Have you ever felt like you’ve fallen off the bandwagon of life sometimes??

I spent yesterday at home because the night before I pulled a muscle in my neck and felt it go all the way down to the bottom of my spine. Not good! The worst part is that I kind of knew it was coming. For a few weeks now, I’ve felt the slight tweaks when I would turn my head a certain way and quickly realized that my body was rebelling against me.

I’ve been pushing myself pretty hard for the last little while. Actually, I’d say that all of 2008 so far has been one endurance race after another. I try so hard to balance everything; to juggle all the balls and balance all the plates. I try so hard to play as hard as I work and to rest as much as I exercise. I try so hard in fact, that when a ball gets dropped and my head turns the wrong way, the disappointment of having failed to manage it all ends up surpassing the pain in the neck (no pun intended!) of an injury I got as a result. As I sit here writing this, I feel depleted, defeated and as though my entire body is put together wrong.

I’m starting to notice that many of my girlfriends and I are being challenged with the same thing right now; the desire to manage our lives and all that it encompasses without losing ourselves in the midst of the chaos. It sounds like such a typical “woman” thing to say but, I think that there’s something to be said for women trying to find their place in the world (or anyone else for that matter). I can’t even tell you how long I’ve been trying to figure out how I can play my various roles without letting the most important of them all slip between my fingers. I most definitely know that the questions are more important than the answers and I even pride myself on taking the time to ask the questions but, is it too much to ask for even a little bit of an answer from time to time?!?!

I think that as the years go on, women become very intricate hybrids of themselves. They play the role of Mothers, Daughters, Wives, Colleagues, Sisters, Philanthropists, Role Models, Chef…you name it! But with that, it becomes that much harder to play the role of “themselves” and I fear that my poor weary soul is producing physical manifestations of the one role I haven’t been doing much of lately.

Many years ago, I was talking with a priest about my completely irrational fear of cancer. He ended up looking at me in the wise way that priests often do and telling me that he thought I was so convinced I had cancer because I was looking for a reason to give myself a break. When you’re sick, he said, you’re only expected to take care of yourself…something that you seldom do. While I still don’t know if I agree with this statement or not, I did find it incredibly insightful. I thought about it quite a bit at the time but, as the years passed by, the irrational fear continued and the wisdom faded. It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, during my crippled day at home, that I was reminded of this compelling thought.

While I’m not a huge fan of Oprah anymore (she lost me after the whole attack on James Frey), I still like to watch some of her interviews and yesterday was a rerun of an interview she did with two people that were dying of cancer (great…just what an overly anxious person with an almost obsessive fear of cancer needs!). The one woman who had been living with cancer felt that she was actually healthier now than before she got cancer. Though I imagine that she likely wouldn’t have chosen to have cancer if she had to do it all again, she found that cancer had altered her life and her priorities in such a transformative way. When Oprah asked why she thought this transformation occurred, she responded by saying that “we all, in some way, wait for that great permission to live.” Obviously, this sounded all too familiar to me and immediately caught my attention. When the gentleman with pancreatic cancer was asked if he had any regrets, he simply stated that his only regret was that he hadn’t “figured it all out” sooner.

Gosh, this made me sad. Despite how inspiring these two people were, all I could think about was how I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be the person that had to get cancer before I “figured it all out” and opened my eyes. Really, what has to happen before we decide that it’s okay to take some time to stretch at the end of the day? Or what has to happen before we decide to shut down the computer and pick up that book we’ve been dying to read? Or what has to happen before we give ourselves permission to come home? There really has to be an easier answer to all of this than terminal illness. Even as I blog through the eyes of a sore neck, I just know that all of us can do it; that we can find that fine balance between being ourselves and being Wonder Woman. But in the vintage fashion that is me…I just don’t have the answer! I never do.

Questions I can do. Answers…not so much!
But I’m determined to remain hopeful.

Any day now…any day.