On sickness and feeling a bit hopeless [where I've been]

Back in my prime blogging days, when I was building Nancy Ray Photography and speaking at conferences and doing all the things, I remember someone attended an event I was speaking at and shared all that she wanted to do. I was cheering her on to create this business and work that she was so excited for!

I checked back in on her blog a few months later, to see what she was up to. She had one blogpost up, announcing she was pregnant and had been so sick for months, she couldn’t really muster the strength to do much of anything. And I remember two thoughts that crossed my mind:

• I was so sad that she wasn’t able to do all the things she wanted to do.

• Then I thought, “maybe she could have still done them and mustered the strength to work through her pregnancy!”

How incredibly naive I was.

How incredibly narrow my view of life was.

I’m honestly a bit sad and quite embarrassed to type those words - a confession of sorts of a pretty ugly side of myself that exalted work as the highest achievement in life. But now, I have so much compassion on her. I understand the feeling of being sick and not being able to muster the strength to do anything. And now I have so much JOY for her! Knowing she was doing her best work, growing life, caring for her body, putting other things on pause to focus on a beautiful, lasting dream of building a family.

And, I relate so much to the feeling of not being able to do work that you really want to do. Putting some dreams on hold. And how feeling sick is just dang hard.

While I’m not sick with morning sickness from pregnancy, we (me and my four kids) have been sick for most of this year, with little bouts of wellness between that don’t last very long. (Will’s immune system is apparently amazing - he’s only been sick once!) And I don’t have much to show for this season of my life work-wise, but I can tell you that we are all still alive and have started school, so that’s a win!

Below I’m writing out our sicknesses… mostly for myself to look back on, so I can say “No, I was not exaggerating. That year was no joke.” Here we go:

December was strep throat over Christmas. (I cried… a lot.)
January into February was Covid and ear infections.
March was the stomach bug
April was triple ear infections and a throat infection and another round of the stomach bug.
May was another Benji ear infection.
June was fevers and croupy coughs - Milly missed most of summer camp and almost went to the ER
July was an intense ear infection in the middle of a trip to the mountains, followed by fevers and coughs for me and all the kids, including losing my voice for a week. (We were all sick for a solid 2 weeks)
August was ear tubes surgery for Benji, followed by strep throat for me and 2 kids, which came right on the heels of that last, awful lose my voice cough and fevers sickness.

And today, August 31st, I’m heading back into the doctor for another strep test, and taking Benji for his follow up appointment with the ENT because he’s been pulling on his ears with a fever on and off the last few days.

And here’s the thing - I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some sickness in this list. I just cannot remember them all.

I am exhausted.

In fact, it has been so difficult for me caring for myself and all of these sick kiddos all year that I’ve started going to counseling every week. Because my mental game has been on the decline, and I’ve been feeling quite hopeless.

There are so many reasons it has felt so hard for me personally. It’s a lot to feel so needed all the time, and to have a lot of needs myself that feel out of reach. Most fun things we had planned this summer were somehow affected by sickness. Trips and camps were cut short or cancelled altogether. My travel anxiety has gone up quite a bit. Playdates postponed. Looking forward to the gym/pool, and then not going to the gym for weeks. All of my work I’ve wanted to do for my podcast or here on my blog, either completely dropped or I barely made them happen. Not to mention the day to day snuggles, nursing while both me and the baby had fevers, cooking, cleaning (so much laundry to keep things sickness free), sleepless nights, and so many visits to the pediatrician. And I think the hardest part was that I was looking forward to summer, because surely we wouldn’t be sick in the summer!

As weird as this is gonna sound, I’m gonna type it anyway: I totally feel like I’m having a mid life crisis.

Everything has been taken off my plate by all this sickness. Plans, dreams, all of it. And as we start the school year, I’m getting really deep about all of it and asking some pretty beautiful and difficult questions:

What do I want to add back into my life?
What is worth keeping, and what needs to go?
What work do I want to be doing anyway, and why?
How do I make plans and look forward to them again?

This is my blogpost, just like that girl, who said “I’m going to do all these things, but I’ve just been sick. So this is what I’ve got.”

And this is me, looking at myself with compassion, trying to remind myself that even though this year feels hijacked with sickness, I’m still doing my best work, growing life under our roof, caring for our bodies, putting other things on pause to focus on a beautiful, lasting dream of building a family.

And this year of sickness is a chapter in that book, but not the whole book.

One thing I know is that sickness can be incredibly isolating. My hope for this blogpost is that I’ll never forget this year, that I’ll never forget how hard it is for mamas when littles are sick, and that if another mama is reading this and has had a similar year, that you’d not feel quite as alone.

I wrote a blogpost titled “Hi, I’m back!” last year about this time. It was all about how excited I was to get back to blogging. I know better now, and I won’t promise anything. But in uncovering some answers to the question “what do I want to add back into my life?” blogging has come up again and again.

I miss writing. I miss photography. And while I’m not sure how consistent I’ll be, I hope to post a bit more, for no other reason than to answer that one question. 💞