For so many years, I struggled immensely to balance work-life, and family-life, alongside my invisible chronically illness… and often felt myself to be failing at all three.
Some of this was because I simply had to, while awaiting a painfully long 5-year diagnosis I was forced to continue working and trying to keep up with family obligations and just try to mop up the disasters it all would leave behind suffering through symptom after symptom. After years of living this way, I became conditioned, conditioned to just push and suffer and make “it” whatever it was happen at all costs even once I had an official diagnosis, and disability benefits… I could have made different decisions to help balance my life but I continued to constantly “fight” my condition, which was essentially fighting myself to try to hold onto the life I wanted, who I wanted to be.
The last 2 years however have been tremendously transformational for me as I continue to practice balancing in all aspects of my life, re-inventing myself for part-time work which better works with my health challenges and symptom struggles, adjusting how I participate with my friends and family in life in ways that do not harm me physically or emotionally, and finding good balance in my mind with peace and acceptance of the life I have, and the life I was given in all of its beauty and brokenness. A powerful quote I continue hold in my mind which helps me everyday, and I hope can help you with this struggle: “The only difference between joy and misery is attachment.”
If we are not attached to certain desires, or expectations, then we can still have joy in what is, and in this moment and free ourselves!
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