Two entire weeks into January and I haven’t written a word.

I don’t have to beat myself up about it. Things ebb and flow. I know that I will return to the words when they are ready to come.

When I try to force things, or make myself feel bad about them, everything just gets harder. It has taken me a long, long time to cultivate the ability to be gentle with my own self. To understand that I can’t give 100% of everything, every day. To be able to slow down and rest when my body, mind and soul are asking for a break.

Today, my business partner and I re-remembered that things always feel hard and slow in January. It’s supposed to be this way. It’s helpful to have lovely people around you who help to remind you that there is nothing wrong with you. It’s just January.

Soon, the days will start getting longer, and the sun will shine a little brighter.

Things wont feel so sharp.

I’m on day 10 of what I can only assume was the flu. Sore throat, congestion, dry cough, fever. I’m not really a tester - knowing what I have doesn’t change the way that I treat it. Mostly, I rest. Mostly, I drink lots of fluids. I take lots of hot baths, and I whine. I whine a lot.

And I tell myself over and over that sickness is a sign that my body needs me to slow down, and I don’t recover faster by trying to pretend that I’m not sick, to push through, or to wear myself out.

I don’t get sick very often, but when I do - I can’t help but feel massively sorry for myself. I don’t want to! I want to be grateful that I don’t get sick very often. I sort of pendulate between being in agony and upset that I am sick, and being in a state of full surrender. “I am sick right now, and that is okay.”

It’s so hard to be okay where we are, when that place is uncomfortable. It’s hard to be unwell, and feeling yucky in so many ways, and not want it to just be over.

The thing is, wanting it to be over or pretending that it isn’t happening doesn’t make it any better. It doesn’t make it shorter, and it sure doesn’t make it more comfortable. It just adds a layer of suffering to the discomfort.

The sickness is inevitable. I haven’t yet seen or heard of a way that truly works to keep all illness at bay. Even the act of trying to avoid illness can be a type of illness. So, when sick, it makes the most sense to me to just BE sick.

I also find it to be an interesting thought exercise - to think about all of the theories around illness and how it spreads. As far as I know (which is not exhaustive, but I’m quite bright, and spent a lot of time looking into things, just because I like to know) - as far as I know, all of the theories of the spread of illness are just that - theories. None of them have been proven. The current prevailing model is germ theory, but it doesn’t hold up in all situations, and doesn’t take into account many factors that seem to affect whether or not a given person gets sick, how sick they get, and how long they stay sick.

There is also the terrain theory, which I think makes a lot of sense as well. It’s less about the pathogens in the air, and more about the vulnerability of the ‘host’.

I also think about energetic illness, and the fact that everything has a frequency - and the way that those frequencies work is still quite a mystery. We don’t understand all of it. All of the most ancient medical techniques - Ayurveda and acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, even homeopathy count on some form of energy and flow to explain wellness/illness.

I’ve also been interested in the German New Medicine theories, and how they look at symptoms and illness completely differently than any other modality that I’ve come across.

I don’t know which one is correct. I don’t know if it’s possible that all of them are a little correct? Or that maybe none of them are completely correct? I think it’s possible that different illnesses have different factors of modality, and that it isn’t something we are really meant to understand.

Generally, that was a very long-winded way of saying: I think we are meant to get sick. And I think we are meant to get well again, mostly. I think, when we are sick, the best thing we can do is be sick.

And when we are well? All we can do is be full of gratitude that we are not sick.

PS - just for the record, I’m not saying that I’m right… I’m just saying that this is how I do it. I come in peace. <3