One of the Messages Kidney Failure Came to Give Me

Disease is a messenger.

This is the highest soul-knowing regarding illness. That disease shows up not as a punishment or a betrayal by our bodies, but as a messenger sent from our soul to help us wake up to how we have been chronically starving ourselves of the energetic fuel our bodies need to be healthy and well, somehow – Love.

For me, one of the soul messages behind kidney failure was exhaustion.

I had lived an entire life of being exhausted – mentally, emotionally, and physically.

And kidney failure was my bodies way of waking me up, and saying NO MORE. This is not who you are, and this is not the type of life you came here to live.

I know how I created my reality of exhaustion: I lived in constant overwhelm, over-giving, putting too much on my plate, not saying NO, and chasing after perfectionism. I never truly knew rest.

And I know how the exhaustion pattern got programmed into me as well – I grew up with exhausted parents.

Parents who had no boundaries, that were workoholics, that were constant over-givers + caregivers, AND that were perfectionists.

Exhaustion was the family way.

The ethic in my family that was modeled by both of my parents to me growing up is that you give and you work until you are depleted. And that you strive for excellence on all things, and do not show up if it’s not excellent. That this is what a good person does, and this is what doing good work in the world requires.

Perfection + overgiving + workaholic + not saying NO = Depleted of your energy, of your time, of your money.

It means you give until you’re sick; you work until you’re dead tired; you help others until you’ve spent all of your own money and can no longer effectively help yourself, etc. And all this makes you a “good person,” AND this is how you show you care.

And what I saw modeled in my childhood is what I became in my adulthood. It was the exact pattern I played out in my life.

But exhaustion wasn’t me. It didn’t sit well in my body.
Being fried, died, and laid to the side led me to disease…and literally dying.

When I did the self-healing work to understand the soul message behind kidney failure after I was diagnosed, it was loud and clear: I AM DRAINED.

And being on dialysis is a physical manifestation of what I had been doing to myself, sucking the Life Force out of my body, depleting myself of energy by the the way I was living my life.

I no longer want to live like that.

I want to live a life that fuels Life Force into my body, instead of constantly taking it away. I want to live a well life, instead of living the unwell life that exhaustion creates.

And living that well life requires me to learn how to put down the mantel of exhaustion, and develop a DEEP, CONSISTENT and HEALTHY relationship with REST, instead.

That rest is how my body needs to be loved more, to receive more, to be held more. That rest is the portal to my health, my wellness, my happiness. I’ve been journeying deeper and deeper into that portal these days.Rest has become my guiding star, and I have prioritized more than I ever have in my past.

Today, that looks like:

scheduling a nap into daily to-do list, EVERYDAY
allowing myself to operate from a plate that isn’t full, that still has room on it, instead of one that is 100% full AND overflowing
saying NO more than I say YES to invitations, projects, collaborations, and events
giving myself TWO days of rest and space after I come home from a work or leisure trip to allow myself to resettle into my environment before I have to begin giving of myself again
getting at least 8 hours of sleep at night
releasing all relationships and relationship patterns where I am over-giving, and meeting other needs, while my own go unmet and undernourished
no longer working until I am stressed or depleted, but allowing myself to work only in a sense of joy. When I feel stress or a sense of drain coming up in my body while I’m working, I take it as a sign to STOP working immediately, and go play or relax. And then I come back to my work when I’m feeling better.
I no longer associate being a “good” person with being drained. I believe now that I can be “good” and charge and nourished, at the same time.

I’m sure there’s an even deeper level of rest available for me. But for now, what I’m doing is nourishing me.