A RAW & VERY EMOTIONAL POST  **I WAS EXHAUSTED!**

“I Owe – I Owe – It’s Off to work I go”, has been the mindset for me and driven me as a young woman. It’s been going on for me for years – for my entire life really.

At school I was the model student- although ‘teacher’s pet’ isn’t a term of endearment that other school kids used, to describe me. But I was a slogger as I knew the path of the biggest slog would lead to the greatest results.

So off to university. There I discovered that the hardworking student, with a bit of alcohol in her system, could abandon the introvert and express her party girl. And with precision of balancing and juggling, she could still maintain her distinguished academic prowess.

Medical internship was as much fun as being locked in a torture chamber. Sleep deprivation, workload of cruelty but that moulded us into who we thought we wanted to be.

And then we could begin our lives…..at 28 years old with further study to become a specialist in our field.

Add in 2 kids, immigration and divorce, I found myself feeling like I wasn’t very good at very much.

All the hard work and I wasn’t happy. I had missed out on being young and was missing out on my family’s life by being married to my work.

I needed a change but was too afraid to make it happen.

I’m welling up now as I, once again, feel the huge cost of this to me & my family which has been way way too much. Working so hard on my work cost me time with my kids – precious play time & bonding time with them.

I WAS DESPERATE…

I realised just how much time and my energy I’d spent trying to BUILD A NAME for myself. This has  NOT GIVEN ME THE  LEVERAGE & LIFESTYLE I BELIEVED IT WOULD.The idea when I was young was to get a good career so you could have a good life. Yet I look at so many people who work so hard for the good life but they really seem to be experiencing this good life.

You see, I have been CONSUMED by my work, trying to please everyone and please my patients, who I loveD helping and want to continue… BUT I NEEDED MORE ME TIME to generate the awesomeness.

MY BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT WAS MY DAUGHTER SAYING, TO ME…

***“Mum God gave you cancer to be nice to us. Without cancer you would never have stopped working so hard.”***

IN THAT MOMENT,  I Saw The Sadness in her eyes – and I knew, I had to change…

The cancer journey was insanely stressful, being told near the end of it that it looked like my cancer had metastasised and I was Stage 4. What that means is that it would recur and I would become resistant to treatment and I would die in the next few years. BUT. I. DIDN’T.

I knew that I needed to change my internal environment so that the cancer body no longer existed. Otherwise, if I kept doing the same thing, the outcome would be the same. \

Giving away my hard-worked-for-career was challenging to say the least. But having children with medical problems wasn’t something I could change. The stressful work situation was far more readily changed. And I set about to rebuild ME to be a better ME for ME.

So my lovely friends……be wiser than I was. MAKE THE CHANGE. Don’t wait for something catastrophic to force the change.