Work from Rest

It has been a while. A long while filled with vacation, pneumonia, existential crises, soul-searching, self-discovery and a sh*t ton of ice cream.

How I spent the rest of June and beginning of July...

I’m so happy to be back but a bit at a loss for where to start.

I’ve started this piece a few times already, but I haven’t been able to get past the initial emotional dump that is an early draft. A lot of that has to do with how I’ve been feeling, so I guess that’s as good a place to start as any.

A couple of weeks ago, the morning I published my piece on Balance, I noticed I was having trouble breathing. It wasn’t anything too crazy, but it was bad enough that I skipped the gym that morning.

That afternoon, my aunt arrived from Boston to visit for the weekend of the Philadelphia flower show. We had a floral bonanza planned, visiting the flower show and dinner at Talula’s Garden on Thursday, a full day at Longwood Gardens on Friday.

Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with our plans and Friday’s trip to Longwood was a six plus hours romp through the rain. We had an amazing time and I was beyond grateful for the visit, but by dinner I was hurting.

I woke up Saturday morning just in time to hug my guest goodbye and promptly went back to sleep for the entire day. Sunday morning I went to work and pulled off the bare-minimum I needed to do there before going home and going back to bed all day. I stayed there through my day off on Monday and Tuesday morning woke up determined to go to work.

It was supposed to be the first day our whole staff was back in the office and I’d planned a lunch to mark the occasion. I was not going to miss it. I showered, sitting down the entire time because it was too hard to stand. Coughing as I brushed my teeth Blake finally turned to me and said “you can’t go in… you sound terrible.”

This is one of those moments when I am so grateful for Blake and his engineer practicality. He has a healthy relationship with himself, his body and actually listens to its limitations and needs. This is not a practice I have mastered and frankly, the past few weeks have shown me, is an area where there’s major room for improvement.

Thankfully he spoke up, forcing me to confront the fact that I clearly couldn’t go to work… I couldn’t even stand in the shower! But still, I spent another twenty minutes trying to power through before ending up in tears and texting my boss I wouldn’t be able to make it.

On Wednesday, at the urging of my co-worker/work Mom, I called my doctor’s office and made an appointment. They still aren’t seeing patients in-person, especially not ones with a cough and fever, so it was telehealth, fine by me. The doctor diagnosed me with a nasty case of bronchitis, wrote me a script and a note for work saying I needed to be out for the rest of the week.

I hated it. The guilt I felt for missing the meeting, the shame I felt for being too sick to go to work. It hit me immediately.

I want to stop here to break down this complex I have about missing work and why it’s such a thing for me. It’s multi-pronged so again, bear with me. Essentially my complex about workplaces absences can be broken down into two parts: how I was raised and how I behaved during my active addiction.

Writing it out here is actually the start of some important processing for me. So thanks for letting me work it out here.

Growing up, my parents didn’t get sick. In my entire life I can remember my mom being sick exactly once and I think maybe my dad was coughing one day but still went to work. Sickness just wasn’t a thing we did. We had a rule in our house, unless you were throwing up or bleeding profusely, you went to school. Unfortunately for my parents and I, I was a sickly kid and I have never grown out of it.

“You tend to get sicker for longer,” my dad said to me on the phone the other night. It’s just a matter of who I am and how my body is, unfortunately.

So that hard and fast rule of “unless you’re throwing up or bleeding profusely,” I really put it to the test.

I specifically remember one incident the first day of fifth grade when I woke up not feeling well. I told my mom I thought I was sick and she understandably attributed it to the nerves of the first day of middle school. Thankfully it was only a half day, because by the end of it I promptly ran outside and threw up on the sidewalk behind some bushes. I thought I was in the clear after that so I tried to continue the day; my best friend’s grandparents were taking us that afternoon and had a wake they had to go to. Waiting outside the actual viewing, I got sick again and this time did not make it outside - instead projectile vomiting all over the funeral home waiting area. I can still picture it, there was some sort of service member standing there in his formal uniform, and him stepping back his overly shiny black shoes to avoid the throw up lurching from my body.

