chronic illness

The Aftermath of the Afterlife: Part 2

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*** TRIGGER WARNING: Please be advised that the following post contains graphic and triggering content.***

The physical repercussions of what happened to me in that operating room have been the catalyst for me to learn all there is to know about the human body and how it functions. The long road of recovery is still taking place even 10+ years later. The autoimmune issues and secondary complications from all that took place is still a learning process. Just when you think you have it all figured out, your symptoms change, you become reactive to "safe" products and foods, and suddenly you have to start from square one.

Although the physical challenges have been my most difficult to overcome, the emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges I have faced weren't any easier. Of course with that kind of trauma and loss it takes a toll on your emotional and mental state. I spent 4.5 hours every week for the first year after the trauma with a psychiatrist and a mental health team who specialized in Women's Health Postpartum issues. I worked with grief counsellors to process the loss of my babies, and with the help and support of these specialists, I slowly but surely found my center again.

It was hard to process all that went on, all that had happened, and filtering my feelings and experiences to not reveal the spiritual crisis I was in after what I had saw. I was walking a very thin line of receiving help for the emotional and mental aspect, all the while knowing that I couldn't reveal the spiritual experience I had, in fear I'd be looked at as crazy or trigger some kind of event where I got locked up in the mental ward. I was terrified that what I had experienced would be looked upon as a mental crisis, so I kept those details and my experiences to myself.

I knew the minute I woke up in the hospital that I was different. I didn't feel like myself. I could see colourful mists around people, and somehow knew what they were thinking. I remember waking up when one of the nurses came into do a check on me, she smiled as I opened my eyes and hovered over me asking me if I needed anything. I said, "You have to go." She came closer to me and asked me to repeat myself, as my voice was still very much a whisper from the damage that took place during surgery. I said, " You have to go." "Go?" She asked, "Go where?" "The girl down the hall, she needs you." I said. Confused she looked at me and said, "What girl?"

At that moment a CODE BLUE rang throughout the hospital requesting all medical teams to head to the room the emergency was taking place in. As the nurse heard the call, she looked at me. I put my finger (the one with the "ET" heart rate monitor on it) up in the air pointing at the ceiling where the speaker was sounding off. "She needs you." I said. "You have to go!" The nurse was confused but left my room in a hurry to respond to the code call.

Later on that day, before she ended her shift, she came back into my room for final rounds. I opened my eyes and asked her if the girl was alright. She nurse looked uncomfortable, but told me that she was doing fine, that it was a close call but they were able to bring her back. I smiled at her, and said "She's scared. She's all alone with a new baby. She doesn't think she can do it. But she can. This is her chance." The nurse politely smiled at me, and quickly left my room.

When I finally got out of the hospital and could head home, I went to stay with my father. My house had too many stairs and I wasn't even able to walk unassisted at that point, so the stairs were a deal breaker for me. I was on some pretty heavy medications after the trauma. I would slip in and out of a dream state where I was experiencing some pretty new dream content, with some really disturbing messages. I had chalked it all up to the drugs until I stopped taking all my meds and the weirdness continued.

Once I stopped taking my meds, I actually couldn't sleep. I would fall into a dream state where I was back in the hospital waking up for the first time with all the doctors standing over me. I could hear babies crying in the background and the dream took a scary turn when the doctors started yelling at me about how I had already forgotten about my babies. They were tormenting me saying that I just left without my babies and now they will be given away, how someone else will raise them.

At that point in the dream I would wake up, terrified, sweating, crying, and reliving the whole trauma over again. This happened multiple times a night, and went on for weeks. The lack of sleep didn't make my days in physical and emotional therapy any easier. It took a toll on me. It got to a point where I was even scared to fall asleep because I didn't want to experience that dream again.

After 11 days of being awake, not falling asleep for even one second, I asked my doctor for help. She gave me some meds to help me sleep, and we worked through the mental and emotional issues connected tot the dream. I got an overwhelming urge to get a tattoo for my babies, memorializing them in the most permanent way I could think of. My boyfriend at the time (the "would be" father of my children) carried me into a tattoo parlour and laid me in the chair where I got my tattoo.

On my right arm, the side of my body that received the most damage, the side of my body that didn't have collapsed veins, the side of my body that kept me alive, I memorialized my children where I wear my heart on my sleeve. That night, as if I had made some kind of peace within myself. I slept for the first time since the trauma without any kind of nightmare forcing me to wake.

