🏹 Anya's Sunday Shift Commitment — May 17-24

💡 WIN / LESSONS LEARNED

This week I am not only finishing off the 90-day roadmap of movement, fueling, sleep, and recovery, but I am also transitioning from the second trimester of pregnancy into the third. I want to reflect not only on the last 3 weeks that I did not pause to reflect in the community, but also on the last 90 days of shift commitments and pregnancy.

The last 90 days were filled with grief, trauma work, profound medical advocacy and learning, incredible personal growth, and learning to be present in moments when survival seems like the only option.

As I reflect on the impact of all this meaningful personal transformation, I cannot simply focus on the pure metrics I used to measure how I slept in the last 3 weeks. My Apple Health tells me that in the last month I slept 7 hours and 7 minutes on average. What the data doesn't capture is the many nights where I did somatic and trauma work with myself to calm the parts of me that were deeply grieving for the son that I lost due to the illness I could not detect, and parts of me that are desperately trying to keep my daughter alive while handling limited and inaccurate data to keep her safe. The data does not capture how my brain activity trying to process all the medical data and write the scripts to make me a "perfect patient who is reasonable and should be heard," and the nervous system that was fired up by perceived dismissiveness and by sitting in front of the computer for a full work day doing research. The data also does not capture the dysregulation of the nervous system that is trying to process a whole day spent at the hospital trying to make sure I am ok and the baby is ok.

What I am trying to say is thank you to my body that operated on the average of the 7 hours and 17 minutes of sleep like a whole team of highly qualified trauma therapists, medical researchers, and advocacy specialists. I have learned to see inflammation and stored cholesterol as a way my body prepares to fight for my needs in light of a history of trauma and navigating a difficult medical system. I am so grateful that in this season I have an opportunity to shift from creating structure that held me through one of the most painful and stressful seasons into cultivating rest, lightheartedness, and healing before our little girl arrives in July.

In the next 90 days, I want to see the effect that introducing small shifts in rest, playfulness, and lightheartedness will have on my perceived stress during a season of life that is very stressful, navigating a high-risk pregnancy and transitioning to parenthood after previous loss. I will use the

Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) today before I start and after 90 days. Baseline Metrics (May 17):

Total Stress: 24/40 (81.5 percentile)
Perceived Helplessness: 17/24
Lack of Self-Efficacy: 7/16

A: Focus: Rest & Playfulness (New 90-Day Roadmap Launch)

B: DEFINE IT -> This week is about Initiation and Exploration. Each week will follow the same structure: Once I write my shift post, I want to kick off the week by purging negative feelings associated with what prohibited rest and playfulness in the first place—my childhood trauma. I will then practice the play focus for the week and, at the end of the week, journal on how the play focus felt in my body. Play has no metrics, no production value, and no final grade; it is purely about how it makes my inner world feel as I carry my baby girl into these final months.

I want to start with a daily morning mirroring ritual. Several times a day I will look myself in the eyes and say the words the Manager part of me that keeps me from rest needs to hear:

"I see you, and you are enough exactly as you are. I see how hard you are working to keep us safe in this environment. You did a great job in the past. But for Axella, I don't need you to be a General; I need you to be a Sanctuary. We need your heart rate to stay low so that Axella can experience safety—this is a high-priority medical need. You are allowed to rest in the Ordinary with me."

C: GOOD / BETTER / BEST VERSION

GOOD: Maintain the 7:00 PM Work-Stop + 1 mirroring ritual a day.
BETTER: Maintain the 7:00 PM Work-Stop + 2 mirroring rituals a day.
BEST: All of the above + 10 minutes of useless play a day.

ONE SMALL STEP TO MAKE IT EASIER The "Play Menu": 3 minor, low-energy things that bring a sense of fun—sing songs to Axella, do one nesting project, dance.

Other things I am tracking: