Tag: Healing

Asking Better Questions

(4 min read)

As I continue to trek down the path of uncovering the chronic health issues and seeking the help and support of my doc, my heart burns with one question over and over again. Will I get better?

Sometimes I break down about it. Because this still feels like it shouldn’t  be me. This still feels impossible. Like it can’t really be happening to me. 

I cry. Sometimes Justin catches me. He walks into a room, and there I am on the floor. Crying into my hands. Because I had just been trying to clean or work on a project or cook, and my body will just stop being able to take it. I collapse. And sometimes I handle that with grace. Deep breaths. Mantras of acceptance and release of control. Because when I tense up and stress about it, the crash gets worse.

Sometimes though, I collapse and cry. I’m unable to stop the sadness from boiling over. 

So Justin will sometimes catch me. And when he does, I sometimes ask him through my tears “will i get better?” 

It’s an impossible question for me to ask of him. He says various things. He tries to comfort me. Something in me so badly wants to know with certainty that I’m going to be well again.

Today, through writing, I heard an answer come to me. It came to me from……source? My highest self? God? I don’t know what you want to call it. All of the above are true. 

“If your question is one of fear, then it is also your answer. For an answer to a question that is birthed from fear is already in motion- creating in the Universe more fear. You cannot really answer that question with Love. Instead, hear the fear in your question, and re-phrase it to a question that is based in Love. A question that is based in Love is also an answer, and will go out into the Universe, creating more Love.” 

(I apologize if that sounds too airy-fairy; its just what came to me.)

And I realized that “will I get better?” was coming from the fear in me. It’s coming from terror that I will not get better. There isn’t a good answer to it. Fear will only actually create more of the same……more pain, sickness, fear, etc. 

And since our thoughts are creative, and have the creative energy to transform, and our words have even more creative power, I am sitting here trying to re-imagine that question into one that is coming from a place in me that is grounded in Love, not fear. (Since Love and Fear are the two operative forms of creation and are always in motion). 

So, I’m thinking that it’s okay to cry when I’m sad and scared. No harm in the honest raw expression of emotions. But then, to carefully create a better thought about my circumstance.

And that maybe my question could instead be 

“what will I do with this today?” 

Or 

“How can I bring love into this challenging situation that I am in right now?” 

“How can I accept myself today, in this moment?”

“How can I show my body love in this moment?”

Or at the very least

“Justin, can you just sit with me for a few minutes?” 

And, as difficult as it is sometimes, to remember that the future self is never coming. I will always only ever be in this moment. In the present. Here. Now. And all I will ever be able to do is accept the present moment as it is, with grace and gentleness. 

Because honestly, wondering about the future me, and if she will still be sick in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years………makes me sick. Makes my body tense. Makes me stressed. My heart races and I get anxious and sometimes even begin to panic. 

And though I do not believe that I have brought this sickness upon myself in any way, I also hold the tension of knowing that I have the creative power to re-create myself in each moment. Our thoughts and our feelings and our words are powerful, always writing and re-writing our experience.

And yeah, maybe I just got wayyyyyyy tooooooo  spiritual, metaphysical, theological cosmology- ish. 

But aside from all of that, I really do only see one way to truly live well: Acceptance. Loving what is. 

This is what I can control: How I feel about it. What I say about it. What I create my life to be about. 

Grace or anxiety.

Peace or fear.

Relaxing or White knuckling.

Flowing with life or Fighting it to the death.

Breathing in acceptance and love, or panicking and wondering. 

Weirdly, one of the reasons I write about my experience is to create for myself (and maybe for a few others who read this and find it comforting in some way) something beautiful from this pain- to ask a better question about the challenge I am in. 

I will, at the very least, have my own words as a living witness to my experience. To go back to and remind myself of how it has hurt, what wisdom I have gained, how it has created my heart to be more open, how much I have grown and become truer. 

With much love y’all, especially those of you who have hidden illnesses and challenges. I’m with you!! 

Riding the Waves of Hope and Hopelessness

*originally written in December 2020

Today, its hopelessness. 

That may sound dramatic, and honestly it may be a little dramatic. But it’s the strip-you-naked truth. 

The last two weeks I had been feeling and experiencing more hope. I think what makes me feel hopeful is when I can take meaningful action to solve a problem. When I’m faced with a problem, I like to come up with a plan of action to solve it.

That’s what makes this so damn hard for me.

