There is a lot going on in the world right now. Even locally, you can almost feel the heaviness in the air some days. It is so easy to turn on the TV, log on to social media, or even hear strangers at the grocery store talking about something to make you nervous, scared, or unprepared to face the day. We have survived a lot over the past two and a half years.
We have loved hard, experienced loss, and overcome illness, among so many other things.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I respond to trauma by overloading myself with information on a million topics so that I don’t find myself caught off guard in the near future. But when I am calm and think that all the way through, I ask myself how exhausting is that? I cannot possibly know everything there is to know about everything in a short time. I’m not that powerful. So then, after burning myself out on learning, I do nothing productive besides things that are required of me daily for a couple of weeks. I really hope I am not alone in this.
There are times when we are just stressed. We are busy women with full, constantly spinning plates. But when you get to the point of burnout, you have to take a break. I am talking to myself, too. It is okay to not know the bad news of the day as soon as we open our eyes. It is okay not to respond to people online who have committed to misunderstanding anything you say. It is okay to wait to share your thoughts on things until you are fully ready to speak about them. It is okay to take some time for quiet and stillness after experiencing something extremely hard.
Take. A. Break.
The people who know you and love you will be there with open arms when you are ready to come back to the surface. If your friends insist on being there in the trenches with you (SO grateful for friends like these), but you don’t really want to talk or hang out, try to be open to them leaving notes or sweet gifts at your door or something like that, just because they were thinking of you.
We really are living in uncertain times. But you were not built to handle the weight of every little bit of the world’s burdens. Take a break as you need it.
