75 days of radical self-care
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The words jumped out at me and I felt my heart race. “What is the truest, most beautiful version of my life I could imagine?”
Why was that question so difficult to answer?
All I could think of at that moment was also on the page in front of me: “Not this.”
Life unravelling
What I’m about to share may be shocking for you to read but I don’t want to sweep this under the proverbial rug.
Too many people are dealing with big things, especially in the wake of Covid19 and too few people feel supported.
Ironically, life for me during Covid19 was pretty great. I had a full-time job. I had savings. I had a great house. Family life was rocking along for the most part and I had some great prospects and high hopes for new business relationships and ideas.
Then a few weeks ago a cascade of big life events knocked me for six. I don’t want to go into detail. What happened is now history but the combined effect of multiple changes sent me spiralling into a world of anxiety and depression like nothing I’ve experienced before.
A new rock bottom
With everything in my life seeming to unravell around me, two Fridays ago I was driving home from dropping my son at work and for a nano-second, I imagined driving my car off a bridge. I didn’t (and wouldn’t) do that of course but it jolted me. I had hit a new kind of rock bottom. And then things got worse again the following Monday.
That day, when I felt like I could take no more, I called a friend and tearfully uttered, “Hey, I really need help.”
30 minutes later I was parked in my friend Belinda’s driveway. We went for a walk in the forest and she asked me, “What do you need to do right now? What will make a difference today?”
I had an interview for a new contract that night and I was struggling to pull myself together. “I need to do well in this interview,” I said.
I knew my full-time job was coming to an end and pretty much every evening for months I had been applying for other roles. I thought it would be easy given my skills and experience but it wasn’t. And my project was coming to an end which was adding to my stress.