The weirdness didn't stop there though. I had been experiencing these really weird times where my ears would ring so badly that it was debilitating. It sounds like a microphone was too close to the speaker inside my head. I couldn't see anything, or hear anything around me when it happened, other then this loud screeching inside my head. This went on for a while. With no physical or medical explanation, I was left to deal with it on my own.

One night as I was watching tv, this happened again. But this time, the loud speaker in my head came through, like I had been scanning the radio for a clear channel. It sounds like many voices speaking together at one time. RUN! That's what I heard. RUN! Run?! Run where? I can hardly even walk how the eff am I suppose to run?!

The messages "RUN!" came through at least once a day. Me, now confused and numb to these experiences, I just let them come and go. Spirit doesn't like to be ignored though. Of course I didn't know that at the time, so it was a hard learning curve.

When I went to sleep at night all I dreamt about was me being in bed in a dark room. The whispers in the shadows kept repeating "Run... run.... run..." This went on for weeks. Finally, one night, the dreamscape changed. The whispers were still chanting, but this time they became louder. And the louder they got, the more I covered my head with pillows in my dream. I remember watching myself all curled up in my bed, my head covered with pillows, and then the chanting stopped. I watched myself take the pillows away from my head and when I sat up in my bed, there were figures of people standing all around me. They stood there, still, unfamiliar, and silent. And then they opened their mouths all at once and this high pitched frequency came streaming out.

In that moment I woke up.

This dream went on for months. The same dream, the same chanting, the same figures, the same high pitched frequency. I woke up at the same time, every time.

Six months later, I reached a huge goal in physio therapy. Finally walking unassisted, and able to stand for more than 10 minutes, I had another crisis. My boyfriend at the time, was an alcoholic, and an abusive one at that. The truth is, I had no business being with this guy. I knew he was trouble. We had had our first physical altercation the day before I found out I was pregnant. We decided that was our wake up call and that we had to put the past behind us, to start new and be better for our child.

To say that he was supportive of me during my trauma would be a lie. He spent the time I was in surgery drinking in the parkade, he was talking to other women and inviting them over to my house while I was still in the hospital, and he beat me down emotionally for "Not being able to provide him with children." "What's wrong with you? he'd say. Thirteen year old girls get pregnant and have babies the first time they have sex. What's your excuse?"

That kind of mental and emotional abuse is never okay, but when someone is already at their very lowest, that kind of talk can be deadly. Not in a position to fight, argue, or defend myself, I just took it. I just took whatever crap he threw my way and internalized it.

That night, on the day I reached my physio goal, he was drinking and became very dangerous. I had asked him to leave many times, but we both knew he wasn't going anywhere. At the end of my rope, I grabbed the phone and hid it under my blanket. I hit redial knowing he had talked to his parents earlier on that evening. Trembling, I held the phone still allowing them to hear the shitshow that was taking place in my living room. After a few minutes, when I felt they had heard enough, I hung up the phone. They immediately called back, and when he answered he played it cool like all was well in the world.

As I watched his face, I knew they were confronting him about all they had just witnessed. His eyes glazed over in blackness and he threw the phone at the wall smashing it in a million pieces. He threw is lit cigarette on my carpeted floor, dumped his beer over me before throwing it threw my window and came at me as I was sitting on the couch. "RUN!" The voices in my head screamed at me, "RUN! RUN! RUN!"

That was the first time in my life I had been thrown across the room like a rag doll. What seemed to be the longest minutes I had ever lived turned into a nightmare that even I couldn't wake up from. I crawled over the floor trying to reach my cell phone to call the cops. Just as the operator answered he grabbed the phone from me smashing that too. He had spent time in jail as a young defender and was terrified to go back as an adult.

"RUN!" They screamed, "RUN!" I got up an ran to the kitchen. He was screaming at me that he was going to kill me and I believed him.

Just as I reached my butchers block of kitchen knives, he came from behind and attacked me, trying to get the knife from my hands. He threw me against the cupboards and stood over me as I was screaming on the top of my lungs for help. In that moment I knew there wasn't a chance in hell that my neighbour was going to hear me screaming and that I was going to die in my own kitchen.

Suddenly I was looking over my body, again. I was up in the corner of the ceiling looking down on all that was taking place. I kept telling myself that it was okay, help was coming and that I was going to be alright. My physical self kept kicking and screaming and trying to get him off of me, to get his hands away from my throat. My spirit self was screaming at my body from up in the corner of the ceiling, trying to cheer me on and keep fighting.

