Every year in mid-September I find myself lying on a chiropractor’s table, eyes filled with tears, wondering why I ignored signals until my body had to sound an alarm. “I had to make you uncomfortable, otherwise you never would have moved.” Thank-you universe, I am now uncomfortable, and I cannot move. Which I understand is the point. It’s not lost on me that the moment my children return to school my body breaks down. And that the moment I have long stretches in the day to roll out clay, I can’t lift a spoon. Pity party over. In my defense, I’ve come along way on the road to self care. The expression, “self care” makes me think of Nair and vanilla scented candles. But, I digress. When life brings you to your knees, or to your back, or to a fetal pose enough times, you realize that some things must change. But you know, middle-aged dog, new tricks, some things are harder to change than others. And as far as I’ve come, I still fall into familiar holes and make mistakes I should know better than to make. When will I learn? Maybe never. Or maybe the fall won’t be as long, and the thump so heavy; maybe I’ll learn to recover better. Here’s hoping. I now have a client that is expecting work I can’t produce, and a list of to-dos that I won’t be able to tick off. It’s funny how pain reduces that list to its very essential items, to the list it likely should have been all along. Maybe the greatest lesson of all is that I have no control, and any illusion that I do is what lands me in the hole to begin with.