Rest and recouperation

**It’s kind of ironic that I wrote this post last weekend, planning to publish it on Monday, to only end up REALLY ill with Mastitis. I thankfully just avoided the hospital, and after 48 hours of antibiotics am feeling a little bit better at last. There has been lots of rest and recouperation this week! **

It’s been a slow week, we’ve all had a cold {just a head cold not covid!} and have been low on energy. In the past, I would push myself to keep going no matter how I felt. I would push through my illness and usually resulted in making myself worse. When the girls were little, I had countless chest infections and bouts of pleurisy, no doubt because I never let myself rest.

I guess is stemmed down to feeling as though I didn’t deserve to rest, or that if I stopped, all the balls I was juggling would crash down.

Thankfully, in the last few years, I’ve learned a lot. Mainly that it is allowed for me to stop. To do nothing. Of course – my version of nothing isn’t exactly nothing. I still had a toddler and foud older kiddos to look after, food to make, a baby to nurse all day and night, commitments, and the like… BUT.

I rested as much as I could. I didn’t run all week, and apart from a bike ride on Monday to the shops just stuck to some gentle time on my yoga mat. I hit the sack early, I ate nourishing foods, as well as plenty of the delicious pie that Baya made for the Equinox.

I did minimal work and only minimal jobs around the house. I snuggled on the sofa and watched movies with the kids. Sat on the floor and played games with the baby.

And knew that I could pick up all the balls again once I was feeling better.

Old me is proud of how far I’ve come. Of the fact, I don’t put myself last anymore. That I don’t push myself to prove anything to anyone. That I listen to my body and do what it needs. In the same way that I run and eat healthy because my body {and mind} feel so much better for it, I let it rest and eat whatever it craves when that is what it needs.

Learning to listen to and honor our bodies is a huge deal. It means we are in tune with ourselves fully, that it doesn’t matter what anyone else says we know what we need. If someone disagrees with your healthy eating and workout lifestyle, it doesn’t matter because you know you are doing what’s best for you. If someone comments on you having a rest day for ‘just a cold’, it doesn’t matter because you know what’s best for you.

Other peoples judgements usually say more about them than they do about you.

It sets a good example for our children to see us do this. For them to see that it is essential to look after ourselves. To eat healthily and workout regularly. Yet at the same time, it is equally essential to rest or to indulge in some cake once in a while, or miss a run if you’re not feeling great.

There is no right or wrong, it’s all about doing what is best for you in teh here and now.