Whenever I get an infection, it usually lands in my lungs, my asthma flares, and it’s difficult to breathe. I’ve been in bed this past week with what the doctor said was likely the new variant of COVID due to my symptoms and the fact that the home tests are working less than half the time with this one. Between coughing fits earlier this morning, I flashed back to the last two times I’ve been plagued with lung issues. Once was in the summer of 2018, four months after my mother died and the last time was in March of 2020 when I had COVID and almost landed in the hospital. Both times, I had pneumonia.

One of the first healers and spiritual teachers I followed in the 1980’s was Louise Hay, who died in 2017. Her international best-selling books, You Can Heal Your Life (1984), and later, Heal Your Body (2004), were constant companions when I struggled with my health. It made sense to me when she said our “limiting beliefs” could actually cause illness, and if we changed the way we thought about things, that we could heal whatever ailed us and create a healthier life.

The summer after Mama died when I was so sick with pneumonia, I was in the middle of my anger phase of grieving. I also wasn’t sure that I knew how to breathe without her being on the planet. We’d had a difficult and intense relationship for much of my life that we healed towards the end of hers. In many ways, we were enmeshed, and I didn’t yet know how to live without her.

One day, while I was ill, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out my worn, faded copies of Louise Hay’s books. She said pneumonia often represented emotional wounds that weren’t allowed to heal, and that having issues with one’s lungs was about unhealed grief and our inability to take life in. Generally speaking, lung issues were about not feeling worthy to fully live. None of these things surprised me at the time. I was fully ensconced in the grief of her loss, struggling to make sense of the complexity of our relationship and sad about the things we hadn’t fully healed. During that part of my grief journey, I was seriously depressed, and some days, even lacked the will to live.

Twenty months later, COVID hit, shortly after my wife Julie and I returned from a plane trip to New York. A week later, I was flat on my back with COVID, which soon developed into pneumonia. I was on a nebulizer four times a day and worked hard to stay out of the hospital and it took me two months to recover.

And now, here I am again with round two of COVID. Thankfully, I’m fully vaxed and boosted, hoping it won’t get as bad this time and I’ll avoid pneumonia. But being sick again has made me stop and question what I need to change in my life in order to fully live. I worked harder in my business than I ever have last year, while also finishing my new book. I had very little time to just be present and to stop and smell the roses. It was go-go-go, all the time, something I vowed I’d never do again when I came to realize the value of down-time in keeping me happy and whole, following my healing journey from grief after Mama’s death. I didn’t realize there were things missing in my life last year that I was grieving until my illness laid me flat—things like having time for walks in nature, time for lunches out with friends, for communing with spirit, for my writing, for travel, and rest.

As the new year begins, I’ve made a decision to add the things that bring me joy back into my life. I am committed to finding a better rhythm, so I’ve decided to work for three days a week instead of five or six at my day job as an executive coach and facilitator (which I love). I can’t breathe when I don’t have space in my life for the things my spirit needs. I can’t be fully alive. I’m grateful for what my lungs are teaching me now about fully owning all the things in my life that I need to be fulfilled, and about the importance of being a human being, not just a human doing in 2023.