Just as I thought I was living my last minutes of life, my spirit self, hoovering above me and him on the floor, seen his parents running down the hall. His father grabbed him off me and rushed him to get out of there before the cops came. His mother kneeled down beside me and when I took my first breath free of his hands my spirit self jumped back into my body.

With the boyfriend now gone, and me in utter distress, his mother picked me up off the floor and got me settled on the couch. I was covered in beer, spit, blood, and tears. My house was totally destroyed. Broken windows, smashed tv, broken phones, curtains hanging off the wall, the fridge and its contents tipped over. His mother cried with me as she cleaned me up.

The police arrived and walked threw the hanging screen door that he ripped off on his way out. And when the cop entered my home he was just about as impressed as I was.

I lied. I lied to the cop. I made up some bullshit story about what had happened, and brushed it off even though his mother begged for me to tell the truth. I couldn't do it. It wasn't because I loved him, or wanted to protect him, it was because I loved his parents and his family so much, that I couldn't bear to be the reason of why their son would be in jail.

Against the cop's and his mother's advice, I stood my ground and stuck with my story and let him get away "Scott-free".

I laid in bed all night without closing my eyes for one second. I was waiting for the sun to come up so I could go to my father's house when we woke up. Beaten and bruised, I showed up on his door step and that was the last time I ever stayed in my own house.

I was struggling both mentally and emotionally with all that had just took place. I was getting ready to take a shower to wash the night off of me and I broke down in tears.

In my head, I asked for God or whoever was listening, to give me a sign. Give me a sign that things will be okay, that I did the right thing, and that I'm safe. Not sure, what I was actually expecting, I took off my clothes to get in the shower, and as I stood there, looking at myself in the mirror, tears running down my face, I got my sign.

On my chest was a bruise in the shape of an angel. He had forcefully pushed me against the wall with such power, that his handprints were embossed in my skin.

The angels were with me. The angels were in me. I was finally safe.

The Aftermath of The Afterlife: Part 1

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Thank you so much for all the love and support you've sent my way since the release of My White Light Moment. I know I left you all in suspense with that cliff hanger, but honestly, there is sooooo much to my story that it's hard to know when to stop. Waking up from that White Light Moment wasn't fun. My life was never going to be the same. Dealing with the physical repercussions of the events that took place in that operating room have also changed my life forever.

When I woke up the next day, my Mother stood staring out of the hospital room window. It felt as if I were looking in on her from another world. She looked tired and worried. I could feel she was scared. I spoke her name but nothing came out. I tried to move and couldn't. I cleared my throat and felt such excruciating pain that I stopped trying. The grunts and moans were enough movement to get my Mother's attention.

She quickly rushed to my side, frantically asking me if I was okay. She swiped my hair back off my face and kissed my forehead like she was never going to see me again. She screamed for the nurses and quickly ran out of my room to get help. I could hear her screaming down the hallway, "HELP! She's awake! She's awake! I need help!"

The nurses quickly rushed into the room and tried to keep me calm as they injected my IV with more meds. Suddenly everything was dark. 

The next time I woke up, it was as if I was on Grey's Anatomy. The scene where the patient wakes up and all the doctors are standing over them telling them how lucky they were to be alive.

Everything went back to black.

When I woke up the next time, I was able to speak. I had a "smelly cat sexy voice" like Phoebe off of Friends. It wasn't my normal voice, but it worked well enough to ask some questions. I asked the nurses who were standing over me uncovering my blankets to change my dressings what had happened. They explained to me that my veins and airways had collapsed in surgery and alarmed a CODE BLUE. They retracted the tube from my airway, and tried to run it through my nose to intubate, but failed. They ended up using excessive force to get a tube down my throat and ended up damaging my vocal chords, and breaking some teeth in the process. They had to run all my IVs and monitors to the opposite side of my body where the veins were still open, and the doctors had to cauterize the hemorrhage in my abdomen where they had removed my baby, in order to close my ports in preparation for resuscitation.

Not really sure how to respond to all that information, I just nodded my head. They took my last blanket off my to reach my dressings and I was immediately traumatized from what I saw. My body was black and blue, swollen and bloody. I was not the very pale-skinned person that I normally am. I was beaten and bruised beyond any type of recognition.

My heart monitor alarm went off and then I was quickly injected with more meds as I was to beginning to freak out. I was sent back to the darkness. 

