When Your Body Is Telling You To Take Time Off To Find Healing Even As You Struggle To Find Work

I was supposed to immediately find my next employment as soon as it was announced that almost all of the staff in my former company would be made redundant.  There's some sort of separation payment to tide us over but the prospect of looking for another employer can sometimes be daunting. One has to browse through so many listings of companies that may fit one's skill set.  Then, granted the opportunity to move to the next level, go through testing(s), interviews, and more testings and interviews at times.  To be taken from a sort of comfort zone at a job I am doing rather well and quickly so to unknown territory is deflating to say the least. Another round of proving oneself. But soldier on we must.

But at times, the body tells us to slow down. After a week in the mountains plus a week tending to my rescue cat, Alvin, I was set to look for another job. But somatically, my body had other ideas.  In quick succession, I got sick and sicker and sicker over the span of nearly three months.  It was serious to the point when I thought I may not live through the bouts with health issues - long COVID, serious side effects from a flu drug, then withdrawal symptoms from long-time pain reliever.  Is it my body's way of trying to tell me to slow down and recover not just from physical infection but also emotional and spiritual scarring?

My last picture of dear Buddy alive

I must admit for the past two and a half years of feeding and fostering stray cats and dogs, I've been shouldering the brunt of emotional scarring -- so many of my fosters have passed on (some even violently), I've buried quite a lot of them (It got to the point when I always carry a gardening spade with me in my feeding backpack.  I simply can't bear the idea of just letting the flies get to them. Besides, no one else will bother to give them the honor of a burial - a return to the earth when they also came). 

Alvin's sis, Ben-Ben who passed from parvo

You'd think you'd get used to it after the first and second, then third and fourth time, but I never did (much in the same way I grieve my Mamay's passing, followed in two years by my Diko).  Even kittens I never got to name before they passed - I grieve for each and every one of them.  

Honestly, at times, I just wanted to break down and cry right there and then.  It gets too much to handle and I've been bottling the emotions up, putting a brave face. And no one seems to care anyway. At night, I'd leave the light on not because I'm scared (I see or feel their presence anyway) but because it gets so very lonely to ponder on their physical absence).

Maybe taking the time off for now is also a way to take stock of my mental, emotional, and spiritual health.  Also a time to recalibrate how to approach the financial aspects of sustainably feeding and fostering them when I get on my feet again and find a job to fund the efforts -- it is admittedly expensive, up to three times my own food budget with no one willing to defray nor sponsor the costs.  

Being an empath probably doesn't help as I'm deeply attached to each and everyone of my foster strays. 

Mama Thea, Cityland 8 resident cat run over by a pickup

Times when something happens to even strange kittens, people come to me for action, never acting on the what needs to be done by themselves.  "Please help this kitten, she got run over!"  "There's a dead cat there, please do something."  "Someone left a kitten over here, please rescue him."  Like they care but not so much - just pass on the buck to me.

Caring and bonding with my stray fosters has its rewards but I realize now how much I'm really scarred by the other aspects of the experience.  My body is telling me to rest for now and I'm heeding it.  Time will tell when I can come back to my feeding and bonding rounds again.  I do hope my strays will still be there and that they will recognize me, nay, forgive me for taking the time off.

My dear Chubby who disappeared after a  mouth infection

P.S.  I'm putting my beloved strays who've passed on  here in my personal space so I'd have a picture gallery of their wonderful memories.  

For now, I have to content myself with the fact that I took care of them the best way I can when given the privilege to do so.  I honestly feel honored to be able to do that even if circumstances prevented me from adopting them and sheltering them from harm from the streets.

If fate would be so kind so as to bestow me the wealth and resources to create an animal sanctuary, I would gladly dedicate it to them, and memorialize each and everyone of them there so more people would know their names and be inspired by them. 

Buddy in happier times

And I personally look forward to meeting them all again when I make the transition to the next dimension myself. I'd be happy to see them all, cats and dogs meeting me in bodies that will no longer have to endure pain or sickness.

P.S. 2 - I'm putting this out for the universe to hear: if you won't bestow me the rewards I deserve, at least please consider my fosters who've been waiting for me to come back.  If they mean anything to you, you'd let me rise again on my feet and give me the resources to care for them anew.  I await your answer, Divine Spirit and the universe.

 

Leo, Cityland 8 resident got ran over by a car