If that doesn’t paint a clear enough picture of my history with illness and absences, there’s one more experience I’d like to share. A year later in middle school I got the flu. I wasn’t throwing up or bleeding profusely, but I was evidently sick enough that my parents called in my grandma and kept me home from school for several days. By Thursday I had started to feel physically better, but my physical illness had evolved into a full-on mental disaster. Going to bed on Thursday evening I have what I can identify now as a panic-attack, hyperventilating and crying, paralyzed by the fear of going back to school on Friday because I was convinced I was doomed by having missed so much in the four days prior. I cried my heart out until my depleted little body couldn’t take it anymore and I passed out. I remember waking up in the morning with a note from my parents telling me it would be okay, that I should take the day to rest and relax and not worry.

Rest, relax, don’t worry. I’m still struggling to take that advice today.

Now to the harder thing to face: active addiction. When I was in my active addiction, I swung the pendulum completely in the other direction. Opposed to following the rule about vomiting or bleeding profusely, as an adult, alcoholic me took the usage of sick days to the extreme. I can remember at my first job, the first time I took a sick day for being hungover.

“It’s okay,” I told myself, “people get sick, this is what sick days are for.” Yes, true, but alcoholic Amanda didn’t just take sick days, she took a gross amount of time off for being hungover, drunk or too depressed from drinking to actually get out of bed.

Not to mention the embarrassing times I’d “work from home,” but end up too drunk to even pull that off, waking up from a blackout to see that I’d passed out halfway through the day, leaving projects unfinished, emails unanswered and my boss seriously concerned that my illness had escalated to death.

It’s really challenging for me to look back at the jobs I had during my years of active addiction and think about the number of sick days I justified. It pains me the opportunities I took for granted during that time and the time I stole from my employers. It all weighs heavy on my heart to this day and I look forward to the time in my program when I’m able to address those wrongs through my steps and especially amends. But that’s coming. For now, I just have to acknowledge the reality of the past and try to understand to grow from it.

Which means understanding that I am not that employee anymore.

I’m no longer unreliable, I don’t call in sick for hangovers or pass out in the middle of a work day. I’m actually a fantastic employee who works her butt off, loves her job and gives it 110% every day. But that understanding is easier said than done.

Even though I know I am a totally different employee now, the guilt and shame I carry around from my past still lingers. It’s like all the guilt and shame I happily ignored while missing tons of work when I was drinking was saved away for when my drinking ended and conscience returned. I still feel it. And so when my doctor told me I had to be out for the rest week, I was crushed. The tidal wave of guilt and shame enveloped me.

And that was only the beginning.

What the doctor originally diagnosed as bronchitis turned out to be pneumonia. Taking off the rest of that week turned into a three-week medical leave that led straight up to my vacation.

It was brutal.

The pneumonia was bad. Trust me, it really sucks and even as I sit here writing I can feel my poor little lungs still trying to get back up to full speed. I spent three weeks in bed. Disgusting and miserable, I binged ABC’s Revenge, Trader Joe’s popsicles and pints of ice cream. I could barely get up to go retrieve the aforementioned popsicles from the fridge. My brain was mush. I couldn’t write. I struggled to breath.

But all that was nothing compared to the mental anguish I felt. Any mental capacity I had was trying to wrap itself around the sheer volume of guilt, shame and despondency I had swirling around in my mind. I hated being sick, being out of work and was drowning the dark, stormies and scaries, shame gremlins dancing on my grave. Not to mention that without my usual routine, the serenity of my daily mindfulness walks with Jax, the stabilization I get from a recovery meeting, the relief I get from spinning, all of those defenses were stripped away. I was left alone, in bed, crying and convinced I was a terrible employee while I ate my feelings through another pint of ice cream/box of popsicles and apologized to Blake for being a useless, worthless piece of shit.

Yes, that is how it escalated.

Thank God for the people in my life who love me. Blake, my work family, my actual family, they carried me through this past month.

It might sound weird that I just listed my work family as people who love me, but that’s actually a really important part of this whole thing. Have you ever worked somewhere where you were genuinely loved for who you are as a human being?

