ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
You don't have to earn rest ð
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Hey Reader, I want to ask you something. When was the last time you rested without negotiating with yourself first? Not rested because you'd finally done enough, or because you crashed and had no choice â but just rested because your body asked for it and you said yes. If you're like most of the people in this community, that's a hard question to answer. Because somewhere along the way, we all absorbed the same message: rest is a reward. You earn it. And if you haven't done enough yet, you don't deserve it. That message was never made for us. I wrote this week's post about exactly that â the rest guilt that follows chronically ill people everywhere, where it actually comes from, and why honoring your body's need for rest isn't laziness or weakness. It's resistance. There's a reader comment in there that stopped me cold when I first saw it. I think it'll stop you too. Read the full post here â The Permission Slip You've Been Waiting For: Rest Is Not a Rewardâ Take care of yourself today â whatever that looks like. Until next time, |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hi Reader, I've been thinking about the moment when the question changes. Not "why do I feel this way" â but "is this just how it is now." If you've been there, you know the difference. The first question assumes there's a findable answer. The second has stopped assuming that. This week's post lives in the space between those two questions. It's about why most symptom tracking attempts fall apart (and why that's not a consistency problem), what pattern recognition actually looks like when...
Hi there Reader, Can I tell you about a recent dinner at my house? Frozen chicken. Microwave mac and cheese. A bag of frozen broccoli. There was a vegetable on the plate, so it counted. And honestly, that was the whole standard that night. I've been thinking a lot lately about the gap between what pacing is supposed to look like and what it actually looks like when you're living inside a real day. The ideal version sounds reasonable enough â know your limits, stop before you're depleted, rest...
Hey there Reader, Something I've been thinking about lately â and finally wrote about this week â is how energy tracking advice almost always skips the part where it tells you what to do when the data doesn't lead to a fix. Most of it assumes you're starting from neutral. That a bad day is an outlier to troubleshoot. That if you just find the right system and stay consistent, you'll get ahead of your crashes. For a lot of us, that's not how it works. And when tracking is built on that logic,...