and very satisfying.
- From my musculoskeletal physio: how we can use movement to send signals to the brain to calm down and get out of fight-flight-freeze mode; how I can teach my body to move more efficiently, using more different muscles instead of just relying on the same large muscles to do everything for me.
What new things did you do?
- Was a bridesmaid at a wedding
- Went camping
- Became a Workplace Contact Officer
- Went to see a pain specialist (who is great and I have continued seeing), a rheumatologist (less great, not going back) and a physiotherapist (who is also great and I have continued seeing), so two from three on the medical practitioner front
- Went on a multi-day hike where I carried all my gear
What activities made you lose track of time?
None of these always made me lose track of time, but they often did.
- Talking to a good friend
- Book club
- Reading a good book
- Hiking
- Yoga
- Cooking
- Gardening
- Writing
- Busy days at work when I am feeling reasonably well
What little things made you happy on a day-to-day basis?
- Caring messages from friends or family
- My garden
- Eating homegrown produce, home baked bread, home sprouted sprouts and homemade pickles
- Garden birdlife such as silvereyes and New Holland honeyeaters
- Garden wildlife like bumblebees and metallic skinks
- Pots of tea
- Snuggling into bed with a book each evening
- Sunshine
- The movements of ships up and down the timtumili minanya/River Derwent
- Singing and harmonising
- The freedom of having my own space to do whatever I like in
- My yoga room
How was your mind? What was your most common mental state?
This question is easiest to answer by dividing the year into thirds.
In the first third of the year, I was hopeful and optimistic as I shifted to four day work weeks and anticipated the benefits this would have for my health. There were also several mood-boosting highlights in the first third of the year: my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding, the Sound and Silence retreat and a camping on lunawanna alonnah/Bruny Island.
In the second third of the year, I was sad and anxious. The benefits I anticipated from four day work weeks didn’t really eventuate. I made some changes mid-year, including going onto a new medication, but this caused a significant flare up of my fibromyalgia symptoms and further eroded my mood.
In the final third of the year, I gradually regained a sense of hope and optimism as I started working with a pain specialist and physiotherapist, switched medications and worked on accepting my illness/disability. Then in November I got COVID-19 which created another flare up of my fibromyalgia symptoms and negatively impacted my mood. My symptoms gradually improved as the weeks went by and I was able to end the last third of the year and bring in the new one on a multi-day hike which was a fitting end/beginning.
Which worries turned out to be unnecessary?
- In the middle of the year when my fibromyalgia symptoms flared up, I worried there was something else going on that my doctors hadn’t picked up on. But then the pain specialist sent me off for a brain MRI and I got a bunch of blood tests done which showed that I don’t have any of the many other possible but unlikely illnesses that could conceivably cause the sorts of symptoms I experience. So, my worries about undiagnosed illness lurking in the shadows turned out to be unnecessary.
- At various points during the year and particularly when I’ve been more unwell, I have worried that I’m not doing a good job at work. I’ve told myself all kinds of stories about how what I’m doing wrong, what I need to improve on, why I’m an imposter. But then I had my annual performance management and development review in September and my manager had a lot of good things to say about my performance. A lot of good things. So, my worries about my performance at work turned out to be unnecessary.
- In the second third of the year when I was experiencing a flare up and exclusively worked from home if I was up to working at all, I worried that my colleagues wouldn’t have noticed or wouldn’t care that I hadn’t been in the office for a while. If they had noticed, I worried they would think I couldn’t possibly have been so unwell that I couldn’t make it into the office for two months; they would look for signs of illness/disability in my appearance, find none and wonder whether I was just making it all up; they would think I was weak or unreliable or a liability; they would assume my presence indicated I was all better and back to normal. But then when I was able to get back into the office, I found that my colleagues had noticed my absence, were genuinely pleased to see me back in the office and seemed to genuinely want to know how I was going. So, my worries about my colleagues not noticing or caring about my absence, or thinking judgmental, negative things about me turned out to be unnecessary.
- All year, I feared I would get COVID-19 and that it would ruin me. Ruin me as in make me far more unwell and have long-lasting health effects. I don’t think the fear of getting COVID-19 was a completely unnecessary fear, it has had a significant impact since I got the virus in mid-November so I think the fear was in many ways warranted, but this idea that it would ‘ruin’ me was a bit overblown and pointed to an understandable lack of confidence in my body’s ability to withstand additional difficulties and perhaps also a lack of confidence in my ability to be resilient and manage challenges. On this latter point, I don’t think I give myself enough credit, although obviously I’d rather not have to use my resilience and challenge-management skills.
- In my experience with COVID-19 at least, my worries that a significant life event such as getting COVID-19 would happen and things in my life would crumble because I failed to take time to reflect, identify and work through my feelings; and to properly take care of myself turned out to be unnecessary as I made wise, mature decisions which allowed me to do the things I feared I would fail at.
What were the biggest challenges you faced?
- Insomnia – I’ve learnt to expect to struggle to sleep on my first night in a new location, but being unable to sleep in my own bed was new and something I struggled with more than enough times this year. As a person who struggles with fatigue, sleep is something I desperately need, so these nights of insomnia were cruel. The day after a night of insomnia was unsurprisingly always a struggle, the night after always an anxious one.
- Winter fibro flare up – I had a significant flare up over winter which lasted a few months, probably due to a new medication I was trying. Symptoms included substantially increased fatigue, headaches most days, fizzing and tingling sensations in my legs, aches in random muscle groups and body parts, brain fog. Unsurprisingly, the flare up also took a toll on my mental health. All in all, the flare up seriously impacted my capacity to do what I wanted and needed to do and hence my quality of life. I struggled to get out of bed in the morning, felt like I was dragging myself through each day, was unable to get into the office and worked exclusively from home when I did feel up to working, struggled to get through a normal day, was easily overwhelmed and tipped into crying, didn’t want to be around other people and just wanted to be alone, and had to force myself to do the things I normally enjoyed. Life became about surviving each day. It was hard.
