Hi, I’m Reid! I write about my life experiences and how we can all live in brave new ways. Dare You is a reader-supported publication. To receive weekly posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. 💗
I woke up this morning feeling under the weather. For some reason, I always get sick this time of year. The past two years, I was sick on my birthday… and this year, God seems to have spared me the birthday blues and blessed me with the sickness just a few short weeks later,at a time with nothing major on my calendar. In the midst of my body aches, I find myself grateful. Grateful that I got sick long enough before we get married, grateful I got to see my family recently while I was well, and grateful that I have assigned meaning behind being sick.
I always seem to get sick right before a big breakthrough- on the brink of a new beginning. Because I am prone to falling into a sad slump every time I get sick, where existential dread seems to take over my entire being, I eventually had to assign meaning to the sickness in order to get through it. Since I always seem to get sick around my birthday and right before the new year, it feels like I am letting go of the old and welcoming the new. Like a snake shedding her skin.
I am one of those people who feels guilty for resting... which makes being sick even more painful. If I lay down horizontally between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., I just feel like a complete failure. But by assigning meaning to being sick, it somehow gives me permission to rest. I am laying here with my cat Isabella. She rests all the time. Every day she completes about 4 cycles of jumping around our furniture like it’s an obstacle course, and in between each one, she curls up into a little ball and rests. Maybe I should take a page out of her book and allow myself to rest between sprints more often... not just when I'm sick.
Even while I'm laying here, I feel the urge to plan what I will do next once I'm done writing to you. But perhaps this time, I'll be able to choose differently. Maybe for once, I can just let myself rest and do nothing. If the meaning I have assigned to being sick is true and I am indeed on the brink of a new beginning, then I can surely afford to loosen my grip and let my body heal. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that growth doesn't always come from pushing forward…it often happens in the stillness, in the quiet moments when we finally allow ourselves to simply be.
-Reid
📹 Meanwhile on Youtube: 📹
Renew and Align | Become your best self by 2025
The Hard Truth About Following Your Heart (feel the fear and do it anyway)
Reflecting On My Birthday: Growth, Lessons Learned, And Future Plans!