I wish someone would have told me this when my world was falling apart… I was 28 years old loosing my professional career I had worked many years in school to earn, was being forced to apply for disability assistance, was afraid to loose my house and my car, I was struggling to keep up with anything and everything in my life and it all seemed like a giant nightmare!
Here I am though, now 12 years later, and I have found lasting love, we have a beautiful home together, I have re-trained myself in a part-time business that I can manage through my symptoms. I have two beautiful pets, I have good relationships, I have hobbies, and have found purpose and meaning in my life through the suffering and tears.
It took a long time, it took a lot of effort, and yes my life did completely fall-apart… I am not the woman I was before chronic illness, and sometimes I do miss her, but that is okay… I have also found this new woman who I never would have been without the illness, without the fight, the tears, the stress, the pain, the struggle. I have found inner courage I never knew I could muster, I have found persistence and grit I never knew a human could have, I have found such a deep compassion and appreciation for everything that life is, I take nothing for granted for a second of the day as I now know that health is such an immense privilege, even the health I enjoy still though my serious illness… but I have now seen life lived by those who can’t eat solid food any longer and are fed by tubes, those who can’t walk at all, even stand, or even sit up un-assisted, those who no longer even have the gift of taking a breath on their own as breathing machines force air into their lungs because their body is too weak to do so on its own.
Life after illness and disability is hard there is no question… but if you let the path become your TEACHER you will find happiness and joy again, you will forge a new way, and you can do so much still in this world.
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