Amber McDuffie

Two snoozes later it was 5:48 AM.

And I could feel the extra clog and scratch in the back of my throat.

Un-phased…

I got up, got dressed and headed to work.

Three days later…

My voice was gone.

Scratchy throat, no voice, runny nose - I was sick. 🤧

And still, I routinely went to work like a “good” employee.

I mean, it’s just a cold, right.

(At least pre-2020, that was the approach.)

As long as I kept moving 🚶🏾‍♀️at work, my sinuses stayed more open and I could breathe.

And for that reason, taking a sick day to lay in bed wasn’t all that appealing.

Not to mention that I was addicted to the psychological reward of being deemed “dedicated.”

When I left my position as an elementary school assistant principal…

I had 480 hours of unused paid time off.

About 85% of it was sick leave.

And the rest were personal days.

I literally accumulated 3 months of paid time off that I would never get paid for. 😩

(The sick days, I can understand - the dedication addiction was real. But why on earth did I have so many unused PERSONAL days??? 🤦🏾‍♀️ Ugh…I was a mess and dedicated to a fault.)

But if I had it to do over again…

Those sick days would’ve been fun days.

Yes, I would’ve done something fun -

And it would’ve been completely ethical.

Hear me out.

If I knew then what I know now...

That fun, excitement, laughter - pretty much any happy emotion - is capable of inducing healing…

Then there’s no way I would’ve been so careless with my PTO.

Unfortunately, there’s this expectation for how you should act when you’re sick.

Pitiful, useless, and out of commission.

And I didn’t want to be that - I wanted to be active.

But sickness is so much easier to overcome when you genuinely express high-level emotions.

Because it was probably stress, overwhelm, anger, disappointment, fear, and/or frustration that made me vulnerable to being sick in the first place.

So why not do something fun to clear it all up?

So yeah, in hindsight…

I would’ve been more creative about how to shamelessly spend my sick day getting well by doing something amazing.

~Amber

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