To Strive. Or Not. An Existential Dilemma

I haven't posted much since the end of February. This has been an emotionally grueling year and I find myself questioning some fundamental attitudes towards work, business, and self.

In January, my mother's accelerating dementia led her assisted living facility to suggest we bring in hospice for a consultation. We did and they agreed Mom was a candidate.

Dementia has a perverse "gift": you get lots of time to anticipate decline and departure. I'd been anticipating her death for many months before that but the decision to join with hospice still swept my legs out from under me emotionally. I was a mess for a while.

I had a long-planned month-long trip to Australia set for mid-March. My sisters and I agreed that I should go. We had no idea how Mom's decline was going to actually progress (hint: it's never as linear as you discover you've secretly expected).

When I arrived in Australia in mid-March I found myself unwilling to stay connected to my professional life. I checked in with my sisters regularly and otherwise simply enjoyed myself. I visited friends and places I had loved while I lived there. Periodically I would stop and say to myself "I feel...happy. Just....happy." I realized I hadn't felt that for a long time.

On April 17, 2 days before I returned to DC, my mother died. Thanks be to God that she was finally liberated from a body that had ceased to be able to truly support her. I wish she'd been liberated sooner.

Again, long-anticipated but it still knocked me for a loop. I briefly considered seeing clients the next week but everyone told me that was a crazy idea so I closed my practice for a week. My primary experience of that week and her funeral was of fatigue and a marked mental slowness/fogginess.

I'm not so much missing my mom right now as finally raising my head from 20 years of increasing responsibility, with my sisters, for my parents' life and health. I find myself only just now realizing how much of myself that took and wondering what I do now.

But, of course, I re-opened my practice this week. Gotta work! Blessedly, the schedule was light because I'm still plagued by fatigue and mental swiss-cheese-y-ness.

Today I had what I consider an optimal schedule -- 4 hours of appointments, reasonably spaced. And yet, by the end of the day, I was drained and had a thumb that throbbed with pain (as in "can't hold a glass or grip a toothbrush" pain). That's extremely rare for me.

On top of all of this, I learned (one week before my mom died) that my husband's job may present me with an opportunity at the end of the year to make dramatic changes in my professional life.

Here's what I find myself pondering in the middle of the night (husband snores, might as well blog!).

Conventional wisdom is that running your own business is hard work and takes a lot of energy, focus, and commitment. There's always something more you could be doing. You are, in effect, always striving. That is the path to success / financial stability. That's certainly the way I've been running my practice for 14 years!

However, the path to emotional / spiritual / psychological health for me is the opposite. Ease, gentle application of energy, non-attachment. Not striving. Deciding what to do today, tomorrow, this month, this year by listening to my body, heart, and soul. Trusting that my life will be abundant and right by trusting the voices of my body, heart, and soul.

Which usually means doing less than conventional wisdom suggests is necessary to run a stable, full, healthy business.

I really really want to be financially stable. I want a robust practice and a beefy client base. My family and heritage believe that hard work (grunt!) is the only way to get what you want out of life. Push, struggle, head down, strive!

I also really really want to be emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically healthy. Sane. With a nervous system that isn't taut enough to be plucked like a banjo string.

On the one hand....on the other hand....

My experience is that decisions rarely come down to either / or. There is virtually always a third choice, though it may take some time to figure out what that is. I'm sure there's a third choice here. I can't see it from where I stand (OK, sit) tonight.

What does it mean to be a massage therapist? A business owner? A 53-year-old woman with no more parents? A human being?

What -- in 5, 10, 20 years -- will I be pleased that I invested my energy in?

Tonight (I think it's actually become "this morning") I don't have the answers. Given that I'm grieving, I'm not going to make any drastic changes to my life or my work. But I will ponder.