‘I can’t afford to get sick!’ I’m sure we’ve all said this from time to time. It was Deborah’s catchcry. Her household was a typically busy one with two working parents and school-aged kids.

Deborah is a nursing unit manager at a major hospital and she was 100 per cent ‘on’ pretty much from the moment she arrived at work until her shift finished. She prided herself on being able to nip illness in the bud! Until she experienced an immune system breakdown due to prolonged stress and overload and the varicella virus, or shingles, reactivated in her body.

Because shingles is contagious, she had to take time off work. It was the first time in her life she had taken the time to heal and she saw it as the wakeup call it was. It was time to create some capacity in her world not just to slow down but to give her body a chance to rest. She began to focus on developing the abilities of her team so the workload was more evenly distributed, and this gave her the space to think and lead.

At home, because in the early stages her shingles had been quite severe, the family had had to step up. Once she got better, she didn’t take back all the responsibilities she had relinquished.