August 26, 2021

MAKING TIME FOR REST.

It's been a hot minute since I last posted. I've wanted to sit down and write for some time now, but I've been learning and growing and I wanted to privately process all of the changes before I wrote about them and shared them with the world wide web. 

And that's what summer has been for me right now. For the majority of summer I was in  professional development trainings and recertification and then straight into planning, preparing, and of course--teaching summer school. Summer school was a blast and I don't regret signing up to lead it but it was also a blur and it felt like it came and went like that

So August has been a chance to exhale and sit in my feelings. It's not something I'm all that great at but it's something I'm learning to embrace and welcome into my life. 

And now that I've officially entered my thirties (say what?!), I am finding more and more stones that I've left unturned in the years leading up to this. And slowly but surely, I feel dedicated to uncovering them all and facing the emotions that have been buried beneath each one. 

One of the first ones I found myself facing was body image and extending grace to myself. Earlier this spring, I tripped (trying not to trip over my dog) while running and took a bad fall and strained my hip. It was just as fun as it sounds. 

I've always been bad at healing my own injuries because I'm as impatient as a kid hungrily awaiting a meal. It's funny, because I can extend patient with kids in the classroom but patience with myself in the healing process? Yeah, not so much. 

Of course, when you strain or pull something, you're bound to to do it again if you don't rest and heal and strengthen it properly. So this past week, I've found myself with a re-strain from another fall (this time uneven sidewalk). 

But I'm trying to do it right this time. Even if that means it takes more resting and more strength-training in the meantime. As I found myself resting my hip (and confining myself to only walks with a side of yoga/pilates), I was texting with a couple friends who extended grace to me in my healing process and to whom I extended grace and well wishes in their own personal healing processes. 

I came to this realization that I was eager to extend grace and love and compassion to my friends but not to myself. 

I know, I know. There are a million and one inspirational quotes about speaking kindness and love to yourself. And that we shouldn't say anything to ourselves that we wouldn't say to our best friends. Trust me, I'm the one who's shared those quotes. 

But sometimes those words go in one ear and out the other and it takes a time or two for me to actually let them sink into the depths of my heart. This time, I'm hoping it sticks. 

I want to rest well. Love myself and the body God's made for me. And to find grace in the stillness. I come from a naturally busy family and it's hard for me to not be ashamed of resting. I have believed the lie that resting = laziness and whenever I found myself resting and watching TV, I felt guilty that I wasn't doing something else. When I sleep in, I tend to feel icky inside because there's so much more that I could be doing instead. And when I wasn't actively exercising (aka running and working out), I equated it to gaining weight -- something that has held a lot of insecurity in my past as well. 

I've started to unpack all of these emotions and lies that I've believed for so long and have started to slowly come to terms with the fact that our bodies change as we age and that we have to take care of them for the long haul -- and part of taking care of your bodies is to love and care for them. 

Rest is necessary when you're healing just as much as it is when you're well. And I want to take those words with me as I enter a new school year and just a new decade of life, too. 


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© IN ITS TIMEMaira Gall