Healing Requires Community

I had surgery a month ago to remove a fibroid and the recovery process thus far has tested me physically, mentally and emotionally. As a single woman, who lives alone, the first thing my doctor told me when I agreed to do the surgery was “Do not think to drive yourself!” I had been seeing her for years, and I had come to every appointment alone. She knew that if she had not said this, more than likely I would have driven myself to the hospital.

I say this because I pride myself on being self-sufficient. I hate asking for help, because life to this point has preconditioned me on some level to expect disappointment from people, even if they are family.

Additionally I hate being made to feel as if I am begging or that I am now forever beholden to someone because they assisted me. I pride myself on being strong enough to lift a 50 pound suitcase with ease, put pressure in and change a tyre, check the oil levels in my car and put together furniture. I especially despise doing the latter but I have two toolkits and my friends often joke that I am one of the most prepared people they know.

Beyond my single status and the rocky relationship with my family aside, I have always considered myself somewhat of a loner. It is not an inaccurate statement that my longest and most successful relationship to date has been with the persons who are in my primary football chat. A group of 8 men and two women, including myself who talk everything from sport to technology, pop culture and life. On most days they are the only persons I speak to outside of work. They were the first people I told about my diagnosis.

I opted for the least invasive procedure, with an estimated two week recovery time and told myself that I was young, in good health and that nothing could possibly go wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew I would need community. My cousin who is more of a little brother, volunteered to take a week off from work to stay with me, and I arranged with two girlfriends for a ride to the hospital and moral support to calm my nerves while I waited respectively. I thought after that first week, I would be well on my way to recovery, and that I would be able to do most things on my own.

As such, I was not mentally prepared for the post op complications that arose and how much I would need to lean into the people I consider part of my community in order to keep healing. When I woke up after surgery with two laparoscopic incisions in my abdomen, I realised that I couldn’t lift myself out of bed without first turning to my side. My doctor said I shouldn’t lift anything over 15lbs but frankly my own body felt heavy and I tired easily. I also had to get used to walking at the speed of a turtle because sudden movements were quite painful. One of my toxic traits is certainly that I believe in doing everything with a sense of purpose. Long drives and aimless walks are not things I find remotely relaxing.

Over the past 30 days not only have I had to learn to ask for help; I have also had to release my innate need to control how everything is done. Laundry, dishes, cleaning. It didn’t make sense to complain how it was done because the reality was I couldn’t do it for myself. That said, I am grateful for the friends who understood the assignment and stepped up with statements like, “I’m late to the party but how I can I help,” or showed up just to lime because they knew I was going “stir crazy,” and constantly checked in to see how I was doing mentally.

Beyond the physical toll that surgery takes, not being able to exercise daily as I am used to, took a mental toll. Lifting weights has always been therapeutic to me and I did not want to lose the gains that I had worked hard for. The reality however was that every time I tried to push myself to do more around the house, to get back to my self-sufficient self, I suffered a setback. From infections to inflammation my body has been putting me through it as if to signal that I NEEDED to rest.

Rest isn’t something that we are conditioned to believe in because modern society praises the “grind.” It’s how we secure the bag to live our best lives, and because we spend most of our time at work, a large part of our identity is wrapped up in what we do for a living.

My team at work is short staffed and when my sick leave was extended I felt like I was leaving my co-workers in the lurch. I felt guilty about being gone for so long, but the reality is that the team was short-staffed before I went on leave. The ugly reality of capitalism is that corporations and businesses try to get maximum output from the least amount of people, but humans are not robots. We break down and burn out physically and emotionally without sufficient time to recover and rest is crucial to recovery.

I do not think that any business is truly set up to care about its people. It cares about the services you can provide, and as a friend rightfully reminded me “sis they will find another you…but if you lose yourself there is no other you.” Rest may not come naturally to me but I am embracing the time I now have to sleep a little later, move a lot slower and to give myself a break from the stress of 9-12 hour days.

Capitalism may be against community, but it is on each of us to make time to nurture ourselves, the people in our community and give ourselves ample time to rest and recover. Good health requires it and the reality is work doesn’t die, people do.