Having It All - What is Work-Life Balance?

My 40th birthday is in 15 days. Birthdays are a strange opportunity to contemplate life and to reflect on our past. This year, as we approach the 2 year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic I wonder, what will the next 40 years bring? It is only recently that I have come to embrace life as a process, one in which I have the privilege to step back and reflect on all that I have or have not done up to this point. 

For many years I was consumed by a need to achieve, to feel like I was accomplishing something...even when I did not know what that thing was. Very recently I found myself being disillusioned with those things that seem to drive the world as we know it: money, fame, and power. Something I began to connect with is this notion of a midlife crisis, this realization that quite likely at least half of my life is now over. How does one deal with that? That moment when you realize that you might be on the downhill slope after working so hard to climb up the hill. I was faced with the stark realization that I was so invested in the outcome that I had lost sight of the importance of the journey. Embracing each day as beautiful and wondering is sometimes a hard ask when every day kind of seems the same with the limitations of the pandemic. So how do I trudge through that? 

 Changing Perspectives 

More than ever I can see that my decisions profoundly impact my children's lives. This may be the greatest gift of the pandemic. I have come to understand that my actions and words are so important in teaching my children how to be in this life. And, this is more than simply walking the walk, this means me as a parent, and as a person embodying the understanding that if I do not talk care of myself, then I am not able to provide the best care to those I am caring for. What a realization for a parent, and a nurse. I think that my experience forced me to reflect on my own understanding of my work-life balance, my health, my mental health, mental health nursing, and nursing in general. 

 So What Does This All Mean? 

I think that the only way that we can take care of other people is to have compassion and care for ourselves. The concept of self-care percolated up once again most recently in my career as I joined a team working on a new program. We had a talk about trauma in health care workers where the facilitator really challenged us on our application of self-care. She begged the question, were we being accountable to ourselves? Or was it again, simply lip service. 

 Love, 

 Michelle D.