Are You Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad?
How recovering from COVID taught me the value of guilt-free rest
It’s been my longest hiatus from publishing on Medium. It sent me straight into guilt when I found out it’s been nearly 3 months since I wrote here; especially since I pride myself on maintaining a consistent writing schedule. I quickly caught my inner critic and reminded myself that I’d merely been on ‘rest island’, gathering resources and strength to set sail again.
Coming out of a long recovery from COVID and a series of health problems, I can say that I’ve finally learned what it means to rest as a perfectionist and over-achiever. True rest comes from resting without guilt or shame, with peace and honour to oneself. It comes with honouring the mind and body, and cannot be done without one another.
Like many of us, I’ve been conditioned to be in a constant state of doing and achieving, but I’ve finally learned the value of resting and respecting my body. I thought I’ve come a long way in redefining what success means to me, but knowing it intellectually was not enough — I had to cultivate and embody a new level of self-respect and set of behaviours that were needed in order to let go of the subconscious guilt that hinders my rest, and break free from the lurking shame of not doing, being enough.
