Friends, I hit a really tough patch in May. The school year ended in five weeks of sickness that found me bedridden and telling my husband I felt I was dying.

The official diagnoses, after a visit to Urgent Care in week four, were severe sinus infection, dehydration, and COVID. I would add to that list burnout: it was the end of three stressful years as department chair.

My husband and I were trying to laugh at the continued, unrelenting symptoms by the second visit to Urgent Care in week five. I was texting him from the exam room as I waited for my results from the blood tests, EKG, and pee tests. He texted back: “So, you waited until now to get COVID, sinus infection, mono, and you may be pregnant.” (Nope, not pregnant at age 41. But I did learn that intense sickness can cancel or delay a woman’s cycle.) Sitting in the exam room where I could barely lift my head, his text made me laugh; it was kind of funny thinking of all those things piling up at once. But on the way home, I asked him to stop laughing, please.

I want to extend my reach to my readers now, male or female, and urge you, if you’re juggling a lot in your life–parenting, working, leadership, commuting, church duties, trying to hold together a marriage, managing depression, anxiety, and/or PTSD, and whatever else is on your plate–if you’re overwhelmed and your body is shutting down…or if your soul feels dead and you have no joy anymore…please stop and listen to your body.

It may be that you are the primary person in charge at home or at work or wherever. If that’s the case, you may not have someone to advocate for you. You might be the one always advocating for others. That’s where I’ve been for three years, and my body finally gave me the signal loud and clear: STOP! Figure out another way, because you physically cannot sustain all the things you are doing.

A Way Forward

In my case, the build-up of stress did lead me to listen to my body and self-advocate, and my husband and I are making changes. Foremost, he has quit his job, and I have worked with my boss to readjust my work assignment: I have not accepted any summer teaching; in the fall, I will also do more online teaching, less in-person teaching, and work from home more, to save commuting time. I am going to work on not being department chair as soon as I can. While the job I am doing is important, needed, and timely, it’s clear that my health has been sacrificed to the job.

Identifying Unhealthy Patterns…at Work…

It’s a gnarly time in higher ed, with online learning growing, dual credit enrollment metastasizing, literacy skills declining, and AI forcing disciplines like English to reimagine themselves. In the last four years, I suffered semester after semester (including summers) of work overloads–growth of programs and initiatives in my department, not to mention an accreditation crisis. Perhaps these growing pains needed to happen; perhaps it was just my bad luck that they happened on my watch. The point is, my body has told me, in the form of never-ending fatigue for three years, that I cannot take it anymore.

Last November I met with my boss, brought a list of my inflated responsibilities, and said I could not do them all anymore. He was new–so not part of the institution’s historical administrative decisions–and he agreed. He helped me to begin slashing tasks that should not have been on my plate in the first place. He also brought up systemic issues in our Academic Policies meetings to begin to fix broken systems. Praise God for Dr. Smith. God sends angels when we are on the verge of collapse.

…And at Home

So, after the fall semester, work was looking up. But home life was still a mess. I now understand that the entire solution did not just rest on me figuring out a different workflow. It turns out that there was simply too much on our family’s plate. My husband had “gone back to work” a couple years ago via a home business. So, he was always home, but the business was keeping him too busy. He was not able to keep the home in order or do much cooking. After kid drop-offs and pick-ups and activities, he was spent. So, I would come home and the house would be the same as when I’d left it; much processed food and pizza were being consumed. The state of the untended house and our poor diets could also symbolize the state of our marriage.

Before we actually figured out that one of us needed to quit working, I shopped around for another job, thinking maybe the ticket was to move and start over. I got to the stage of being invited to visit and interview at a great school in Tennessee…but we were praying through these decisions the whole time. I also prayed for God to keep the door open on our Texas set-up if he wanted us to stay.

A Sign to Stay: Writing for Healing

It ends up God answered my prayer for the Texas sign: I got a small research grant for a research/creative project I proposed on Narrative Medicine, Expressive Writing, and Bibliotherapy. Basically, in March, as I was applying for the other job, I also proposed to do some research on how English departments could reorient their curricula toward mental health and greater service to the whole person. Recognizing my own degraded mental state, I was also hoping to spend more time again writing for healing, and helping more students do the same.

Well, those five weeks of sickness became a writing opportunity. In May I started to put words to what I’ve gone through these past three years, digging into the depths of bitterness that have built up during this time. I have also reconnected with Straight 2 the Heart prayer ministry, praying with one other lady, and taking time to pray for my own wounded heart. I have figured out that it may take lots of writing and prayer to get back to “good,” just as, a decade or so ago, it took writing Ending the Pain and months of prayer ministry to heal from earlier life traumas. But through it all, I cannot help but recognize God’s good work in redeeming traumatic life seasons.

I know God is going to rehabilitate my mind and my body from these hard years–I count on Him to do it, because He has told my family, through multiple signs, that we are supposed to stay in Texas; He has work for us to do (and He has never led us wrong). The beauty is that the work project I’m doing now will not only help make our English curriculum more missional and helpful to our students, but this work will also help me recover. God knew I needed to write and heal. If I had started a new job, had to move across the country, get our family resettled in new schools and a new community, there would have been no time to do this healing work. In the end, I can be thankful for the sick signals that told my body to take action. If you are facing unrelenting physical or mental anguish, please don’t ignore it. Listen to your body. Pray. Write. Seek advice. Set boundaries. And make changes.