ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
ðŠ Do You Still Recognize Yourself?
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Hi Reader, Somewhere in my first year or two after diagnosis, I caught my own reflection and had this small, strange thought: I don't totally recognize this person. Not dramatic. Just a quiet double-take. Patience running differently. Energy running differently. Even my sense of humor felt rewired somehow, in a way I couldn't fully explain to anyone who hadn't lived it. For a while I tried to fix it, like enough effort could get me back to exactly who I was before. What actually helped was realizing different isn't the same as lost. The version of me that showed up after diagnosis wasn't a lesser copy of the old one. Just further along. Shaped by something real that had actually happened. If you've had that same double-take in the mirror, you're not imagining it. You're not the only one sitting with it either. More soon, |
April Smith | The Thriving Spoonie
ðŠI create resources to help people adapt to living with chronic illness so they can thrive.
Hey Reader, Some days the routine just isn't happening. Pain's louder than usual, brain fog's thick, or there's no reason at all, just that heavy exhaustion that tells you today's going to look different. I used to try to push through those days anyway. It never worked. I'd end up more burned out, in more pain, and further behind than if I'd just adjusted in the first place. So I stopped. Now I've got three versions of my routine ready to go, depending on what the day actually gives me, and a...
Hi Reader, I hope your August is treating you kindly, because mine has been a lot lately. Between my husband's work schedule shifting around him lately, our community volunteer commitments ramping up for fall, and my own Tuesday choir practice, dinner has become the one thing I genuinely don't have extra energy left for by the time evening rolls around. And that's before my GI issues decide to flare and toss the whole plan out anyway. So this month, I stopped trying to plan meals and started...
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about a morning recently that didn't go anything like it was supposed to. I'd had a flare bad enough that I ended up calling my husband home from work. Pain and nausea that just wouldn't let up, my body sweating and shivering through it while my nervous system tried to sort itself out. Not fun. And for a few days after, my normal morning routine, the one I actually rely on, meds before food, food before coffee, a slow unhurried shower, just didn't happen. At all....