After all was said and done, I was in the hospital for over 10 days; most of those  were spent in a drug induced coma to help the healing process. I had gone through 2 emergency surgeries, 3 blood transfusions, I was resuscitated after my airways and veins collapsed on the table. I sustained injuries from the struggle to incubate, from my teeth being cracked by the tools they use to stick the tube down your throat, to a damaged sinus cavity and vocal cords from a forceful intubation.

I suffered permanent nerve damage from them retracting their tools in my abdomen in a hurry. They nicked a nerve bundle from my spine that runs down my right leg. I had to endure 6 months of physiotherapy to walk again. Over 600 hours of absolute torture just to be able to walk unassisted. I gained over 100 pounds in 6 months from a blood disorder that I received from the blood transfusions, and now have such a compromised immune system that eating normal foods makes me sick. 

The first year after the trauma was spent going to doctor appointments and seeing specialist after specialist. It was a horrible time in my life. I also suffered some memory issues. The Doctors thought it was due to having such a traumatizing thing happen to me, but even to this day, I'm still not so sure about that. It was as if everyone and everything was new to me. I had no clue who my boyfriend (now ex boyfriend) was, or why I would even choose to be with him in the first place.

I didn't recognize my own family and had to rebuild a new relationship with each of them. I also didn't recognize my own house and decor. I had no clue why I would have ever chosen those curtains!

This trauma allowed me to see some of the greatest doctors in town. It took many years to get a full diagnosis. Medically, I was diagnosed with endocrine issues, adrenal issues, neuropathy & CRPS (a degenerative nerve disorder), and suspected for lupus and/or MS. I still have a benign pituitary brain tumour in my head that flares up causing more health issues in my body. My immune system is so overactive that I have a reaction to anything that gets put into my body. I can no longer tolerate scents and fragrances, foods and products that I'd used my whole life. Now it seemed like everything was causing me to be sick.

I ended up having to sell my house and car - along with anything else that was of value - shortly after getting out of the hospital, as I was now fully disabled. I was unable to work and couldn't keep up with the lifestyle I had previously established. No one plans to be disabled at 24 due to trying to have a family. I had no medical benefits or insurance coverage and was forced to downsize my life. 

Being grateful for a second chance at life was really hard throughout these times. I had spent a lot of time thinking about WHY I was spared a second chance. I thought of all the people out in the world that want to live so badly that they'd do anything just to continue on, and they don't get the chance to. But here I was, not wanting to be alive and having to deal with the aftermath of a horrible situation.

Everyone you hear about having a near death experience is always so grateful to be alive, and so happy and beyond blessed to be able to continue living. I didn't get it. I just didn't feel that way. I felt the weight of the world, the sadness, the heaviness of life. I felt pain constantly throughout my body. I didn't have any fight left in me but yet, I was spared my life. I should have felt grateful. The fact that I didn't feel grateful made me feel bad.

I just couldn't understand how anyone, if they had the same white light experience that I had, felt that kind of warm, loving, oneness, and to see that beautiful indescribable light like I did, how they could be happy coming back here. This world, although has its beauty, is nothing compared to what I saw. It's not even comparable. Even those rare moments in life when you experience TRUE beauty, a sunset, sunrise, true love; nothing even compares to the breathtaking beauty of that light; that love; that feeling of being at peace. The feeling of being home. Your soul's TRUE home.

These other people who are so happy to be alive, who have seen THAT light, couldn't have seen the same beautiful light I had. If they did, they would be here longing to go home; back into that light, as I do, every single day of my life. Don't get me wrong, I do my best to be happy and try to create a life for myself of gratitude and positivity despite the many horrible challenges I face on a daily basis. But in my heart of hearts, I know I'm here doing what I have to do, and once I've completed my mission, I too, will get to go home.

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Should We Really Embrace Our Pain?

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We as Souls decide to be humans to experience the hardships, challenges, pain and adversity, because as a Universal love we don't have the means to embody any other perspective than oneness, unconditional love, and understanding in Spirit form.

Humans are messy.

We have complex bodies and minds, and with our Soul and inner spirit inside of our heavy meat suits, we walk through the ups and downs of life trying to accomplish inner peace.

We are born with a quest for inner peace because that is the energy we live in as Spirit. It acts as our moral compass within these complex bodies to lead us on the path that gives us the best chance of feeling the inner peace that we come from.

This is a pretty heavy world we live in. We have lots of opportunities to either become more in alignment with our inner selves, or the chance to live in the world of illusions that we have created through the roles and requirements of the survival of our ego.

