Why You Shouldn't Skip Sick Days
I’m interrupting our regular Friday morning email schedule and taking a sick day today. Here’s why ⤵
I came down with something pretty gnarly just a few days after arriving home from my Amsterdam trip. It felt like the flu, but I soldiered on. I didn’t want to take time away from real life to get better — there was too much to catch up on, too much to do.
And life kept coming at me. More fun stuff to do with the kiddos. New summer schedules and routines. A series of big clean-outs for our cluttered house. New opportunities. More to-dos. More phone calls. And a few big family decisions, too.
So.
Much.
I bet you can relate.
As a result, I’ve been coughing for almost three weeks now, my body feels achy, and my brain is foggy. My words come out jumbled sometimes. I’m getting short-tempered. I’m tired. And these quotes from this week’s Authenticity Calendar almost brought me to tears⤵
“If your compassion does not include yourself,
it is incomplete.”
~ Jack Kornfield
“Sometimes it takes a sense of dissonance, disconnect, or tension for us to realize what our real values are.
This feeling, although unsettling, is a gift—a call to realign our lives with our hearts.”
~Erica Layne
So today, I’m taking a sick day — sipping my coffee slowly this morning with this message to you and then slowly pedaling my bike to a quiet spot where I can read my favorite summer book and just breathe. I’m going to stay there as long as I want. My emails will keep piling up. I won’t be answering my phone or putting together content for anything.
I’ll just be healing.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I took a whole day away for myself. It’s been too long (and not just because I’m self-employed, which means sick days can cost my family real money). It just always seems selfish somehow. But I’m starting to think that’s not true.
I know I’m not alone — my guess is most people these days, especially women (especially those of us who are stay-at-home women) try to soldier on when we know we need rest, healing, or time away. Anne Morrow Lindbergh recognized this trend for women back in the 1950s⤵
“Every paid worker, no matter where in the economic scale, expects a day off a week and a vacation a year. By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class. They rarely even complain of their lack, apparently not considering occasional time to themselves as a justifiable need.”
That’s why I’m sharing this with you today — just in case you find yourself in need of a day to heal soon, too. Call it a sick day, a mental health day, or time off for good behavior, whatever you like. Whenever you need it, I hope you can take it.