Don’t Hit My Wall
I’ve hit the wall a few times in my life, I think most of us have. But the wall I don’t want you to hit is the disease wall. Health cannot be underestimated in its importance. Without it we struggle to work, relate, parent, travel, engage with projects, with life, with each other and even with ourselves. Ill-health transports us into an alternate reality of surviving, struggle and pain and it is frightening and lonely. My 20 year journey with my health has seen me live a fraction of the life I would otherwise have been able to and would have wanted to live. Chronic fatigue meant I was unable to enjoy my kids to the fullest, or pursue other personal, professional and travel dreams. Pulmonary TB saw me deathly ill at the young and tender age of 28; an age that should have been defined by vitality and strength and energy. I have spent 20 years trying to dial back an illness position and step into a wellness position. Through my model of self-leadership including a mindset of radical personal responsibility, I finally, in my 40’s, have done so.
How did I hit this wall I hear you ask? At the time of my TB diagnoses my Pulmonologist told me I fit his majority patient profile of TB – I was staggered. Me? I knew TB to be an opportunistic infection preying on sickly people usually in poverty and likely living with HIV/AIDS. This was not the only case so please understand this key learning whether you are in this position yourself or have staff in this position: His profile of TB patients was working mothers in their later twenties or thirties who were literally burnt out, leading to immune suppression and easy susceptibility. Added to this, women are generally more relational humans and are likely more exposed to others with TB. I am convinced I contracted it on a flight back from a business trip where I was seated next to a man with a vicious cough and because I was so run down, stressed and exhausted my immune system was wide open for this bacterial onslaught. I had also recently become a mom, and was in the height of that rollercoaster ride.
Pregnancy is an hormonal upheaval and mine unearthed, as is extremely common, a thyroid autoimmune disorder called Hashimotos. Pregnancy is under-appreciated for its impact on women, not only hormonally but also in terms of broken sleep, the emotional weight that a mother carries and the very real task of physically feeding a baby.
Where I take so much responsibility and have worked on deeply forgiving myself and learning from it is that I was doing anything but practicing radical personal responsibility or self-leadership. Before falling pregnant I was partying as hard as I was working. I was drinking and smoking and taking a mild-at-most interest in my nutrition. I was working in a toxic environment for a narcissistic boss but because I was climbing so quickly towards directorship I stayed and worked even harder to please and impress her. When I finally came to see this toxicity I left that business and three months after my child was born I opened my own BEE consulting firm. Shortly thereafter I set up a BEE verification agency and became the second Durban agency to be accredited and I was elected to sit on the first industry body board of directors, all the while new parenting. By the time my child was one and my business still a fledgling but flying, I was diagnosed with pneumonia, then TB and this preceded a 20 year journey with chronic fatigue, multiple autoimmune diseases and a hugely compromised quality of life. My perfect storm was pregnancy, parenting exhaustion, a lack of self care and work demands.
I have significantly pulled back my health state and it’s taken years of loss, tough decisions and discipline and I don’t want the illness, or the excruciatingly hard work for you. What I have learnt along the way is to deeply honour and listen to my body. I have lost attachment to the glory of overworking, overscheduling and overachieving and I have reframed balance as success. I take so much joy and pleasure in hyper-nourishing my body with simple, whole foods. Into my 40’s I stopped drinking alcohol as my body simply told me it didn’t want it anymore. I listened. I work on a mind, body, heart and spirit model whereby each of those dimensions of me get some attention, even if it is momentary, daily. I practice and teach wellbeing at work, self-leadership as a model of radical personal responsibility and self care, and I focus a lot of my work in the realm of stress, overwhelm and burnout using the lens of the nervous system. My work is trauma-informed, empowering and transformational and I work in the places I know personally and professionally. I want a world of wholeness and wellness. I help people people better. I am Colleen Wilson, Humannavigator.
