Tender

 Have you ever noticed a tenderness in your body? There are different kinds of tender ~ physically tender ~ when you are unwell or injured and your body aches. There is also an emotional kind of tenderness that comes sometimes very strongly but I think is always present and in different forms.

The last few months have been a time of testing for my mental health. I have had very little sleep and little ones and big ones that were so sick and needed my time and attention day and night for weeks and weeks. I pushed through day after day literally tending fevered brows and soothing children who cried and moaned endlessly. The rain poured down and when one sickness would end another one would begin. I had moments of panic and moments of despair as there was no let up, and it felt like this was more than I could bear. During this time I didn't have anyone to help or lift the load of this. I felt very alone. 

Then Valentines day came and the night before I managed to write my Valentines to my children and husband which felt like a big accomplishment. I managed a grocery shop where I could buy some chocolate that I use every year to decorate the table. That night was one of the hardest. I did not get sleep all night. When my husband got up in the morning I asked him to stay with the sick ones so I could sleep for two hours. After that time I got up and made a special breakfast. I had decorated the table. I gave literally everything I had to give to my family in that moment. I was dizzy and undone and just so beyond tired as that was the second night in a row of only two hours of sleep. Everyone ate and then left the table. No one thought to clear their places or even to really thank me. I asked my husband to get everyone to please clean up so I could rest for a while. When I woke up later the food was still out and the dishes undone. I angrily asked my husband why things were not cleaned up and that unleashed a diluge of verbal unkindness to me from him. I was told I was many negative things. I felt physically punched over and over even though I wasn't. I was in the wrong as well I know. However I was so weak in that moment and I had given literally everything I had. I had this realization yet again, yet again, how little value I have here. Walking around day after day knowing you don't have much value is exhausting. 

Since then I have been feeling tender. People are still sick. I am still caretaking. Through these last months I have been so thankful to not get sick but I am sick now. I ache everywhere and it echoes how I feel emotionally. Today my sweet little one turns seven and I am valiantly doing all I can to celebrate her. This is her first day in over a month she feels better. What a gift.

What do I do when I feel this tender? There is not a lot of space to do much. I need to work on my mindset and attitude. I hope to be able to physically tend to myself when people are less sick. I hope to have a counselling session. Writing this is, for me, a way to acknowledge that I in no way deserved to be treated the way that I was on Valentine's day and that it's okay that the hurt lingers. Also, I need to process the feelings and let them go. Everyone has their reasons they respond the way they do and having the capacity to see other perspectives is a gift as well. I understand the circumstances in it all. I just wish that there could have been such a different outcome to the day. The hurt will be there for a long time. I was so vulnerable, so weak, and I just needed some help and some kindness. 

I wanted to say that this happens to everyone at different points. We are all worthy of love and care and of being valued. In our most vulnerable moments is when people can hurt us the most. It is the most beautiful thing when we are vulnerable and honoured but the most ugly when we are vulnerable and not.

May you, as you enter the month of March, go forward in your tenderness, in your givingness, in your vulnerability, and may you feel loved and seen and held. 

You are worthy of this, 

xo