Ego is the voice and programming we have in our head. It is the inner chatter of negative and fear based motivations that have us abandoning the moral compass inside to fulfill all of our worldly needs and desires. And there's nothing wrong with that!

If you have a soul that has spent countless reincarnations as a poor or unfortunate human, struggling through lives without the luxuries of pleasure and comfort, it is totally fair to come into this life as a rich person who lives every moment surrounded with the best of the best this world has to offer, and not feel bad about it. Many people will get to experience that life lesson and at the end of that life, most would agree that THINGS, material possessions, and wealth was fun, but it came at far too great of a price.

Jim Carey, as eccentric as he's been over the years, will be the first one to say that everyone should have the opportunity to be rich and famous for them to realize that it isn't the answer.

The richest a soul wants or needs to be, is rich in experience, rich in lessons, and rich in the wisdom to know that if it wasn't for their pain and struggles, they would have never discovered their strength, their spiritual self, or the closest thing to inner peace a human could ever know.

I truly believe that The Universe gives the best students the toughest tests, and that we are tested in our faith and ability to tap into the love and trust in one's self and in the Universe as our Souls know very well. Many of the greatest spiritual healers come from great tragedy and pain. True healers don't go looking to fix people, but rather attract those ready to be triggered into wanting to help and heal themselves.

Through the scars of those that use their stories of experience to help inspire and encourage others to find their inner light, healers must endure the greatest pain from life experience to be able to show others that the way out of darkness, is to follow the light.

As humans, we are told that pain is something we want to avoid. Yes, it's unpleasant and something no one wants to voluntarily experience, but the reality is, it's through pain and discomfort that we learn and grow. Sometimes we don't have a choice in the trauma that we've experienced. We are conditioned by culture, genetics, environment, and influenced by those that raised us.

A lot of the time, we suffer from the actions and decisions of others. A child doesn't have control on whether they are abused, yet the abuser’s own inner hurt caused long lasting effects on a child that had nothing to do with the pain they experienced in life. Often times pain is passed down through generations, and each time it is up to us to heal from hurts that we didn't cause ourselves.

We as a society are going through a huge health crisis, as the weight and stresses of this world are sometimes too overwhelming for our energetic selves to handle. Because we are energy bodies trapped inside these human bodies, the alignment of these systems are so influential on each other that we have to treat disorders and diseases as whole body sicknesses and not focus on JUST the mental body, or JUST the emotional body, or JUST the physical body.

We are now seeing an epidemic of new diseases and disorders that are misunderstood to the medical community. Disorders like fibromyalgia, CRPS, MS, Dementia, and Alzheimers are effecting more people now than ever before.

I am a true believer in both energy and medical science, and trust that you need to factor both in, in order to fully understand what these diseases and disorders are operating on.

Most of the unexplainable disorders and diseases now are nervous system based. Because we live in a much more toxic world than ever before, both energetically and chemically, our energy bodies are overstimulated and begin to manifest physical symptoms.

I myself suffer from CRPS (Complex regional pain syndrome) caused by complications from my emergency surgeries surrounding my near-death-experience. CRPS effects the autonomic nervous system actions such as heart rate, digestion, temperature regulation and the automatic processes of your internal organs.

To simplify, my body tells my brain that it's under attack and my brain responds by sending all my cells into overdrive and fighting a non-existent war, which in turn, ends up identifying my own body as the invader. It sucks. After 10 years, I still don't have a full understanding of what goes on inside my body and brain.

Through my quest for a PHYSICAL healing, I have discovered that there is no amount of healing that will take place unless the whole body is being healed. Meaning, your mental, emotional, spiritual and physical self, all need to be nurtured and balanced in order to operate properly.

There is a huge mind, body, soul connection that we are JUST starting to realize here in the western world of healing. Most times than not, when we suffer a health crisis, it is really the beginning of a spiritual quest and discovery. It makes you face yourself, refocus your energy and efforts to heal yourself and get back to the things you love.

For example, if you break your leg, you will be in pain, it will bum you out, you will miss out on doing things you love, you will have lots of time to think of things that you wouldn't normally think about, and it is in these times that your inner strength - or lack there of - is revealed.

You find out just how strong you are when you have no choice but to be. And if you're lucky, you will heal the bone, and help yourself back to health and be able to regain full functioning of your leg and engage in all the things you couldn't do with a cast on. When you are able to regain your ability to take part in the things you missed out on, you will do so with a new appreciation for it, because at one time you took it for granted.

