None of This Can Be Rushed

I’m 53 days into my experience with the novel coronavirus. This is the longest stretch of time that I have ever been sick. Usually, when I contract a viral illness, I recover in a traditional amount of time and it is a linear process. Well, the coronavirus came in like a wrecking ball and changed all of that.

I don’t meet any of the criteria for a severe case of Covid-19. That doesn’t seem to matter. The coronavirus doesn’t care that I have no pre-existing conditions. It doesn’t care that I’m a lifelong non-smoker. It doesn’t care about how much yoga I practice or how dedicated I am to my own health and wellness. That was my first valuable lesson.

The next lesson that I learned was even harder. My body simply could not be rushed. When I contracted the coronavirus, I expected to be on the road to recovery within a few weeks. However, life had other plans.

My unrealistic expectations didn’t appear out of thin air. They were born out of the dangerous way that society treats us when we are sick, especially in the United States. The truth is, we can’t handle being sick. We can’t handle anyone else being sick. We barely pay our workers (if at all) when they get sick. I know this all too well since I am an entrepreneur. I have gone without sick pay for the last seven years. If I get sick, I don’t get paid. The fear of what I would do if I ended up with a prolonged illness has led to many sleepless nights. My healthcare plan is generally to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Note: That is not a real plan. Especially in a pandemic.

So, my biggest fear became a reality and that has inspired me to speak out. We cannot live in fear of being bankrupted by our own illnesses. We cannot go to work against the better judgement of our bodies. This has to end.

The coronavirus tore it all down for us. This is a truly critical moment in our collective consciousness. However, if we rush to resume all of our status quo systems and behaviors, I fear that we will miss a real opportunity for change.

Distance truly does inspire perspective. A few weeks ago, I decided that if I really wanted to heal from the coronavirus, I needed to take a step back from everything. So, I slowed myself way down. I stopped checking the news. I refrained from texting daily symptom updates to my friends. I took a formal break from work and I let my body dictate when I returned. I stopped comparing, pathologizing and judging my experience. I reassured myself that there was nothing inherently wrong with my recovery process. I just let myself heal. And then, something miraculous happened: I started to get better.

I know that we all want to skip to the part where this is over. We want the virus to be mild and to last for two weeks. We want the world to go back to the way it was. We want to bypass the general discomfort of this era. We want all of this to have been a nightmare.

I come bearing an important message: None of this can be rushed.