Apr 4- Home

Meditation: Calm, Emotions Series: Burnout
Length: 10 minutes
Where: Bedroom, Los Angeles
How It Felt: Cleansing

The hospital saga is over- for now. Still more procedures in our near future, but Steve is going to be just fine, and that is what matters.

We made it home yesterday, Steve to Michigan with the kids, me back to LA, where he met me today. We are exhausted. I am exhausted. Originally, I was just going to do a sleep meditation, seeing as what I knew I needed was a good night’s sleep. However, my body and mind were craving a proper, sitting up meditation session after so many days of short, quick ones, so I whipped out the cushion and committed to a full ten minutes.

I chose one called “Burnout” for obvious reasons. Honestly, while the stress of worrying about my husband and sleep deprivation were the biggest sources of my burnout, it was also challenging to have no time or space to process anything. My free moments were spent keeping the kids distracted or taking care of them, updating all our friends and family who were worried about Steve, catching his parents and sister up once I got back to the house- for an introvert who needs time to slow down and process thoughts and emotions, this was hard.

Now that I’m home, I feel like my mind has sort of collapsed in on itself. When it does start going, I have a million thoughts. I slept twelve hours last night- and through an actual earthquake.

It felt good to take deep breaths for ten minutes, to just be present in a safe space and give my thoughts some room to move around. I could tell how high my stress level must have been because I really couldn’t breathe all the way in for the first half. My “deep” breaths were more like mid-level ones.

Happy to be home and looking forward to getting the rest of the crappy medical stuff out of the way. My poor guy.

Also happy to be back with Tigre. I’ve never known such a loving, cuddly cat! He’s been attached to me since I walked in the door, even trying to jump in the shower with me today. Cats- they know!

As a final note, in the future, I know a stronger meditation practice will help me manage stress in times like these. It just seemed all my alone or quiet time was spent either trying to sleep, eat, or shower, or constantly getting interrupted by doctors, nurses, worried kids, parents, or my ever buzzing phone. It seemed impossible to get ten full minutes to myself. It’s good to remember to keep it a priority, though, and also encouraging to see that even when things get really crazy, I continue to make meditating (and this blog) a priority in some form.

So often in life doing our best is exactly enough.