Growing Deeper Roots: My Story of Invisible Illness

Writing about my journey with chronic illness has been both therapeutic and difficult for me. Many times, processing my pain and recovery is more easily done when I start writing about it. Other times, the stage of recovery in which I have found myself is so full of complex emotions and thoughts, that stitching them into words coherent to another person, even one on a similar journey, is just impossible.  So I have been upfront when writing this blog, letting you know that my posts might come more sparingly as the journey's direction changes. When I started going to therapy and working on the grieving component of my illness, I was honest with you, letting you know that I wasn't always going to write about the process, I would have to keep parts of it private. That's the stage I was in most of this spring, sorting my own thoughts out and wondering if I'd ever be able to put them into words. Or if I would ever really want to, if I would want to open that story up to...

I haven't posted on my blog in a very long time. I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't neglect it. When I started it in the depths of my illness, when I was the sickest I'd ever been, I found that blogging was therapeutic and cathartic but it was also hard. So I promised myself that no matter how busy or tired or stressed I was, I would make time for my blog. I knew it was good for me. But I made another promise. I promised myself that I wouldn't let my blog become an echobox of self pity or whining or complaining or self-indulgent gloominess. I was going to write from a place of honesty but I was also going to write from a place of hope. Lately, these two promises have been in competition with each other. During my winter break I celebrated my first Christmas with my illness. My first New Years. I had a hard time balancing my health and my strong desire to celebrate and live normally. I'm still having trouble accepting my new normal, espec...