You may have read that title and thought to yourself, “Why in the world is this lady dedicating a blog post to silverware?” Fear not, I promise this blog post is not dedicated to the missing contents of one’s silverware drawer. Instead, it’s about knowing one’s capacity and knowing when your battery is on empty or.. when you’re out of spoons.

Many in the chronic illness community have adopted the spoon theory and call themselves spoonies. “The Spoon Theory, developed by Christine Miserandino, is a metaphor used to explain the limited energy of people with chronic illnesses or disabilities.It uses “spoons” to represent units of energy, and each task throughout the day requires a certain number of spoons. Individuals with chronic conditions often start with fewer spoons and need to carefully manage their energy to complete daily activities.” The spoon theory is one way in which people with chronic illness and/or disabilities figure out how to pace themselves in an effort to not overdo it. It’s one way to avoid your body screaming at you. For instance, if someone starts out with 10 spoons for the day and showering is an activity that for their body takes 5 spoons then taking a shower is going to be their major activity of the day, so as to not run out of spoons. Yes, there are people with chronic illness who a shower is a major activity for them, which requires planning and the saving up of energy or spoons.

From the title of this blog you can probably guess that I am not always the best at adopting The Spoon Theory into my everyday life. I try incredibly hard to pace myself and to never find myself running low on spoons, but lately I seem to be running low on spoons more often than both myself and my body would like. The combination of heat, humidity, no OT for a month, grief deciding to stop by often, lack of sleep, nightly reenactments of the civil war (yay fireworks!), and living while our democracy is crumbling daily has left me running pretty low on spoons many days. By the end of the day yesterday, the spoon section of my silverware drawer was completely empty. I had nothing left to give, my brain was running on pure survival instinct, and my body was just done.

I have been living life lately as if I don’t have chronic illness and while it has been good for my heart and soul, in many ways it has not been kind to my body. I have a heart and soul that want to live life at 100mph soaking up every moment, experience, opportunity, etc that I can, but I have a body that most days needs to live life going 5-10 mph under the posted speed limit. It’s hard to live like that because it feels like living that way means that life is passing me by and I am not really living. For some reason to me a full life is one lived at 100 mph and not one lived in the slow lane of the interstate. Maybe it’s not an either or but more of an and. I can live life in the slow lane and have moments of a 100mph life, but I can’t live that life all the time.

Knowing our capacity is like balancing on a tightrope. Some days that tight rope can hold a lot and other days the capacity of the tightrope is less. It’s a constant balancing act between what our heart wants us to do, what we feel called to do, and what we actually have the capacity to do. It requires us to really check in with ourselves and with our bodies. To ask “Do I have the capacity for this?” and then to listen for the way our body responds even if the response isn’t the one we wanted. Sometimes knowing our capacity means saying “No” to things, people, experiences, events, etc that we really want to be a part of. Side note: The listening step is the one I struggle with. If I get an answer I don’t like I sometimes just ignore that answer and do what I want. It never works out well for me and yet I still do it.. I’m stubborn and a slow learner.

I could lie and tell you that I am going to turn over a new leaf and never have another day where I run myself out of spoons. That would be nice, but the truth is living with chronic illness is a huge learning curve and even though its been 3 years I still feel like I am in the novice category when it comes to figuring out how to truly live and also take care of my body. I will have days where I will run low on spoons again. Days where my body will have to not use its inside voice to get me to listen. Days where I will wake up the next morning and regret how much I did. I hope those days are less often and I have more days where I end the day with spoons still left in my silverware drawer.

My goal is progress and not perfection, so I will work on finding beauty, joy, and fulfillment living life 5-10 mph under the posted speed limit knowing that doing so will keep the spoon section of my silverware drawer from being empty.