When Being Capable Isn’t Enough

I was very good at being her. The capable one. The ambitious one. The one who could figure things out. The one people came to when things were complicated. The one who kept going. And, if I’m really honest, the one who had become a little too good at working.

For nearly 30 years, I was a rehabilitation counsellor. I helped people navigate injury, illness and trauma and find their way back into work and life. I built businesses, led people, taught, wrote, created and solved problems. I was proud of what I had achieved, and I also thought I knew a fair bit about recovery.

Then I got cancer.

Suddenly, I wasn’t the rehabilitation counsellor. I was the patient. I thought I’d be pretty good at that too. I knew the theory and the research. I knew about graded activity, building capacity, returning to work and managing fatigue. I knew what best practice looked like. What I hadn’t quite appreciated was that best practice doesn’t necessarily mean best practice for me.

My body had its own ideas. Cancer recovery became neurological recovery, and neurological recovery became learning to live with an ongoing migraine disorder that I still have today. That has been one of the biggest lessons of my life. Because when you’ve spent your career helping people understand that recovery isn’t linear, it’s rather humbling to discover that you don’t get a special exemption from that rule yourself.

I tried. Oh, I tried. I tried to work my way out of it. I tried to exercise my way out of it. I tried to find the right combination of treatment, nutrition, walking, rest, supplements, routines and discipline. Surely there was an answer. Surely if I just did the right things consistently enough, I would get back to being me.

Except I eventually realised something rather inconvenient: I wasn’t going back.

And that was a grief I hadn’t expected. I missed the woman who could decide to do something and just do it. I missed being able to push through a busy week without wondering what my body would have to say about it afterwards. I missed trusting my body. And I really missed being able to measure my progress by how much I could do, because doing was how I had measured myself for a very long time.

That’s where the work addiction bit comes in. I don’t think I ever woke up one morning and thought, I’m going to become addicted to work. It was much more socially acceptable than that. I was ambitious. I cared. I was committed. I was building something. I was helping people. I was being productive. All of those things were true. But somewhere along the way, working hard had stopped being something I did and had become part of how I knew I was valuable.

Cancer interrupted that. Then my migraines kept interrupting it. Eventually, I had to learn something I had spent years telling other people: Your capacity is not your worth.

That sounds obvious. It wasn’t obvious to me. I’m still learning it.

Self-compassion has probably been one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn. Not because I don’t believe in it. I can talk about self-compassion beautifully when I’m helping someone else. Doing it for myself? Apparently, much harder. I still have days where I hear myself thinking, come on, Jo  you should be able to do this. Then I have to remind myself that my body isn’t failing an exam. It’s giving me information.

That shift has changed me. So has picking up my craft again. Knitting. Crochet. Making things. I had forgotten how much I liked doing something that didn’t need to become anything. No business plan. No outcome. No one needs to see it. No one is measuring it. It’s just me, some yarn and something to make. There is something wonderfully liberating about that, especially for a woman who spent a lot of years turning ideas into projects, projects into businesses and businesses into things that needed to work.

I’m also learning to appreciate ordinary days. A walk. A coffee. Some time in the garden. Making something. Being with people I love. A day that doesn’t produce anything particularly impressive and discovering that it can still be a bloody good day.

Bali gave me a glimpse of that. There was space. Less mental load. Walking, coffee, yoga, snorkelling, craft and simply being somewhere without the usual list running around in my head. I didn’t become a different person there. I think I just had enough space to notice some of the person I’d been neglecting.

And that’s probably where I am now. Still becoming.

I’m not suddenly a woman who has mastered balance. Far from it. I still overdo things. I still get frustrated. I still have big ideas. I still have days when I want to tell my body to pull its bloody socks up and get on with it. But I’m getting better at listening. I’m getting better at asking, What do I actually need? rather than What should I be able to do?

And I’m learning that I don’t need to give up my ambition to look after myself. I just need to stop confusing ambition with self-abandonment. That might be the biggest change of all.

I’m not trying to become less. I’m trying to become more myself. A version of me who can be ambitious without burning herself out. Who can contribute without constantly proving her worth. Who can rest without having to justify it. Who can make something simply because she loves it. Who can have a quiet day and not feel like she’s wasted it. And who understands that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stop trying to get back to the woman you were and become curious about the woman you’re becoming.

I don’t know exactly who she is yet. And I quite like that.

There is still plenty on my list. Things I want to create. Places I want to go. People I want to help. Ideas I want to explore. And yes, I still have a ridiculous number of things I want to do. I’m just learning that I don’t have to do them all at once.

So, if you’re a woman who has spent years being capable, ambitious and bloody good at getting things done, and somewhere along the way you’ve become exhausted or lost a little bit of yourself, I want you to know this: You’re not too old. You’re not too late. And you don’t have to wait for something catastrophic to give yourself permission to live differently.

You don’t have to become smaller. You don’t have to stop wanting things. You don’t have to stop being ambitious. Maybe you just need to stop abandoning yourself in the pursuit of all the things you want.

I’m still working that one out.

But I think I’m finally becoming her.

And I think I like her.

Looking forward to sharing more with you.