What was never closed to you

The narrowing was to the ritual prayer and the fast. That is all of it.

Dhikr is open. Dua is open, and you are in a state the tradition takes seriously. Listening to the Qur'an is open. Sadaqah is open. Istighfar is open. Sitting with your hands empty and saying something to Allah in your own language is open.

One honesty note inside that list, because the difference is real and you may meet it. Silent reading is held to be open, with al-Nawawi reported as saying there is no difference of opinion on it, and listening is open. Reciting aloud is disputed: the majority disallow it in this state, while al-Bukhari, Ibn Jarir at-Tabari, Ibn al-Mundhir, Malik and ash-Shafi'i in an earlier view permitted it. Those positions are set out on islamqa in fatwa 70438, which also records that the report usually used to close recitation is itself weak. We report the difference and settle none of it.

And on the form of worship when you cannot manage the ordinary form, a classical handbook describes you rather than excuses you. Ibn Qudamah al-Maqdisi, in Mukhtasar Minhaj al-Qasidin:

فأما من صعبت عليه الطهارة في الليل، وثقلت عليه الصلاة، فليجلس مستقبل القبلة وليذكر الله تعالة، وليدع مهما قدر. فان لم يجلس فليدع وهو مضطجع

Our rendering, and it is a rendering rather than a published translation: as for one for whom purification at night is difficult, and the prayer is heavy upon him, let him sit facing the qibla and remember Allah, and supplicate as much as he is able. And if he does not sit, let him supplicate lying down.

There is no note of apology anywhere in that sentence.

It is worth saying what this section is not. Doing more of any of it is not a substitute for treatment and it is not a test you can fail. If somebody has told you that more dhikr would have lifted this, they were wrong, and lesson five deals with that sentence directly.

This is a concession, and the tradition is direct about what a person is meant to do with one. Take to the concession Allah has granted you, and accept it. The Qur'an says it as plainly as it can be said: God wants ease for you, not hardship.

The forty days are not forty days of falling behind. They are forty days on a different footing, and that footing was given to you.