RECOVERY TIME

Giving Oneself Gentle Permission to Heal and Seek Support is not Easy in our Culture

Today I want to talk about coming out of the Muck (the ooey, gooey gross time after cancer treatments). This is not graceful. This is messy. It is a one step forward, two steps back kind of scenario for many of us. It is often a lonely time, when the survivor is struggling internally and hesitant to put loved ones through another day of stress by admitting that they are not okay.

For me it was alternatively a time of panic and a time of collapse. The fight or flight I had lived in for 12 months had chronically stressed my system to a point where I often went into hypo-arousal. My nervous system gave up. I played dead, even though the lion had already released me from its jaws.

The inability to feel positive feelings. Check. Lack of interest in activities you used to enjoy. Check. Avoiding reminders of the difficult time. Check. Nightmares. Check. Feeling as if you are back reliving those moments. Check.

I wonder how many cancer survivors and thrivers have symptoms of PTSD? I wonder how many suffer in silence, adding to their burden of stress and pain?

I remember grappling with how I was feeling, and deciding early on that I was in a period of recovery. I gave myself a name for it. This is RECOVERY TIME.

I kept notes in a binder. I joked with my friends that I was my own worst project. I made checklists about foods to eat every day, walks to take, stretches to do, appointments to go to. I had massages and epsom baths to soothe my chemo-laden joints and muscles. I started doing yoga at home using youtube videos to get some strength back, and eventually found an amazing trauma-informed yoga teacher who does classes at the Y near me. I read books on recovering from cancer. I did self-compassion exercises, thank you Dr. Kristin Neff! I saw a psychologist and then a counsellor. I started a virtual cancer support group to seek out connections with other people with lived experience.

Looking back now I can see that recognizing I was struggling and giving myself RECOVERY TIME was foundational to my healing. If I had hopped back on the train of productivity and pushed myself I think I would have floundered and collapsed. Instead, with the help of many supportive people in my life, I admitted I was not yet healed.

It is okay to need time to heal. You must give yourself time to heal and prioritize your health and well-being. A key part of this is telling the people in your life that you need support.

I went back to work, but in a different way. I left my busy, chaotic school counsellor job (which I loved), retrained as a trauma-informed EMDR therapist and opened a part-time private practice. I allowed myself to rest and take my walks in the mornings and removed some stress from my day. I invested time and energy and lots of money (in lost income) into my well-being.

Whether one is recovering from cancer, other medical issues, difficult life circumstances, a mental health illness, a traumatic incident, the death of a loved one, or something else entirely, it is so important to allow RECOVERY TIME….. And that period of time cannot be on a timeline. There may not be a clear end point.

In some ways I feel my recovery time has bled into a healthier way of living my life. I don’t know where one ends and the other begins.

Giving oneself gentle permission to heal and seek support is not easy in our culture.

I wish I had known about the importance of RECOVERY TIME on the day I rang the bell. I had to figure it out on my own, and it was a difficult journey. This is why I want to start talking about it.

During my morning walks I have a lot of time to watch the ducks and loons.