The Trip That Reminded Me I'm Not Immune to My Own Advice
The Trip That Reminded Me I'm Not Immune to My Own Advice
I have spent the last three weeks quietly away from your inbox, and I want to tell you why.
In mid-April I headed to Florida with my daughter Kenzie. She competed in a cheerleading competition in Tampa, and then we drove to Orlando to watch Opal (our billet) compete as well. We spent a day at Universal Studios, cheered through two more days of competition, and squeezed in two days poolside. It was full, it was fun, and it was exactly the kind of trip that fills your heart.
This wasn't just any trip either. It was the highlight of our entire cheer season. Our gym had never sent a team to Youth Summit before. The girls had to earn a bid earlier in the season just to qualify, and the whole year had been building toward this moment. There was no version of this trip where I wasn't getting on that plane.
There is just one problem.
I was sick the day before we left.
Not dramatically sick. My nose was running like a tap. That low-level heaviness had settled in that tells you your body is working on something it hasn't fully shared with you yet. I remember standing there genuinely wondering what I was going to do — carry a full box of Kleenex onto the plane? The other passengers would have loved that.
So I did what I suspect you might have done too.
I packed the DayQuil and NyQuil, tried to dry things up, and I pretended I wasn't sick.
I managed my symptoms quietly. I kept moving, kept showing up, kept doing all the things because we had pre-booked plans, people counting on me, and honestly because stopping didn't feel like an option. The heat was getting to me. The medication was making me feel dopey and disconnected. And I just kept going.
At the hotel I slept on the couch so I wouldn't get Kenzie sick. Because even when I was running on empty, that instinct to protect her was louder than anything else.
I came home and booked a doctor's appointment, half expecting to hear post nasal drip or laryngitis. Something I could brush off and move on from. Something minor that explained the cough and the fatigue and the general feeling that I had been hit by a slow-moving truck.
Pneumonia.
Not a cold. Not travel fatigue. Pneumonia. The kind that has had me genuinely short of breath this week, sitting on the couch, trying very hard not to reorganise my kitchen drawers just because they're bothering me from across the room.
Here is what makes this worth sharing with you.
I have spent thirteen years doing this work. I have coached women through burnout, through stress cycles, through the pattern of putting everyone else first until their body forces them to stop. I understand the nervous system. I understand what chronic overdoing costs us. I teach this.
And I still did it.
Not because I don't know better. But because old patterns have long roots. And because the circumstances felt special enough to justify pushing through. A cheerleading competition our gym had never been to before. A trip the whole season had been building toward. People I didn't want to let down.
The circumstances always feel special. That's the part worth sitting with.
Getting good at something doesn't mean you've outgrown the pattern completely. It means you've built enough awareness to catch it, most of the time. And sometimes, in the middle of heat and DayQuil and a packed itinerary, the awareness slips. And your body picks up the tab.
This week I am resting. Actually resting. Not scrolling-on-the-couch resting. Honouring what my body is asking for, even when every part of me wants to be productive.
And I am letting that be enough.
So here's the question I want to leave you with.
Where in your life are you pretending you're fine?
Not the dramatic version, not the obvious burnout or the crisis moment. The quieter version. The runny nose you're ignoring. The exhaustion you're pushing through because the timing isn't convenient. The signal your body has been sending that you keep promising to address later.
Later has a way of turning into pneumonia.
You don't have to wait until your body forces you to stop. That's actually the whole point of the work I do,
helping women notice the patterns before they reach that point, not after.
If stress has been quietly running in the background and you're ready to start paying attention to it, the 5-Day Stress Reset is a good place to start. It's free, it's practical, and it's built for women who don't have time for complicated.
