Illness has unraveled me. Like others with invisible illness, at different points, I have lost nearly everything. Yet, I am one of the lucky ones. Most of my 20s I had little energy for family, friends, hobbies, relationships, education or career flexibility. And yet, while I am still grieving watching life pass me by, I continue to be reinvigorated and healed only by what I can describe as pure grace.<\/p>\n
Coping with the stigma of an invisible, misunderstood illness has gifted me with a nourishing connection to self, soul and planet and a ferocious compassion for all life.<\/p>\n
My earliest memory of being different is not having the energy to run and holler on the playground like other kids. Socially, delayed cognitive processing and ADD-like brain fog made adolescence excruciating. I grew up playing outside in a haze of pesticides sprayed on the cornfields around my house.<\/p>\n
A Type A personality, I pushed through. I went into deep denial in high school when my blood pressure and adrenal fatigue was so bad I would black out standing up too quickly or close my eyes to rest when walking down the halls. I almost didn\u2019t make the last few months of high school even though I amassed achievements a mile long.<\/p>\n
It was in college that I completely lost control. Life felt like a death match gameshow I could not win. Cycling through severe stomach pain, exercise-induced blackouts, muscle pain, amnesia, neuropathy, insomnia, nausea and depression was the norm. I should have dropped out. Chronically flu-like, I blamed myself. I chose to hide and overcompensate and graduated with honors.<\/p>\n
I had a burst of almost-normal energy followed by another decline, and this cycle continued until I was housebound on and off for years and then six months straight in 2013. At one point, my depression became severe, and I was fighting for a reason to “be here.”<\/p>\n
It is humiliating to be told that my symptoms couldn’t be real. Intolerant of making other people uncomfortable, or being dismissed, I further cut myself off.<\/p>\n
The beauty of reaching these depths of despair was that I finally dropped within and let go of control, expectations and attachments. If I could stop judging my experience, I might find peace.<\/p>\n
While I still experience relapse and down cycles, I am now healthier at a core level than I have ever been. After a lifetime of illness, I have made a 65 percent recovery by engaging in therapies to heal CNS dysfunction, naturopathy, somatic work, and most importantly, taking up a strict diet of rebellious self-love and self-advocacy.<\/p>\n
I am now successfully self-employed helping others reckon with chronic illness.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t change the agonizing soul lessons that have brought me here for a thousand carefree years in the sun. Little by little, as I let go and listen to the whisperings of guidance within, I am regaining more than I could have ever lost.<\/p>\n
I am unspeakably blessed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Humans of ME\/CFS Illness has unraveled me. Like others with invisible illness, at different points, I have lost nearly everything. Yet, I am one of the lucky ones. Most of my 20s I had little energy for family, friends, hobbies, relationships, education or career flexibility. And yet, while I am still grieving watching life pass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/sean_s.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofchronicillness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}