Why I Hit The Pause Button on Life

[title maintitle=”” subtitle=”Pause. Reconnect. Love. Series – Part 1″]

Have you ever felt tired and overwhelmed as if there’s so much to do and no time for self-care, but somehow you still pushed through it all? That secret push of energy is what motivational speaker Brene Brown calls hitting your “dig deep button.”

I spent a lifetime pushing that dig deep button on a weekly basis and at times daily in the name of:

Love
Family
Hustling hard
Being a strong Black woman

Hitting the dig deep button I thought was my secret superhero power. It allowed me to be everything to everyone, which was how I measured my self-worth. Little did I know after losing five people in one year, including someone who was my everything, my dig deep button had malfunctioned.

Thankfully I have close friends who recognized things were spinning out of my control and spoke up, even though I wasn’t trying to listen. However, when three people all say, “Danielle you can’t see it, but you’re grieving and you need a break,” you have to believe there’s some truth.

Yet, as an advocate for self-care, me grieving was laughable. I wasn’t crying and even took extra self-care vacation days in South Africa to be by myself; In my mind I was doing ok. In reality, depression had already kicked in right after I got back from Africa (or before) and I mistook it for a bad case of jet lag mixed with a newfound love for binge watching Grey’s Anatomy.

No longer could I act like I had the “strength” to dig deep and continue to disregard the pain, exhaustion, and lack of self-care needed to get past this moment in my life. So I did the only thing I could do, I hit the pause button on life.

Actually, I went hella rogue and slammed my hand down on the pause button on life. For three months I got off of social media, stopped checking emails or my phone and stayed in destinations great for a life pause.

Did I feel guilty for letting go of my responsibilities and leaving my still grieving family behind and ignoring concerned friends? Of course, I felt guilt and shame, but I also knew taking this pause in my life was a solo experience and it wasn’t optional. I needed to make my self-care my number one priority, so I booked a ticket to Bali not sure when I’d return.

What happened in Bali, shifted everything in my world.

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Stay tuned for Part 2 and 3 in the Pause. Reconnect. Love. series coming later this week.