Reigniting the Glow after Burnout
What do you do when you quickly glance in the mirror one day and do not recognize the person staring back at you? How do you start a glow-up when your flame is completely burnt out?
The year is 2021.
I’m running to the bathroom between teaching classes. And I’m literally running. When you’re a public high school teacher, you maybe get a thirty second window to dart into the hallway after all the students in one class pack up and leave, before the next group of students start filing in, asking questions, requiring assistance, and demanding that you look at the most hilarious meme they found yesterday during lunch (which I always do, with delight). I enter the staff bathroom, take down my face mask to get a gulp of fresh (public school bathroom) air - because remember, it’s 2021 and we’re trying to teach and learn in a pandemic - quickly do my business, and start to wash my hands as fast as possible. I take a quick glance at myself in the mirror as I dry my hands. And… Who. The heck. Is that?! Who is this old lady looking back at me? She has a puffy face, red eyes, and crazy-looking hair that is sticking up and broken at the crown. Her clothes are too tight. Her skin is dry. And she just looks dull. She has no life in her eyes. I truly cannot believe what I’m seeing. Because she is me. I am her. And of course the fluorescent lights are doing me no favors, but geeeeez, I look rouuuuugh.
I knew I was gaining weight and feeling “off” but … we all were. It was the pandemic. We were stressed out.
I had been stressed to the max while trying to teach during the pandemic. And I was in good company. Everyone’s jobs sucked at this time. We were all stressed out. At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, I had the worst UTI I’ve ever experienced. I started summer break, bedridden for 7 straight days with a high fever and was in tremendous pain. The pain was so awful that I originally went to Urgent Care because I thought I may have something like appendicitis. What I didn’t know at the time was that stress was causing my body to say “Hey! If you don’t find a way to chill out soon, I’m going to find a way to make you lay in bed for a week.” I went to my doctor and told her that I felt really “off.” I told her that I had just had an excruciating UTI. I told her I didn’t recognize who I was anymore, and that my ankles, fingers, and face were literally swelling. I suddenly had cankles and my wedding ring, which is normally slightly loose, wouldn’t fit on my ring finger anymore. My hair, which was usually shiny, thick, and long, was broken, thinning, and dull. With very little compassion, my doctor said, and I quote, “Well. You are turning 40.” She commiserated with me, because she was also turning 40 and experiencing the same types of issues. She prescribed a water pill to pull the water out of my cankles, asked if I wanted to be put on an anti-depressant (I didn’t), suggested I stop taking birth control pills to “get a clean slate” and told me to exercise more. I left her office feeling worse about myself than ever. Not only did she not seem to take any of my ailments seriously, she didn’t appear to believe me when I told her that I was already exercising a ton and hadn’t made any huge lifestyle changes to bring on these symptoms. After all, I was 39. Part of being a woman is accepting that your body is going to change around 40, and you just need to be okay with that.
I was not, in fact, okay with that.
For another year, I exercised even harder, counted calories, and slathered on hair oils to try to bring some of my sparkle back. I took my daily prescribed water pill and watched my skin dry up into a leathery husk. The cankles went down a smidge and I could squeeeeeeze my wedding ring onto my finger if I had just put on lotion right beforehand and was like, “Okay, okay, this is progress! It’s just going to be slow progress because I’m almost 40. This is my life now, I guess.” I began to have periods from the pits of HELL. The cramps would double me over and I had to buy mega-packs of Super Plus tampons to make it through the week of torture each month. I was popping Midol like candy and my husband can attest that I was a moody little sassafras that would bark out “Ugh, don’t touch me, I don’t FEEL GOOD” on the regular. I never had periods like this while on birth control pills. I barely even had any noticeable cramps! It got me wondering if my hormones were possibly imbalanced. So back to the doctor I went. “Could you do some hormone testing on me? I feel like my hormones might be out of whack and that’s what might be causing all of these crazy symptoms. Again, I just don’t feel like myself at all. I’m so crabby all the time and that’s not me. I’m acting like a bridge troll.” The response was not great… the doctor explained that she couldn’t just do a hormone panel unless there was a medical reason (apparently my symptoms were not a strong enough reason to compel testing on her end). Meanwhile, she looked amazing. A year ago, she looked like me - worn out, dull-eyed, uncomfortable in her clothing, and stressed. And now she looked… well… incredible. After my check-up she pulled me aside, and slid a Post-It note over to me with the name of a clinic that would do hormone testing but did not accept health insurance. She said her own hormones were imbalanced and they helped her, and she felt great now; I just had to be prepared to pay out of pocket. I could have kissed her on the lips. I was willing to pay anything to feel like ME again.
And the winner is… PCOS!
So off to the clinic I went. $600, a two-hour initial session, a full hormone and blood panel, and lots of relief-tears later, I found out that I had PCOS. The birth control pills had been masking the symptoms for the last 20 years, and it turns out stopping the pill cold turkey, along with going through the most stressful year of your career, while getting ready to turn 40 is apparently the perfect storm to take a girl OUTTT. I do not recommend! 0/10 stars. My hormones were indeed out of whack, in a major way. But there was good news. They could fix me.
So the glow-up journey began.
Once my new hormone specialist doctor got me all balanced out, took me off the water pill that was drying me to the bone, and gave me supplement recommendations to bring some youth back into my body, I finally felt like me again. The weight slowly but surely melted away. My hair started to grow again (I could cry just typing that!). My skin no longer resembled a 15-year old baseball glove. My periods went back to being short, light, and relatively pain-free. And I became determined to repair the damage that the imbalanced years inflicted. I researched and researched. I fell down rabbit holes. I consumed anything I could get my eyes on that talked about healing the body, self-care, and glowing up. I began implementing regimens and systems that helped reverse the damage done, and now feel like a brand new person at the age of 42.
All Systems Glow!
So this is it! My little glow-up chronicles. My diary of systems that I’ve implemented on my journey to get my glow back. And while I’m still a gigantic work in progress, I’m so proud of the progress I’ve made with these systems. And I’d love to share them with you, too, in case you are on your own little journey to get your glow back. Especially if you’re over 40 and feeling like a little bridge troll. I promise that’s not how it has to be.