Lately I’ve backslidden on my sleep schedule, staying up until almost sunrise and waking up in the afternoon. But because I’m getting up early (by anyone standards) tomorrow to run around, I set my alarm for before noon today. Like, maybe I can ease myself into this. Y’all, it’s awful. I’ve been ready to go back to bed all day. Now it’s five in the evening, and I’m working feverishly to finish the blog before I teach dance in an hour and a half. Since I’ve got to go to bed early tonight–I’ve just got to–this may be more of a sprint than a marathon. Some days all you can do is show up.

This afternoon I finished reading a book by Laura Day about intuition and how it relates to healing. It’s due back at the library tomorrow, and I’m finding that having a deadline is a good way for me to get things done. Anyway, the book mentioned something about feeling “comfortable and proud” in your body, so I’ve been chewing on those words, since they’re not the first adjectives I think of when describing how I feel in my skin, but I’d like them to be. I guess sometimes I feel that way, and I know I feel that way more than I used to. I’d just like to feel that way more often–comfortable and proud.

Hum.

Whenever I get a sinus infection, my go-to adjective for describing the way I feel is “weak.” All my energy is just up and gone. It feels hopeless, like all my vitality has been buried next to Jimmy Hoffa, never to be found again. Much to my non-amusement, “weak” has become a kind of joke in our family, a word we toss around whenever one of us feels bad–like, poor, poor, pitiful me.

As a healing exercise, the book I finished earlier suggested remembering a time when you felt strong, almost unable to contain yourself, absolutely powerful. This isn’t exactly easy to do when you feel like someone’s unplugged you from the wall, but I assume that’s exactly the point, to reconnect with the best possible version of yourself. More than anything else, the exercise made me realize that weak isn’t simply a word I use to describe myself when I get sick. I mean, I don’t put it on my business cards or even think that word on a day-to-day basis, but I often feel that way, like I’m unable to affect change in my life, unable to move forward, unable to heal.

Just bringing my attention to this fact has made me realize that it’s not true. Like, I can look at my life and list dozens of places and situations in which I’m able to get things done, make progress, be effective. And yet still that feeling is there. I guess I get hung up on the things that aren’t happening yet, the things that aren’t healing. I start comparing myself, giving all the praise I have away to others and saving little for myself. This is something I intend to work on, gently if possible. I just looked up “weak” on Google, and whereas the first definitions is “lacking physical strength and energy,” the second is “easily damaged.” Synonyms are frail, feeble, delicate, fragile. This is good information to have, since I don’t feel THAT way at all. Even when my energy is low and things aren’t happening as I’d like them to, I don’t feel that kind of weak. Rather, I know there’s a part of me that’s eternally strong. That’s the part of me I want to spend more time with, the part that’s not only confident, but also comfortable and proud, simply happy to be alive, sure that it can weather any storm.