Weekly Inspiration: You Deserve a Break Today!

My husband and I just returned last night from a week-long camping trip to Virginia with our pop-up camper. We had a few hiccups (including the weather in this incredibly cold spring we are having!), but overall, we had a good time. It was a nice, relaxing, quiet getaway with lots of time spent outdoors, which was just what I needed. As I explained in this article on The Restorative Power of Nature, being outdoors is very rejuvenating for me, and plenty of scientific studies bear this out. Spending time in nature (or even looking at photos of nature) has been shown to have all sorts of positive physical effects on the body, including improving the immune system! Many years ago, I also wrote this post on The Joy of the Outdoors, about how spending time outdoors brings us joy.

Our camper at dusk - home away from home!

This very cold, wintry spring we've been enduring made me feel even more desperate for a little vacation. For me, it was mostly about feeling overwhelmed by my normal daily life. With limited time and energy and necessary naps every day, I have been juggling two blogs, support groups both online and locally, a growing freelance writing business, plus all the normal, necessary stuff related to maintaining our home, helping our kids, managing bills and medical care (a full-time job in itself!), and just the daily maintenance tasks of life. No wonder I have been feeling overwhelmed and worn out! Those are my issues, but maybe for you it's more a matter of feeling bored and sick of the same old thing every day. Whatever your situation (unless, of course, you are fully bed-ridden), we can all use a little break from our normal lives once in a while and a change of scenery - it really is rejuvenating!

Enjoying an easy paddle on a quiet afternoon.

While our relentless and successful search for Effective Treatments for ME/CFS has helped me improve to where I am today - able to hike or kayak (with a heart rate monitor and staying below my limits) for an hour - we never stopped traveling or camping, even during the worst years of illness, when both of my sons and I all had ME/CFS pretty severely. For tips on how you can manage a getaway, check out my article on Travel Tips for the Chronically Ill and this post on Camping and Enjoying the Outdoors with ME/CFS. Both include lots of helpful tips on managing to get away for a bit. Camping works for us (with the accommodations mentioned in that post above), but for you, maybe it's just a couple of days in a hotel or a rented cabin (there are some inexpensive ones in many state parks, often with lovely views and some with handicapped access) that feels more home-like. Or maybe it's just an hour with a friend or family member driving along the back roads for a change of scenery or even lying in your yard, garden, patio, or deck outdoors instead of on the couch. However you define it, just getting away from the same old, same old can help revive your mental health - and a dose of nature helps even more.

Relaxing with a book while dinner cooks on the campfire

So, this past week, we enjoyed a quiet, restorative getaway. We just drove a couple of states away (south!) to Virginia, with our pop-up camper (home away from home), and stayed in two lovely state parks in the southeastern part of the state. Nothing fancy or expensive, but it was just what I needed. We spent a lot of time reading and relaxing, took short walks according to my limits, enjoyed campfires, and explored a few small towns nearby. When it got really cold and our camper's furnace broke, we went into town to buy a space heater, and on one cold evening, we went to the local movie theater instead of sitting by a campfire. We just relaxed and took things at our own pace (my husband is quite happy to also take a nap when I do every afternoon!). It was wonderful to be totally unplugged - no internet, no social media - and to be away from my ever-growing to-do list.

And now we are back home - it was great to have my couch back last night! And I feel refreshed and ready to tackle all my to-do's anew. Everyone deserves a break, no matter how you define it to fit your needs.

Sunshine selfie, from a bench during a short walk.