Surviving Chronic Illness

I know I've said this before, but it's worth saying again: It is incredibly hard to be sick day after day. But being chronically ill does not mean that you cannot find happiness and peace in your situation. Lyme disease ripped me straight out of the ground--uprooting me from a life of normalcy, and replanting me on what felt like an entirely different continent. I had two choices: learn to grow where I was replanted or whither away...

Having a chronic illness doesn't have to mean a miserable life just because it's a different life than you expected. You, and only you, are in charge of which way you choose to look at it. When your body doesn't cooperate and you can no longer do the things you want to do, it is frighteningly easy to let yourself get sucked into a deep pit of despair. It is no surprise that many people become depressed when battling a long-term illness.

You might be housebound, or even bedbound, but the sooner you can understand that you are still useful and that you still have a purpose in life--though it is likely much different than you thought it was going to be--the easier it is to pull yourself out of that dark place. If you can no longer do what you could do before you were sick, your goal is to find your new purpose, because chronic illness, like a tornado, sucks you up and abruptly drops you in a very unfamiliar place. Your purpose is still there, it's just not where you thought it was. You are different after the tornado of your illness and you are on a new path now. "New" can be scary, but it can also be a very beautiful thing.

As a plant grows, the weakest and oldest leaves die off. This gives the plant more energy to focus on its strong and healthy leaves. In order to grow stronger and taller in your present life and live in harmony with your illness, you have to let go of the bitterness and negativity you've likely picked up along the way from losing your health. I had to accept that I can no longer do many of the things I love to do. That was the most difficult part of my journey so far--even harder than coping with the pain--and I had to go through the stages of grief before I could accept my illness.

My life does not look like what I thought it would now, but it is a good life--full to the brim with many blessings and wonderful friends. Living with an excruciating and controversial disease is not easy, but it is quite possible. My heart has bloomed with beautiful flowers that have grown out of nuturing the seeds of hard work that were/are required to live in harmony with chronic Lyme disease. It has not been an easy path for me, but my walk has been made more bearable by wildflowers of encouragement planted along the way by friends and family.


I would love to hear what you have done to survive your own chronic illness or what you have learned from loving someone with a chronic illness!