Fortified By Books - #FitReaders Check-In

This check-in is for June 15th – 21st.
This past week has felt like being stuck in the middle of a whirlwind. It wasn’t tornado-level chaos, but it was definitely stressful, difficult, and exhausting. My boyfriend was out of town, one of the short-term medications I was on to help get my nerve pain under control was causing a bunch of unpleasant side effects, and one of my two cats got sick with some kind of stomach thing.
One of the biggest things that helped me get through the week was breathing exercises. I still felt on edge and had all of my usual stress responses, but making myself stop periodically to breathe deeply for a few moments kept me from going over that edge into a breakdown. My body is still feeling some side effects from the medication (feeling tense, jumpy, and agitated regardless of what’s going on), but the deliberate, slow breathing is letting my body know that I am not in fact being chased by a wild animal.
The other thing that helped a lot was the decision to go to a day-long meditation retreat yesterday, even though I thought to myself that I couldn’t possibly take the time to do that with so many other things that needed doing. When I realized I was trying to talk myself out of going to the retreat because of busyness, I knew, barring any real emergency, I HAD to go to the retreat.

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#FitReaders Check-In