I just can’t fix this.

I can’t figure out how to fix this. How to fix my aching, tired, sick body.

I hate how that even sounds. I hate saying it. Chronic Illness. Chronic pain. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I hate those words. They make me feel weak. Sound weak. And God I hate feeling weak. And God I hate not being able to fix myself.

So for years and years I’d been pretending I was well. I deeply believed that if I acted okay, and pretended to keep up with everyone else, that I’d trick my body into being fine again. 

Obviously I am sitting here writing about feeling hopeless about how much my body hurts and how no one has figured out exactly why yet, so ignoring my body’s struggles totally worked. 

I have ups and downs with pain, fatigue and an all-over ill feeling. This last low I hit two weeks ago was after experiencing such enormous pain in my neck and shoulders, that my husband found me in the bathroom sobbing hysterically into a bath towel. This was after we had been watching a family movie, and even the act of laying there watching a movie was excruciating. So much so that i had tears rolling involuntarily down my cheeks. In an attempt to hide the tears from my kids, I causally got up, went to the bathroom, and buried my face in a towel to muffle the sobs that wracked my body. 

This level-10 pain is new, as of 2019. I’ve had these chronic issues since 2009, but things have taken a dramatic turn for the worse for me since 2019. 

So a couple weeks ago I did some research, and called several doctors and a physical therapist. I finally, after over 10 years of ignoring my body and its signs of distress, have decided that I need answers. 

Jumping into action felt good. 

My physical therapist feels that although i have a history of chronic pain and illness, that the severe and worsening pain, dizziness, memory problems, nausea, uncontrollable tremor and vision problems are connected to a concussion and whiplash that occurred in 2019.

My family doc, who has been seeing me for a year now, ordered a repeat brain and cervical spine MRI, as he has believed for a year now that this is MS. (only a neurologist can diagnose this, so he is pushing me to see another neurologist.)

And a rheumatologist I saw last week didn’t really address my chronic issues yet, but thinks the increase in pain and addition of new symptoms are related to the neck injury.

I feel frustrated and anxious today, wondering if any of them can really give me the answers I need. I sense that neither of them are barking up the right tree. I sense that this is something different, something else, something more…….

I suddenly realized a couple weeks ago, that I cannot fully grieve and find acceptance for what i’m going through until I understand what it is. And I can’t seek the kind of help and support I need until I know what’s happening to me. 

Today I feel afraid that no one will figure this out. 

And I just needed to say all that out loud. Because it’s an incredible burden to keep inside me all this suffering; both physical and emotional. 

And I can’t just say this to my husband every day of the week. Or my friends. Or my family. He knows. They know. It feels awful to complain all the time. So I don’t.

This blog is to give myself the space to cry and grieve and feel it. So that I can pick myself back up again and go make dinner and be with my little family. I need to be present and joyful for my kids. They deserve a mom who smiles and laughs with them and enjoys their company. 

I just cannot let this problem I’m having turn me into a ghost. 

Pretty: A Six Letter Lie

I have been a sufferer of chronic pain, illness, shame, and maybe depression (though I hate to name it) for much of my adult life.

Here’s the kicker though: that person, described above, is unrecognizable from the young girl I once was. Ask my parents and sisters; they will tell you.

As a young girl, I was a force of energy and reckless abandon. I was a tomboy; constantly on the go, creating worlds of fun for myself. Riding my “air tire wagon” down my street, riding my beloved bike, rollerblading off of jumps I made, swimming endlessly in lakes, sledding, and being as silly and weird as I delighted in.

My sisters were my constant companions in these shenanigans.

If the sun was shining, and if the sun wasn’t shining, I was outside and moving.

Now obviously, there is so much about life that shapes each of us.

But I’ve recently become aware of a significant point in my life when I turned away from my truest self; my soul. When I traded my fun-loving, light-hearted energy in for something else.

I was in the high school locker room. I was 15 years old; a freshman.

I had just put on the required weight lifting uniform: long navy blue shorts and a grey shirt, and entered the high school weight room.

I had chosen weight lifting because I needed to fulfill my Physical Ed requirement, and I loathed organized sports, or competition of any kind.

After a short demonstration by the weight lifting coach about safety, we began learning how to do weighted squats, bench press, chest fly, lateral raise, biceps curl, triceps extension, leg curls, etc. We learned to use free weights and various weight machines.

