knows the callous ignorance underlying such claims. What creating your own reality really means is to cultivate your ability to create and take responsibility for the mental environment within which you operate, thereby ending your emotional suffering so that you can face your disease head-on—with acceptance, strength, and laughter. It is not meant to cause you guilt or shame.
When I stop feeling angry about my disease, my whole world changes. It doesn’t mean that I am physically healed or that the disease is gone, it means that I find ways to appreciate my life as it is. Sometimes I have to put “mind over matter” and be happy with my life, even if my body isn’t performing the way I wish it would.
There are ways in which my life has been enhanced because of my disease: I have become someone I like much better than the person I would have been if I hadn’t been so challenged; and I have established a deeper connection to divinity because of my experiences with this illness. Now I understand that having a shifted reality (diagnosis) doesn’t have to equate to suffering (a decrease in the quality of my inner landscape); I can choose happiness.
This book won’t heal your disease. But it will help you heal your ideas about the disease and find ways to love your body and your life, sometimes despite the disease, sometimes in celebration of it—and often through humorous reflection on it.
Creative Tips for Empowering Yourself
• While the diagnosis stage is scary, remember you are still the same person you were before. Whether your diagnosis is recent or not, remember you are not your disease; you merely have it. Say, “I am a person with these symptoms,” or “My body is healthy, whole, and happy!” By doing so, you maintain your own identity and remember that your life is not controlled by illness.
• Find one thing to laugh about today.
• Pick one thing you did today, however small, that you couldn’t do yesterday and say “thank you” to your body.
• Replace anger with acceptance and gratitude. Say, “It’s okay that I can’t do everything I want to do; I will celebrate the things I can do.”
• Repeat after me: “I can be happy no matter what is happening to my body because I am a beautiful, wonderful being, and I am alive!”
Caregiver Tips
• For any parent, spouse, significant other, or close friend, the beginning stages of diagnosis are scary—know you are an important part of your loved one’s journey.
• To be supportive of your loved one, listen to him or her, accompany him or her, be understanding, and realize you don’t have to “solve” everything to help.
• Just being there is often enough.
Create Your Own Marvelous Transformation
Take your journal and spend a few minutes reflecting on what you’ve just read. Let the following questions guide you in processing your own truth and emotionally charged experiences you may have been reminded of through reading my story. Thinking and writing about these ideas and any positive insights you have gained from this chapter will help internalize and solidify your own transformation:
1. What situation or example in this chapter resonated most with you?
2. When faced with similar situations, how do you feel, act, or think?
3. What would you most like to remember from this chapter?
4. What can you do going forward to view your diagnosis in a more positive light?
5. How do you feel, now, when you think back to the time of your diagnosis?
6. With your new perspective, how will you deal with feelings of unfairness from now on?
7. Look back at the notes you made before you read this chapter. Have your thoughts changed after reading the chapter? If so, how? What realizations are you most grateful for?
Pigtails and Knobby Knees: Learning to Overcome
Take Stock of Where You Are Now
Transformations often begin with a radical decision. Answer the following questions about life-changing decisions in your journal.
1. Name a time when you changed a habit or trait that no longer served you.
2. What did you do to change the habit or trait?
3. How did you feel about the decision?
4. What was the experience of change like (easy or difficult) once you made the decision?
5. What parts of your life have been altered due to your health?
6. Describe any tough decisions you’ve had to make to change your chosen path. How do you feel about those decisions?
7. If there were another area in your life in which you could make a powerful, path-altering decision, what would it be? How do you feel when you think about making that change?
The Wonderful Pieces of Divinity I Have Found
You are stronger than you know, even if you have to dig deep to find it.
•
You can do anything you put your mind to.
•
Be grateful for the life you have.
•
Having autoimmunity helps you slow down.
This is a good thing.
•
Money isn’t everything.
•
Your planned career may not have been your life purpose; find your path by listening to life as it presents itself.
I was that awkward, shy, creative, pigtailed girl with her nose stuck in a book on the playground. The middle of three kids, I was quiet and didn’t really understand other people’s jokes. I tried to be nice to everyone and while I wanted to have a lot of friends, whenever I found myself in a crowd of kids I just wanted to be left alone. The only place I felt truly comfortable was with my family. This shyness would play a huge role in my ability to manage my health later in life.
Mom stayed home and chauffeured the three of us around, as mothers do, until she became a teacher when I was in third grade. She liked to sew a lot. She enjoyed decorating and sewing, making some of our clothes and all of our Halloween costumes. We could dress up as whomever and whatever we wanted: a mermaid, a bride, a pumpkin,