- Going back to see medical specialists – this shouldn’t be particularly challenging, but it is in so many ways. Finding the right specialist is tricky; getting an appointment is difficult; the lead up to meeting a new specialist is anxiety-inducing; seeing a specialist often involves a long wait first; the first appointment with a new specialist is incredibly draining; not all specialists are good listeners or communicators; some specialists lack compassion and kindness; there is a hefty price tag attached; you may come away from a first appointment feeling validated and equipped with some new things to try, or you may feel eviscerated and dispirited, and it’s a game of roulette; the medical system is incredibly disjointed and you often find yourself spending your appointments simply relaying what one person said to someone else; I could go on but I’ll stop there because I trust that you get my drift. Going back to see medical specialists was hard, but it did lead to a positive outcome with the pain specialist I was referred to. He has some of the skills other specialists lack and seems to get me so I have continued seeing him.
- Getting COVID-19 – this made for a challenging last six and a half weeks of the year, causing post-viral symptoms/another flare up of my fibromyalgia which I am gradually coming out of as 2022 draws to a close. It caused a lot of anxiety and emotional upset and resulted in more time off work sick, meaning I’ve had more time off work sick this year than in my two previous years of work combined.
- Working towards accepting my illness/disability – this was a challenge I set for myself, but mostly because I could see the alternative – resisting my illness/disability – was simply becoming untenable and creating more suffering than it had developed to try to protect me from. The fact that I set this challenge for myself didn’t make it any easier. I did a lot of hard but ultimately very worthwhile psychological and emotional labour in 2022 to make progress towards acceptance. This work will continue in 2023.
How was your body?
My body had some okay patches and some pretty rough ones this year.
Fibromyalgia symptoms-wise, it was better (January to April) then a bit worse (May to mid-June) then a lot worse (mid-June to August) then better (September to mid-November) then worse again due to COVID-19 (mid-November to December).
Migraine-wise, I had a pretty consistent pattern of two migraines with aura plus at least couple without aura each month, aside from in December when I had five migraines with aura to round out the year. When you think about the fact that this equates to at least one migraine per week and that a migraine can impact me for more than one day, that’s not a great result, but that’s life for me and I manage the migraines as best I can.
In the better patch from September to mid-November, I could feel my body getting fitter and stronger as I hiked a lot more, gradually increasing the challenge level, and incorporated more strengthening poses into my yoga asana practice. I was really enjoying the feeling of getting fitter and stronger, the growing sense of capability this was giving me, and the fact that I was approaching this process from a place of self-care and curiosity rather than from a place of self-loathing or punishment. I am hoping as I I’ll be able to continue with this in the new year and my multi-day hike to end 2022 and bring in 2023 was a great way to do this.
How did you go in terms of your theme for the year?
My theme for 2022 was settle and restore. Settle because in all the change and stress of 2021 I didn’t really feel like I’d fully settled into my lovely home; or my current job; or the new routines of living somewhere different, living alone, working from home some days etc. Restore because all the change and stress of 2021 unsurprisingly took a lot out of me physically, mentally and emotionally, and I wanted to restore some of what got lost in 2021: energy, balance, a sense of there being time, self-belief, joy and happiness.
I began 2022 with a lot of hope that it would be settling and restorative as I began the year by making the switch to four day work weeks and work from home Mondays. I honestly couldn’t see how I wouldn’t feel at least somewhat better. But then, as years often do, 2022 threw things at me that I wasn’t necessarily expecting when it began.
Despite all the challenges 2022 threw at me, I definitely feel more settled into my lovely home; my current job; and the new routines of living somewhere different, living alone, working from home some days etc. I note 2022 unsettled me in new ways with all the challenges it threw at me!
I also feel more restored in some domains: balance and a sense of there being time, thanks to the four day work weeks; self-belief, thanks to a range of developments during the year, notably a very positive performance appraisal in September; and to some extent joy and happiness, thanks to my work on acceptance and seeing some improvements in my health in the last third of the year (pre the setback of getting COVID-19 in November). Energy continues to be a challenge, but I am taking active steps to boost this as much as I can and manage the energy I do have to ensure I have balance across the different domains of my life.
My year of settle and restore in many ways didn’t end up looking or ending how I envisaged it would at the beginning of 2022 when I set the theme, beginning of the year Emma not anticipating the challenges the year would throw at her, but the theme was nonetheless a useful guiding principle for how I approached the year. For example, when I approached the halfway point of 2022 and could see that I wasn’t really feeling settled or restored, reflecting on my theme prompted me to make changes which, after some false starts, gradually set me on a better path and which facilitated some settling and restoring.
Zooming out to reflect on 2022 as a whole has highlighted to me how challenging it was. Of course, I am very aware that I am privileged in many domains and my year could have been much worse in myriad ways. But on a personal scale, 2022, like 2021 and many other years before it, was challenging. But I was so focused as I was on getting through each day and week, I hadn’t quite realised this. This realisation has then prompted a lot of self-compassion (“yikes, you poor thing, 2022 was rough!”) as well as pride in how I managed the challenges (“go you, you’re amazing, I’m so proud of the way you navigated your way through 2022”).
A review of the specific intentions I set for 2022 is coming, as are my 2022 Favourites and a 2023 intentions post.
Love, hope and peace from Emma.
Love Hope Peace 