When You Can't Power Through

Before launching the SheHive, I worked full-time while volunteering 20+ hours a week on Mayor Duggan’s first Mayoral campaign while also going to grad school. I’m accustomed to working long hours and derive a good deal of personal satisfaction from working hard on causes that truly matter to me.

I swore to myself I would take time off after finishing grad school to rest. It lasted all of a month or two before I quit my job and launched both a consulting practice and the SheHive. Once the SheHive felt established enough, I returned to work and, for the past nine months, I’ve consulted three days a week for a large automotive while also continuing my work at the SheHive. In January I intentionally started blocking out full days on my calendar every week for self-care.

Sometimes I even honored them.

And then March rolled around and I woke up one morning feeling like I was hit by a brick wall. I couldn’t even fake my way through a day. I wanted to sleep. And sleep some more. And then sleep some more. Self-care flew out the window as I merely tried to survive. My brain’s been foggy. I cry at the drop of the hat. I found myself forgetting small details - and then big ones.

I tried to start my car with my Roku remote yesterday.

Consensus is that it’s probably hormonal (Hello, menopause?) and my doctor and I have agreed on a course of treatment that is smart and safe and is going to get the job done - though not nearly immediately enough for my liking. What the doctor can’t prescribe, however, is coming to terms with my personal belief that, no matter what, I can just “power through.”

I can’t power through. My body and, more frustrating, my brain just won’t let me.

Hell, some days I have to remind myself to put on pants before leaving the house.

So I’ve had to do something I’ve never had to do - consistently reach out for help. Little by little I’ve reached out to members of my circle and asked them to take on increasing responsibility at the SheHive so it could continue to thrive while I ticked off one item on my giant to-do list at a time instead of all of them.

And you know what happened? They did so - and they did so willingly. In fact, not only did they take on more, they started dreaming up ways to help before I even asked. It’s been a glorious lesson in friendship and kinship and the power of a tribe. I don’t have to go it alone.

None of us do.

Asking for help is scary. Admitting you can’t do it all is scary. But scarier yet is running yourself into the ground when there are people all around you ready and able to help you if you will just let them.

Let them, lovely. None of us were put on this planet to go it alone.

​With much love and gratitude,