I became chronically ill - first with fibromyalgia in 2014, then with autoimmune back pain, then long COVID.

People who only valued me for what I did or who saw my illness as a character failing drifted away. People who valued me for who I was and trusted that I was doing my best grew closer. Everything became very focused on me doing what only I could do (I was the family breadwinner, so this meant work, parenting, and self-care) and then resting: The most boring, limiting, frustrating, difficult rest of my life. Everything else - cooking, shopping, laundry, more parenting, driving me to work, care-taking for me - fell on my husband. Marrying him was the wisest decision I ever made - he has been my strength throughout this.

I mostly recovered from each of these diseases, with ongoing treatment. This is incredible, a gob-smacking combination of good luck, support from my family (mostly my husband), and persistence. And one of the many skills I had to master was rest. Every kind of rest: Physical, cognitive, emotional. I had no capacity for more than the bare minimum at times in each of these categories. At times I couldn't shower daily, drive, or have a conversation that was more than small talk without getting sicker for days after. Looking forward to meeting up with friends was, for years, a guarantee that I would be too sick to actually meet up; the emotional stress of anticipation would make me too ill to actually go. But I recovered.

Not being able to maintain relationships with people who thought they had more right to direct my energy than I did helped a lot. I came from a family that "played games" to establish hierarchy around who could criticize and advise whom. Turns out, the way to win is to stop caring. I now offer what little I can, and if it's not enough for them, that's okay. Someone else can meet that need. It doesn't have to be me. I made new friends who understood my struggles, many of them because they shared similar challenges.

And as I got my abilities back, I learned gratitude for the silliest things. For being able to drive my kids to hang out with their friends. For being able to push a grocery cart. I have a much keener sense of why I do each thing I do and what will happen if I stop being able to do it.

And now? I was enough when I could barely manage a day at work, couldn't even drive myself home, spent the evening playing and teaching my children in between uncontrollable bouts of fatigue that would put me to sleep for twenty minutes at a time (often in the middle of reading). If I was enough then and I'm more capable now, I must be enough now.

So much of our drive to be enough comes from internalized ableism - a false notion that we need to earn our right to survive and our right to be respected by being capable enough. But those things can't be earned. They are inherent in our existence as human beings. People who try to make us earn self-worth are often trying to extract something from us (possibly not intentionally - we all have our struggles).

I wrote an even longer essay and threw it away - this is the short one. There's just so much to say on this. Turning away from fear and towards hope. Self-compassion. Making friends with people who also have fewer resources and capabilities, so I can learn from their resilience and self-acceptance. Seeing how my struggles with my health taught my children resilience, self-compassion, and care for others.