I was 3 when I first said I was in pain. My mum and I were medically gaslit for years. “It’s growing pains”! I stopped growing when I was 10 so I don’t fucking think they were ever growing pains. So I learnt to ignore it, I had no other choice. I learnt to get by, keep going, push myself harder and strive for perfection all along ignoring my body, my needs and myself.
Throughout my life I chose everyone and everything else over myself and I held a deep resentment about it. As if it is someone else’s responsibility to put me and my needs first, after all I would do it for them. Bitter but not understanding how to help myself, angry and not able to let go of it, too bottled up to cry. I was sick!
Hindsight, in all its 20-20 glory, has helped me to see the truth in these patterns and conditioning I had - be good!!! Always be the best, be a good girl for mummy and daddy, behave appropriately (I actually never did that one hahaha). Be the perfect girl. Shut up and put up!
Breaking free of these patterns and limiting beliefs has been so liberating and healing. Even though I am sitting in bed, in my pjs at 6pm, feeling worse for wear, I know I am healing, I know I am doing what is best for me. I am finally choosing myself, feeling no guilt or shame in giving myself what I need.
I am coming off medication that I have been on for 10 years! For over two years I have not had any opiates, and I was taking the maximum dose possible daily for 8 years. That was hard, possibly the hardest thing I have ever done and as I am struggling with withdrawal symptoms again I remind myself of the strength and resilience I showed 2 years ago. That I have shown over and over again in my life.
You need to be strong and resilient when you’re chronically sick, even though you have felt weak look back at how you kept going. It is this that will help you get through the shittest parts of healing. Learning not to push yourself and still keep on moving forwards, to be kind and loving towards yourself whilst being brutally honest about your choices - it’s all a balancing act. First we go one way then all the way to the other side - from overworking to cocooning. Then we find our middle ground, and from here you build, learn and grow.
Taking responsibility for my choices, my needs and myself is how I continue to grow. Right now I choose to cocoon, to allow my body to acclimate to having no drugs in my system, to find the balance once again before emerging as a big beautiful Monarch butterfly (I’m a Queen after all!)
To show yourself love in the darkest of times is what lights the way out
