This week I continued to train for the Camino. With my date for leaving now three months away, I need to be more focused and spend longer with my feet in my boots. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with how to prepare and do the other things in my life. But then I feel grateful that I’m able now to physically walk for hours; a year ago, that wasn’t the case.

Last year, in mid-April I got a virus, followed by another that then became a bacterial infection. I was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia; I have never been so acutely ill. Before getting sick, I was in the best shape I’d been in, walking, dancing, and doing aerobic exercises regularly.

Through the haze of a three-day hospitalization, I came to appreciate how an illness that impacts your breathing impacts everything. I wrote about it in a blog post Illness: The Great Teacher:

“Talking to my doctor about how long it would take to get back to my baseline, I saw how this would be a slow healing. There would be no immediate return to my usual life, as there had been in the past. This time, I had to slowly re-approach my life and judge more closely how much energy each activity required.”

During the days after I was discharged, while I rested and recovered at home, I thought about all the ways I hadn’t been aware of how I expend my energy. How much effort was involved in a phone call, a text, a visit, cooking a meal? How had I worn myself down before I got sick by trying to push too hard in my home–to get my new townhouse like I wanted, including planting my first patio garden? When I looked closely at all that I’d been doing, I saw–in retrospect, how I’d been careless with my energy as if I had an unlimited supply.

Slowly, I regained my strength and by a couple of months later I was able to walk without giving out of breath. At the same time, I changed some of my practices: decreasing the number of times I danced each week, choosing one activity instead of several on the weekend, and switching some in-person visits to phone call visits. I let my family and friends know I’d realized I had to rest more–and the wake-up call of having pneumonia helped me to set that boundary.

Last May, on the day I was admitted to the hospital was the day of our Smith Family Reunion. We have that gathering of Mama’s family once a year and I was looking forward to seeing my two aunts and lots of cousins. I was sad that I’d missed seeing them–the largest number that had gathered in years. I assumed that this year I’d be able to make up for it—to some degree.

Yesterday, we had our reunion. There were fewer family members able to attend. One of my two aunts died last fall, and cousins were either traveling or having other activities. A male cousin, whom I used to refer to as my “baby cousin,” since I helped take care of him when he was young, told me he’d been diagnosed with dementia. How sad it made me to look at his kind and gentle face and see what loomed. Life had changed in that two years since I was with my family. It made me realize how important it is to be there.

Picture of early days of family reunions at Grandma Smith’s house near Lillington, N.C.

I close this post, because my time today is limited and I have people I need to spend it with. I’m doing a better job than I was a year ago of setting priorities and putting boundaries on what I promise. Hopefully you’re finding a way to take care of yourself, too. We all have limited time and energy and we deserve to take good care of these limited resources.

Best to you,

Connie