I. LOVED. IT.

Mastering the techniques and doing the required repetitions came easily to me. I guess my lifestyle up to then really served me in this regard. I was strong, well-coordinated, and fearless.

There were two other females in my weight lifting class. The rest of the class was about 20 males.

The other girls were seniors; cheerleaders.

For the first several months in weightlifting, I was independent. I earned the respect of a few of the guys in the class, I suppose. They would do rotations with me and spot me. I could bench press and squat more weight than any girl in any other weight lifting class.

I was strong, capable, and I was enjoying these qualities in myself. They had been constant companions of mine.

After a while, I started to notice the two other girls watching me and whispering while I was in class.

I noticed a few of the guys, who enjoyed making these girls giggle. And after a while, they were joining in their across-the-room sneers and whispers and laughs as I bench pressed one day.

Was I just perceiving all of this? Maybe. I may never know.

The next morning, I changed into my uniform in the locker room, preparing for another weight class.

As I worked at my reps, I was aware of the cheerleader girls; remembering their disapproving looks from yesterday.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I consciously pondered the thought, “I am a girl; they are girls. They seem so different from me, though. We are not alike.”

I finished my reps and sat up on the bench. I was aware, suddenly, of their slender bodies. Small waists. Long, slender legs. They both had beautiful, long blonde hair. They giggled with the other boys. They sucked at lifting weights. They weren’t trying, really. They did not care about lifting weights.

But they were beautiful.

It just kept overwhelming my awareness.

I hadn’t really noticed this before. I hadn’t taken the time to notice. I was too busy doing me; being me; lifting weights and enjoying the methodical nature of working out each day.

Until I did notice.

And then, it’s like I couldn’t unsee it.

They both had long hair. One of them had curled hers so it looked really pretty. And it was pulled into a bouncy pony tail.

They both had on mascara. And….eyeshadow? (I wasn’t even certain of what it was called). And had bronzed cheekbones and pretty earrings.

They had each rolled the elastic waist of their shorts several times, making their school-issued shorts climb higher up their legs.

They had rolled and tucked their longish short sleeves up under the straps of their sports bras, showing off their slender shoulders and colorful bra straps.

And, I also noticed the “different” sort of attention they got from the boys.

After class that day, we went back to the girls’ locker room to change back into our regular clothing.

I caught my own reflection in the full length mirror of the locker room. A mirror I had never thought to stand in front of before.

I looked at me. And I consciously reflected, “I am not pretty. Like them.”

My arms were meaty and thick. My legs were thick and strong and not slender. I had pulled my socks up high towards my calves like I always had. My hair had been pulled into a quick low pony tail that showed off my big ears sticking out. My forehead looked huge. My eyes looked too small. My waist was not narrow. I looked huge and clunky and awkward.

I turned away from my reflection quickly, shame washing through me.

I wasn’t pretty.

The thought overwhelmed me.

I went straight to my room after school that day and stood in front of my bedroom mirror, in a way I never had up to that day. It was like seeing myself for the first time. I was nothing like those pretty cheerleader girls in my class.

And from that day forward, I had one goal: Be pretty.

And that thought slowly chipped away at the person I was before.

I no longer rode my bike. Instead I tried out new makeup techniques and hairstyles.

My time was spent studying pretty girls, loathing my differences, and trying to physically change myself.

The pursuit of beauty consumed my thoughts and therefore, my energy and presence.

And the saddest part: I was never pretty enough. I never looked in the mirror again approvingly. At least, not for many many many years.

It’s honestly astounding how much this one “little” experience I had in freshman weightlifting changed me.

Do I really think that this seemingly minor experience truly had the power to cause depression, chronic pain and illness for me?

Well, yes.

In part.

There are a few other aspects of my life that caused me to live in relatively permanent state of stress.

Whenever we are living out a mental story of shame or fear, we are putting our bodies into a perpetual state of stress.

The effects of this stress on our bodies has the power to cause any range of illness, mental and psychological struggle, and relational disturbances.

In what ways have you changed yourself in order to be good enough?

Is it someone else’s measuring stick you’re holding up to yourself? Or your own?

In what ways has your culture defined for you what you should look like, care about, or live like?

What happens when we look up and out too much? What happens when we are looking around us for the rules, instead of looking within?

I’ll share more of my journey through the Lie of Being Pretty, and how it shaped me, and why I had to throw it out…………next week.