Embracing Crip Time: Redefining Pace, Productivity, and Patience

Crip time challenges us to reconsider our relationship with time and pace. Here is what it entails.

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

On May 2nd 2011 my life was interrupted — forever. I was attending a yoga teacher training class and I had to lie down for the entire class, not knowing what was wrong. I had just quit my job, because I thought my job was the cause of my symptoms and venturing out on my own would solve it. While I tried to keep myself financially afloat running a small online coaching business, I would never work a fulltime job again. 

Without knowing, or understanding why, my bodymind had shifted into ‘crip time’. 

‘Crip time’, a term I first heard in Alison Kafer’s book Feminist, Queer, Crip and later in Ellen Samuels’ essay Six Ways to Look at Crip Time, challenges us to reconsider our relationship with time and pace. Crip time embraces the rhythms, delays, and pauses that come with navigating a world not designed for all bodyminds. Alison Kafer writes: “Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.” 

The first thing I noticed when I entered crip time was that my body or mind did not respond well to deadlines or any kind of pressure. I remember, in the early days of my illness, my friend had asked me to “just call for some take away, will you, I’ll be arriving in twenty minutes.” I completely broke down. It was too much pressure to first of all make decisions (decision fatigue is real), and second of all to call strangers on the phone. This is not something that was ever a problem before I entered crip time. 

Deciding on food (and deciding for someone else) is exhausting when your energy levels are minimal and your brain has slowed down. And talking to strangers requires alertness that I simply have never had since I became ill. Anything can happen on a phone call with strangers — whether a rational thought or not — and my brain and nervous system don’t  like that. 

My friend was surprised, in shock actually. She had no idea I would react this way to minimal pressure, and frankly, neither did I. I had changed. My relationship to time had changed. My life and the way I move through it had changed.

It would take another six years before I got an official diagnosis of ME/CFS, but during those years of not knowing that my body was ill were the most confusing: I wanted to live in ‘normal time’, but my body or brain wouldn’t let me.

My energy levels were fluctuating and mental and physical exertion could hit at any time without my knowing. I didn’t have the knowledge or know-how needed to adapt or pace effectively. But something shifted when I was finally diagnosed and I knew what was biologically going on in my body (at least to some extent). 

I ended up quitting my small online business, because I could finally accept that this was not something my body and brain were capable of anymore and I finally learnt to pace effectively. 

I began the process of accepting living in crip time, with everything that entails:

Crip time entails waiting for relief and better days and building a reservoir of patience. 

I often wait for months in between writing or recording a line of vocals for my upcoming album. I have long periods where all I can do is lie with my eyes closed, and to ensure my brain isn’t going in all kinds of directions I put on a series I have seen plenty of times before and turn the volume down. In that way my brain is occupied without being overstimulated. 

I try to not see these periods as a waste of time as it is simply a part of the rhythms of my body, although I must admit doing so is incredibly difficult. But I have become a master at patience. I can out-wait anything and I feel it has become my superpower. Afterall, good things come to those who wait, right?

Crip time entails going into dark places with eyes wide open

My friend said the other day: “There is nothing like chronic illness to help you shed all of your demons.” And she is right. Crip time involves spending time in darkness, facing your own mortality, facing fear and angst as well as loving parts of yourself you never knew you needed to love. 

Ellen Samuels writes in her essay: “Crip time is grief time. It is a time of loss, and of the crushing undertow that accompanies loss.” A lot of time, when living with chronic illness, is spent grieving all the things we lost and the things we will never have or experience. We grieve concrete losses as well as the ambiguous ones. 

Our time, more so than able-bodied, is spent in grief or dark places, sometimes it takes a long time before we breach for air. This time is valuable, even though we don’t acknowledge it as such in our ableist and patriarchal society. In crip time we practice compassion and empathy and shed the things that do not contribute to our humanity.

Crip time entails redefining productivity and letting go of linear progress

I have good days and bad days, setbacks and times of joy — there’s never a linear path towards anything I do. Crip time means honouring the cyclical nature of the body and mind, resisting capitalism’s constant pressure to move forward. It’s our quiet revolution.

Crip time asks us to listen to the natural ebb and flow of our energy and to value the pauses as much as the progress. My body and brain decide when it’s time to rest, not me, and I have learnt to trust in those signals and that rest is an equally necessary part of the process as ‘doing’. Able-bodied people could learn a lot from us.

Crip time becomes a radical act of self-compassion in which we emphasise the value of how we care for ourselves, rather than how much we accomplish. It’s a rebellion against measuring life’s worth by results or speed. We know that there is no one right way to live or create.

Crip time entails adapting — and letting go when nothing can be adapted

I had to completely change the way I create and produce music, as I have written about here. From being in hour-long flow states when composing and writing, and recording a full song at a time, I had to adapt. Instead of flow states I chop the entire song writing process into tiny creative acts, which you can read more about here. And instead of recording a full song at a time I only record a line or a verse on those few days a year where my voice opens up, 

But there are things I cannot adapt — like making my own food — and I have to let that go so as not to hurt myself. 

Imagine if crip time was normalised. Fewer people would experience stress and burn out, our environment would be less burdened, mental health could improve across the board as there would be less pressure to conform to rigid timelines, and there would be a greater degree of inclusivity in our society in general. 

Tell me…

What does crip time entail for you?

How have you had to adapt due to your impairments?

What can able bodied people learn from us?

Thank you so much for reading this post. If you know someone who could benefit from this, then please share this page with them. You are also more than welcome to share it in your Facebook or other patient support groups.

Did you miss?

Tiny creative acts: How I stay creative in the midst of chronic illness

This is what happened when I tried to embrace my disability/illness

Grieving the loss of my inner world

Meditation: Calming an overactive mind

Are you looking for all the meditations? Click here