Body Breakdowns, Grief, and Acceptance

“Wholly unprepared, we embark upon the second half of life…we take the step into the afternoon of life; worst still, we take this step with the false assumptions that our truths and ideals will serve us as before. But we cannot live the afternoons of life according to the programme of life’s morning – for what was great in the morning will be little in the evening, and what in the morning was true will in the evening have become a lie.” Carl Jung

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become." Carl Jung

I'm feeling philosophical today. Perhaps it's the exhaustion that comes from a weekend of too much stress, fun, long hours, late party, and the springing forward of a clock when the body has no idea what that means. With all that, there's also the bone-numbing tiredness and realization that this body can't roll with the flow the way it used to.

So be it.

I accept it.

My husband even complimented me - me! - for how well I handled my exhaustion yesterday. Which is lovely, because, quite frankly, I can be a bitch when I'm tired. However, yesterday I did what was seemingly selfish - I put in my earbuds, parked myself in front of the computer, did my work, and (mostly) ignored my family.

Sometimes the best thing you can do for everyone else is take care of yourself. I didn't cook, clean, or do laundry. But I didn't yell or grump at anyone either. I accepted my exhaustion and in accepting it, I got done what I could and allowed time to take care of what I couldn't take care of otherwise: resting my body. As Jung says, we can't live in the afternoon as we lived in the morning, but we also get to choose how we live. When I was younger, a weekend like this wouldn't have thrown me so.

I've bumped up against the limitations and the breakdowns of my body a few times. In my 30s I went through infertility and the grief and anger that my body wouldn't do for me such a seemingly natural thing as getting pregnant. I raged, cried and mourned the loss of my "perfect" body and finally accepted it (and then, ironically and happily, got pregnant three times). In my 40s I was diagnosed with kidney disease and told by an insensitive doctor that he was so, so sorry for the horror that my life would be (huh? I seem to still be perfectly fine!) And again, when I turned 50, I suffered the angst of realizing there were things I wanted to do that I probably wasn't going to get to do since my life was half over and my body was not the strong, young thing it had been. I raged and cried and mourned the loss of time and again accepted. And as Jung says, I turned my thoughts from all that had happened (or not happened) to me and focused on what I could become.

It's been many years since I could easily pull an all-nighter, or even a half-nighter. With age, along with (hopefully) wisdom comes the body's changes. You can accept it and work with it, or you can be miserable about it. I suggest, that if this is where you are in your life, acknowledge and experience your emotions. Write about them, talk about them, cry about them. And then know that as long as you're here, you're in the driver's seat. The road may be a different one than you thought you'd drive on, but you are driving. Look out the front window - as Wayne Dyer says, you wouldn't drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror, and that's no way to live your life either. If you're not on the road you want to be on, start moving forward, enjoy the scenery, and think of how you can get to where you wanted to go. Or pick a new destination. But, make sure it's a destination you're interested in getting to.

And don't let anyone else tell you what you can, should, or will still do. We don't know the limits of what we can accomplish but when we think we do, we automatically limit ourselves. There's a fine line between honest acceptance of what is and what cannot be changed, and being open to realizing how much can be changed. If I listened to the people who said post-menopausal women can't lose weight, I'd be twenty pounds heavier and accomplishing less than I do now because when I was heavier, I had less energy. If I assumed I didn't have the brain cells at age 55 to be back in school (and many people have told me they feel too old at this age to learn new things), I wouldn't be embarking on this new career that I love. So, check yourself out honestly, honestly see how things feel and what you want and then point yourself in the direction of your dreams and go!