My body shut down at 39: here's what I learnt about getting a better life |
High performer. Working mum of two. The juggle looked effortless. On the inside, a different story entirely. Always wanting to deliver to the highest standards, no matter the cost. Saying yes to everything, responding to everyone else's needs, putting myself last.
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Career, the kids, family, relationships - and a desperate craving to take care of me that I could never quite find the time for. Drowning in overwhelm. All in the pursuit of achievement.
Sound familiar? If you're an overachiever, I suspect it does. I thought the cost was simply the price of ambition. Rushing through my life so fast I wasn't present for any of it. Balancing on empty and calling it success.
At 39, my body had been shouting at me for a long time. I was simply "too busy" to listen. A rare autoimmune disease, and then cancer, made sure of that. Stuck in a sick body for more than a decade, not always sure I would make it, I had to urgently figure out a better way. This was it for me - as good as it gets. I had learnt the hard way the real cost of my ambition and forgotten what truly mattered most. Facing your own impermanence has a remarkable way of forcing you to sense-check what you actually want your life to be.
In the years that followed, fighting to stay here and rebuilding my life so I could actually enjoy it, I found a better way. Here's what I know now:
If you don't have health, you have nothing
Most of us move through life feeling quietly invincible. As overachievers, we make an inner deal: rest after this next thing, slow down once I've earned it. It's the bargain that keeps us pushing through and stops us seeing rest as the strategy it actually is. The tension headaches, the 3am wake-ups, the exhaustion a weekend can't fix - your body is already trying to tell you something. Rest is not slowing down. It is the thing that makes everything else........