For some, we don't recover. Something happens in our physical bodies, and then of course in our mental and emotional selves, that don't allow the leg to fully heal. We end up losing our identity bit-by-bit by having to accept the fact that we may never skate board again, or live a life without being in pain. We may never walk without a limp or not be able to walk ever again.

Everyone's story is different. Everyone's circumstances are different. But one thing that is the same, is pain. We all experience pain. Everyone's pain IS pain, and there shouldn't be any comparison among pain and trauma. We are stuck in a culture that promotes focusing on pain, and promotes competition among everything we humans do. I have encountered many people on my path that compare pain and trauma to make themselves appear that they are in more pain than you.

I will repeat, pain is not a competition.

We are also a society that encourages healing. A part of healing is to acknowledge and embrace the pain. Whether we are talking about an emotional or physical trauma, there is always pain. As humans, we got really good at detaching and repressing pain. Whether we weren't raised in a healthy environment that encouraged expression, or whether we were just we unable to fully express ourselves in our world, we all have issues that we've stuffed so far down, that we are almost in denial of their existence.

That's what happens when you decide to heal. You have to ask all the pain hiding in the darkness of your heart to step up and identify themselves. You have to stare that pain in the face and hug it as much as you hate it. You have to acknowledge the pain's existence, and then you have to embrace the pain.

The problem is, we usually stop there. There is one more step to the process that we fail to complete, which is letting that pain go. We like to hold onto our pain. It makes sense to hold on, and identify with our pain, because it's because of the pain, that we are currently who we are.

We identify so greatly with our pain, that we begin to wear it as our armour. We get up every day and put on the pain that has shaped us. Sometimes, we are so scared to let go of the pain and actually heal, because we are afraid of who we might be without it.

I know it sounds too simple to be true, because chronic illness and ongoing pain is a very real thing. But the way to heal the physical pain, is to acknowledge the energetic pain that our physical, mental, and emotional bodies hold onto. It is through rewiring your brain, in alignment with what your other body systems know to be true, before we can truly see an improvement in our physical health.

I have been on the quest to heal for 10 years now, and I still suffer from debilitating physical pain that interferes with my life and has shaped me greatly. It is a daily struggle for me to be aware enough of myself, to remind myself that the pain does not define me. I am currently undergoing a very intense therapy that explores how to align the physical muscle memory and the energetic system of the body to reset the programming between the brain and the body. It focuses on the physical symptoms as a secondary complaint to the emotional trauma that tends to be a motivator for the body to hold onto.

When we focus so much on pain, we experience more pain. We give power to where we focus our attention. It is easy to feel at odds with your own body when you are constantly suffering from the wrath of hate your body seems to have for itself.

But instead of looking at pain as the enemy, we should embrace the pain enough to ask it what it needs to heal. When you befriend your pain, and use it as an indicator as to what you should actually be focusing on healing, you become more one with yourself then you would be when at odds with yourself.

Disease happens when we are not in ease within our selves. Dis-ease is created when the body systems aren't in harmony and balanced with one another. So any time there is a physical symptom, you need to realize there is an emotional motivator keeping that pain alive. We need to identify the trauma, acknowledge it, embrace it... and then let it the f@ck go!

We have to work on our release. Thank your pain every day for allowing you to experience your inner strength. Thank your pain for showing you the way to your spiritual self. Thank your pain for showing you where you need to focus, and thank your pain for coming as you boot it out the door.

I invite you, if you are a pain sufferer, to adopt the perspective every day when you get up in the morning, regardless of how bad you feel, that you GET to wake up today, you GET to learn how to take care of yourself, and you GET to be on the path of self discovery. When you stop putting your energy into the pain and the limitations it puts on you, you will see the pain shift.

Is it possible to get rid of pain completely and fully heal from such a horrible disease or disorder?

I'd like to think so! I believe in miracles and I believe in science. I think if you put forth the effort and are open to exploring your inner self, you will find you really do heal! It may be small parts of you that get healed or it may be a total recovery. I believe it is the best thing you can do for your state of mind and physical health.

Even getting needles every week and IV infusions more often than anyone should, I remind myself hooked up to those machines that this is just temporary. It's all just a stepping stone towards being free of the pain.

I have befriended my pain. I have embraced it and allowed it to lead my life. I've asked it what it needs from me, and I've given it everything I can. I still live with my pain, but each day it is another step to letting it go. And one day, when it has taught me all there is to teach, it will be released from my body, as I transform the pain energy it has created into a source of power.

I invite you to do the same.