My Rest Appreciation Post

Hi, I’m Mary, and I used to be terrible at resting. Because I’m me and I fully have a giant Rubbermaid container in my guest room closet full of memories from my childhood, I have a copy of the senior edition of the school newspaper from the year I graduated high school. There is a page called “Can you imagine…” full of mostly funny beliefs about some of the students and teachers. For me, they put “can you imagine Mary Hutton relaxing?”. It was so unbelievable to my classmates in 2002 that I had the capability to relax that they printed it in the senior paper. And they were 1000% right. At the time, I was not in any way self-aware enough to recognize how terrible I was at relaxing, but I was. 

I’ve gotten a lot better at relaxing over the years. Good friends showed me the most fun ways to let my hair down and the best friends ate icing with me straight from the tub in law school, made wine night a thing (the best part of law school hands down. I miss you all and I miss wine night something fierce), took me out dancing (back when we could do things like that), and send me texts at 8am telling me when places open up for us to eat late night desserts together (y’all remember that post about the ultimate girl group? Yeah, amazing lady friends really are the best). Finding my people made and continues to make a world of difference to encourage me to relax. But rest? Real true, do nothing and revel in it because you know you need it rest. That’s a harder one for me.

I know I still have a lot of work to do in this area because I chose not to listen to my body back in November and run on a hurt leg. All because I was unwilling to take the time to rest and recuperate. Our body will let us lie to it for awhile, but it always wins in the end. I remember a lesson from The Oprah Winfrey Show that if we just listen, we will be given the guidance we need to move forward. She said that at first the message comes in whispers, like a tap on the shoulder leading us in the right direction. If we choose not to listen, the message gets louder until eventually we get hit by a brick wall of the truth. Her wording was a lot more eloquent than mind obviously, but the message still comes through I hope. What I took from her words is that if we choose not to listen to the truth around us, we will get hit by brick walls over and over until we get it right. I’ve had a lot of brick wall lessons over the years, most notably in recent years getting mono because I refused to rest enough and then losing out on the ability to run the past month and a half because I refused to take a few days off.

I’m at the point where I’m tired of learning the same lesson over and over. I used to think it was lazy for me to rest. All the way back in high school, I think it had a lot to do with fear of failure and worry that I wouldn’t be “good enough” (for whatever that meant to me at the time). But failure is an amazing teacher because what was really happening was me failing over and over to learn how to rest. Now I know that I can accomplish my goals better and do more good in the world by taking the time to slow down and rest. To nap, meditate, stay on the couch for most of the day and actively choose not to move. No more waiting until the brick wall of my body screaming at me to stop. I’m listening to the whispers more and more each day and I’m so grateful to do so. 

Side note: the more and more I write, the more and more The Oprah Winfrey Show will come up. From the mid 90s until 2011, I had a standing 4pm date with Oprah every weekday. As in, before DVR was a thing, I scheduled classes around my 4pm date. Extreme? Probably. Regrets about this decision? Zero. Just wanted to share because she played a significant part as a teacher for me during that time and her lessons resonate with me today. So know that you’ll probably be hearing about Oprah for awhile 🙂

If you need a whisper today, here goes. If you’re doing your best, you are doing enough. And when you fail (because if you’re truly doing your best, you will fail at some point) stop, rest, and figure out the lessons. You are allowed to fail. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed to stop and pivot when you’ve made the wrong call. As long as you are kind to your fellow human means, you are an unmitigated success in the world. Kindness and compassion are always going to be your most important accomplishments so if all you are known for in this world is how freaking kind you are, you did enough. Keep going being that awesome, kind person who cares deeply about other human beings. Sleep. Rest. Work really hard on being a helper in whatever way you can and listen way way more than you talk. You’ve got this. 

DM me anytime @mamacomesfirst if you need a hype squad. I’ve got your back. Now I’m going to listen to myself and hang on this couch for awhile. I ran a whole mile yesterday relatively pain free and today I’m listening to my body and resting my leg. Here’s to hopefully less brick wall lessons this year and more paying attention to the whispers of truth before you get hit in the face. Happy Wednesday!