An Antidote to Exhaustion

Tomorrow is my birthday! Please enjoy this free Corona Cafe newsletter as a birthday gift from me. If this email brightens your day and you aren’t already a subscriber, you can sign up below. Can’t afford $7/month right now? Send me an email to let me know that you’re a long-hauler in need of a free subscription, and I’ll be happy to add you to our community!

Several mornings this past week, I woke up feeling utterly burned out. Burned out on being sick. Burned out on being a sick mother. And really burned out on being a sick mother trying to homeschool and parent in the middle of a pandemic and the aftermath of divorce while having my period. It was too much. My five-year-old smells burnout in the way that bees smell fear, and he likes to greet it by crashing full-force against every rule, limitation, and boundary. (And also against his brothers’ unsuspecting bodies.) I crave rest on days like this, but rest is elusive. As soon as I sit down, someone needs me again.

Today, I happened upon an article written by Irish poet David Whyte, in which he recounts a time in his life when he was feeling exhausted and burned out.

He brought this simple plea to his friend, Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast: “Tell me about exhaustion.”

Steindl-Rast’s answer could have been written for me: “You know, the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest. . . . The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness.”

We long-haulers do need rest. Of course we need rest. Rest gives our body time and energy that can be used toward healing. But it wasn’t a deficit of rest that exhausted me most this past week. It was my own resistance to my day-to-day experience. It was my inner voice, grumbling, “This again?” It wasn’t parenting that was exhausting me. It was half-hearted parenting.

Half-hearted anything is draining.

So, what does wholeheartedness look like? For me, wholehearted parenting is all about trying to connect with my kids rather than control them. The best moments of my burned-out days were the moments when I briefly stopped resisting and began connecting. They were the moments in which I was snuggled up with my five-year-old, reading all 350 pages of “George and Martha.” They were the moments spent peeling carrots with my eleven-year-old and following my nine-year-old on a guided tour of the ‘roads’ he mowed across our lawn. They were the moments in which I was actually present—the moments to which I was alive.

It isn’t parenting while sick in a pandemic that exhausts me most. It’s doing this while wishing I was doing something else that fans the flames of burnout. Of course, this isn’t unique to being a parent. When I pause to reflect, I realize that my half-hearted parenting days tend to be days in which I’m half-hearted at everything else, too. I take a shower but don’t actually feel the water. I brush my teeth without noticing the sensations. I climb into bed without any awareness of the texture of the sheets.

If half-heartedness drains us and whole-heartedness fills us up, then perhaps the quickest and surest antidote to emotional exhaustion is one simple moment of uncomplicated presence. Take a shower, and feel the water. Brush your teeth, and notice the sensations. Climb into bed, aware of the texture of the sheets. Feel the movement of your eyes as you read these words. Notice the brush of air against your skin. Feel the chair you’re sitting in.

Presence wakes us out of half-heartedness and into wholeness. We don’t have to wait until we are healthy or the pandemic has ended to be whole. We don’t have to wait for our cells to heal, our paychecks to grow, or an election to go our way. Wholehearted living is possible right here, right now.

What does wholeheartedness look like for you today?