It’s rare, and I’ve been fortunate to have it several times. Even during my active addiction and everything that came with it, I have been lucky to have employers who genuinely care about me and my well-being. More on that another time, suffice to say I’ve been incredibly blessed and my current job is the perfect example of that.

As I’ve mentioned before, and really need to write a piece on, my job is an actual god-sent dream job. I’m the Communications Director for a local church and I thank God everyday for bringing me to this place. It has been an incredible safe space for me to grow past my old habits and develop new, healthier ones.

So when I told my boss that I planned to power through and work after that initial diagnosis of bronchitis, I was met with kindness, appreciation and a gentle suggestion that I instead actually take the time off to rest and heal.

I should note, that since I work at a church, my boss is in fact a church pastor. This man, is incredible and I learn so much from on a daily basis. Feeling my hesitation to release the reigns and actually take sick time, he reminded me that we as humans aren’t designed to rest from a place of work, but instead work from a place of rest. It’s something he’s been trying to model for his staff and the greater church community. If you’re interested in it, he actually preached a sermon on the topic this past Sunday.

It’s amazing, and starts after the Gospel reading around the 40:00 mark.

“God is inviting us to stop and work from a posture and position of rest and not to rest from our work,” Pastor Jonathan explains. “It’s just swapping the position in the sentence, of those two words but it makes all the difference in the world.”

Personally, I think its advice everyone needs to hear, and that I’ve been lucky enough to hear over and over again. Thankfully, Jonathan is blessed with the patience only a pastor possesses, so he’s been willing to repeat himself for my stubborn self. He mentioned it that first day when I was diagnosed with bronchitis, again when I came into work after finishing my course of antibiotics, coughing and struggling to breath, and again when my first stop after urgent care and my pneumonia diagnosis was to the office to pick up materials to work from home. (Don’t worry, I wasn’t contagious at that point.)

The last time Jonathan relayed this wisdom to me was the Thursday before I left for vacation. Feeling slightly physically better, but emotionally distraught over the idea of leaving for vacation, I stopped into the office to take care of some things before leaving for yet another week. Jonathan invited me into his office to relay to me the story of how he learned the importance of working from a place of rest, reminding me of a critical takeaway I’ve been struggling to swallow since I started this job.

“There is room for grace,” he reminded me.

It’s something he’s patiently reminded me of over and over again, as I lambast myself for every and any glimpse of imperfection. In addition to being an alcoholic, I’m also a recovering perfectionist, so this idea of giving myself grace is one that Jonathan has been lovingly feeding in small bites ever since my Tasmanian devil of perfectionism swirled into his office.

I know that his efforts aren’t for naught, because however slowly, I am starting to learn grace. In fact, it’s where I landed in the last piece I wrote.

“Give yourself grace,” I pressed.

If only I’d listened to that advice when I wrote it. Or even over those past few weeks of being sick. But I am a case of progress, not perfection and for some reason, it took hearing it from Jonathan one more time to for it to finally click.

There is room for grace. People get sick. Just because you’ve abused that in the past doesn’t mean you’re doing it now. It’s okay. You’re okay. There is room for grace.

It’s okay. You’re okay. There is room for grace.

That last part is something I’ve been repeating to myself over and over for weeks. A little mantra I’ve been working on and slowly coming to believe, finally cementing it in my brain after that last talk with Jonathan.

With it, I was able to leave for vacation on July 2nd and actually give my body the rest it deserved and so desperately needed. I put up an out of office email reply, put aside my guilt and shame and went to the beach. I ate more ice cream, slept a ton and soaked up as much sun as I possibly could. I came back from vacation tanned, refreshed and actually excited to get back to work.

All smiles for our first day back.

Yesterday was my first day back and I couldn’t have been happier to head back into the office. I was nervous, of course. A little hesitant and still trying to shake the fears tagging along with all my baggage. But there was also promise in what I’d learned and finally internalized from that last conversation with Jonathan.

My enthusiasm to head in even eclipsed Jax’s, which is saying something. As we bounded in the back door and settled back into our daily life at the church I felt this amazing tranquility flowing over me, eradicating any of the residual anxiety I’d felt from my time out of the office.

This - I thought to myself, is what working from rest feels like. I’ve got to do it more often.