At my friend’s yoga class last Saturday she opened up with a tidbit of wisdom that I pocketed away for the week. It’s been an especially slow start to the year in San Francisco with the rain storms and it’s tested the virtue of patience for a lot of us. She questioned, how can we let go of our need to always be striving and accept what the current moment is offering us. Have you ever considered rest as a true luxury?

Using that thought to shift my perspective this week has been so helpful. As many of you know I have an autoimmune disorder, Hashimoto’s, that affects the thyroid. After a severe hypothyroid crash this summer, I haven’t felt my best and have been working with a naturopath (message me if you need a recommendation in SF!) to find the root cause of the disorder. After months of testing, we discovered that I have Lyme disease (my worst fear!) and a co-infection of it called Tick Borne Relapsing Fever. I’m currently on day 20 of a potential 90 day antibiotic therapy and am experiencing a lot of  die off symptoms of the bacteria as I detox from it, which they call a Herx reaction, that is making me exhausted and feel like I have arthritis in my hips. I have been on this health journey for around 15 years now and thankfully am feeling so much hope now that we know exactly what’s going on.

But all this to say that I’ve been thinking a lot about self-compassion lately. There’s so much I want to do that I physically cannot do right now. I adore being outdoors and too much movement makes my symptoms worse, even a walk around the block can send me straight to my bed when I get home. Accepting where I’m at and trusting the unfolding is hard when I don’t feel like I have any control. It’s brought awareness to some of my biggest fears- if I don’t do or create anything today, will I still be loved? And the answer I’ve had to dig deep to find and truly feel the answer to is yes. 

It’s taken me months to find the beauty in this experience but I’m starting to see that it’s a gift to have the time to go inwards and learn how to love yourself fully no matter what. I have to keep reminding myself that this is just a chapter in time and isn’t my identity. As everything does, this too shall pass. I’m still the same me who gets dressed every morning even if I’m feeling puffy and who’s wisdom and love flows in client sessions just because it always does. These things are in my bones no matter what.

I’ll leave you with these two questions that I read this week in Sarah Blondin’s newsletter, “What is the source of inexhaustible compassion?” and “How do we find the divinity of our fear and confusion?” This is what the journey back home is about discovering the answers too. We’re all taking a different path to the same place.

xx, Jillian