Check In With Yourself

This past summer, I summited K2. Somewhere along the climb, I got sick with anthrax. Yes, anthrax – you might remember it from right after 9/11 when terrorists sent anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. mail and five people died. The bacteria wreaked havoc on my body, and my doctors had no choice but to put me on the strongest antibiotic out there (which unfortunately kills off the good bacteria too). After being the healthiest I had ever been in my life while training for K2, suddenly I was back to square one. The craziest thing was that I looked pretty much fine from the outside. It wasn’t like I had broken an arm or developed a flesh eating bacteria. Other people couldn’t tell how depleted my body was and how much I had to rebuild. To them, it seemed like I should have been at peak health and happiness after successfully summiting the world’s second tallest mountain.

This realization that how we are perceived by the outside world is not always (or perhaps even usually) an indicator of how we are doing inside is similar to how this week’s podcast guest felt during a turning point in her life. When Michelle Williams (yes, that Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child fame – I had to pinch myself during our conversation) began speaking out about her challenge with depression, those around her couldn’t understand it. All the world saw when looking at her was her amazing life. They didn’t understand how she could possibly be depressed. After all, she had sung alongside Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland. She had money, opportunities galore, and a powerful platform. But when her engagement ended in 2018, she recognized that if she didn’t take a break, life was going to take it for her. She needed to do something to come back to herself and remember that she was the author of her own story.

I firmly believe that breaks are a critical part of life. But “break” can mean different things. There is the definition that implies destruction, and there is the one that means rest and recovery. Either you’re proactive enough to take your own break, or life will force you into it. When I had my car accident in 2018, it was life’s way of forcing me to slow down and reevaluate how I was living and where I was headed.

Try it yourself:

Step away and do something just for you. Have kids? Hire a babysitter and get out of the house at whatever cadence is realistic for your situation. Trust me, your family will respect you for taking the time to take care of yourself, and you’ll be a better parent for having done it.

Find something that reignites a childhood joy. For example, Michelle loves taking her car to the car wash. She finds something very restorative in watching the soap suds transform into a blanket of bubbles that cascade down her vehicle. Taking a break doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Just find something that makes you feel like a carefree kid again.
Prioritize doing something that will avoid drama for you in the future. Boring as it might sound, my version of self care sometimes involves sorting through our family finances. Think about it like this: imagine you’re an air traffic controller and have planes constantly circling above you as they wait for direction. You’re fine when you can land each of them at regular intervals. But when the planes start piling up, delays happen, passengers miss their connections, and stress builds. If your finances are a plane that you’ve let hover a bit too long, just land the thing. It’ll give you bandwidth to handle all the rest of the planes on your schedule.
When you’re in the middle of a break, don’t shame yourself for doing it. Avoid the temptation to think about all the “more productive” things you could be doing with that amount of time. Break hard, and own the break. Commit to being present in the moment.