December 2020. Where did the year go and how the hell did it go so fast when Covid slowed everything down??? I guess in some ways it has been painfully slow, yet in others so very fast…yes, I think that would be more accurate.
When I think about it, December 2019 was more difficult ironically than this December has been so far. Lol I am only one week into it mind you! The spring of 2019 was when my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. 5 years previous a similar diagnosis took portions of her lungs so this time treatment options for an 84 year old were really nonexistent, the words ‘inoperable’ and ‘incurable’ were devastating. Where did the years go and how the hell did it go so fast??? I wasn’t ready to let my mom go. But life is not like that. We don’t always get to decide, we don’t always get a choice, life unfolds at its own pace and if we think we can control it we are very wrong! “Life is what happens when when you’re busy making other plans”…John Lennon…someone else gone too soon.
So, back to December 2019. We had just returned from a very much needed week away from the shitstorm of my life and me being me was looking forward to Christmas as it is my favorite time of year even though I am really a warm weather summer girl. Then it happened, I got sick. It was just a cold that first week so I thought nothing of it but then it came back with a vengeance. Fever, cough, heaviness in my chest and sheer exhaustion. I am an absolute baby when sick. I hate it, it is such a waste of precious time. I remember crying as I laid in the recliner, just getting up to use the washroom exhausted me and I was so frustrated and upset that this had ‘happened’ to me. I wanted to do all the things I loved to do in December but that was not going to be.
Thank God December is a good time of year business wise for a personal trainer to take some extra time off because there was no way I could work. I couldn’t decorate, bake, shop…feeding myself was a production. So mostly I just laid there and slept, cried, and thought about what the lesson in all of this was. Yep, that is also me…this must have happened to teach me something, what was it?
December 2020 and I think it has come to me! Wow, that didn’t take long to figure out now did it?! I think being sick last December was the beginning of a very slow realization that I am not taking care of me. I am very very good at preaching it to others however! Of course in my line of work it can be easy to get caught up in all of that. As an individual in the health industry you are working to help others make healthier choices in their lives so you become very good at giving. And because that giving feels so good, it can become addictive. And when you become addicted to anything you are no longer in balance, you are basically out of whack. I was out of whack.
I think the only reason I am able to come to this conclusion is because of Covid. It has taken a pandemic to close my business giving me the time and isolation I needed to realize that the very core of why I do what I do, although a great thing, the WAY I was doing it was not healthy for me. I was not giving to me. Yes, I was truly out of whack. But the good news is I am still here…I can find my balance again.
And so ‘Tis the Season, the season I love! The season of cold and snow and hygge. (I hope my sweet Danish uncle John will love that reference!) The season of lights and music and cheer. The season of shopping and wrapping and magic. The season of love and being with the ones you love.
But what about Covid you say, Covid has taken all that away? Not in my out of whack mind! I have always loved this season and everything that goes with it. Last year I struggled to enjoy it because I wasn’t healthy. Covid hasn’t got me yet so I am going to enjoy all those things I love about the season. And while I may not be able to be with all the ones I love in a physical sense, I, like my mom, can be with my loved ones in different ways. I am grateful for my health this December. I am grateful I am still here to love and enjoy everything and everyone around me even if around me is from afar. I’m still here. And so I will do all of the things I love while thinking about all the people I love with this out of whack, grateful little head and heart. ‘Tis the Season.
Wishing you and yours a grateful December and of course, Love.