Month: August 2018

It’s Been A While

hourglass-time-hours-sand-39396In all honesty, I have no idea how so much time has passed since I first posted. Since (W)hole is such a new business, I sort of feel like I’ve left my kid home alone for too long. Well, since January, I’ve found my life exploding with mostly positive albeit time consuming things. Full time at work, helping with the new puppy, continuing my writing amongst other things – like my birthday and trips to San Francisco/Wyoming!!! The negatives include attempting to balance everything that’s been going on, which in turn has been causing stress. I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of stress eating and overly consuming coffee that’s also heavily creamer-ed. I grasp the fact that I am still a paleo-lovin’ babe, but unfortunately it is still much too easy to find packaged and/or convenience foods within that specific dietary lifestyle. And I know this, because I have been slowly indulging in such boxed wonders. Not much, but still, it’s been enough. Beyond the occasional packaged treats – and hard ciders, and whiskey neats – my number one negative cloud has been has been the two tests run by my doctor.

In March, I went to see a new doctor. Since my mother has RA (rheumatoid arthritis), and I already being diagnosed with Raynaud’s Phenomenon, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was on the path to at least one autoimmune disease. So, giving my symptoms (swollen joints, horrible pains in my feet at the end of the day, increasing anxiety, chronic exhaustion, blurry sight, completely random mood swings) I was told to get a blood test. I find that the worst part about blood tests isn’t really the prick of the needle, but the waiting. Waiting for results is boarder line torture, especially when you know that something is very wrong, and your appointments have to be booked a month in advance.

Before I had my blood taken, something incredibly strange happened. My body was reacting to things like work and the stresses of normal life at an increased level. I couldn’t control my reactions to things, and found myself hiding away because I didn’t know what was causing these outbreaks. I felt like crying, but there was nothing to cry for; my body hurt more then it ever had before. Any little thing would set my heart racing in the worst way, and I couldn’t control it. Six days of this before finally, I slowly began to feel not like myself, but slightly more under control again. Thankfully, I was about a week away from getting my results. Seven days later, my doctor told me  that I may have lupus, but we needed a second blood test to be sure. Just keep breathing is what I told myself over… and over… and over again.

There I was receiving the results from my second test, and as it turns out, I don’t have lupus… yet. Incredibly, I was angry about that outcome. It will sound outrageous to some, but I actually wanted lupus – not because I wanted a disease, but simply because I wanted to know what was up with my body, and how to care for it. Why in the world couldn’t I just know? Since I was eleven I’ve been trying to figure out what my body wants, and here I was again, answer-less. In all truth, it took me one whole day to calm down and realize what had happened to me. I hadn’t been throw out int he cold, I had been given a gift here, one that allowed me complete control over what happened next with my physical and mental health. I had the potential to either accelerate the “landing” of an autoimmune disease” or keeping the “switch turned off”. I could, should I decide to do so, not live in the world of crippling autoimmune diseases. How incredible!

So, that is my next mission: to restart my immune system while it’s still working and keep this lupus or any other AD (autoimmune disease) as far away as possible for as long as I can. That’s possible by discarding the dietary choices I know to be bad for my own body (processed sugar, red meat, grains, dairy, soy) while weeding out some of the new foods that cause inflammation in my joint, or send my blood racing due to the anxiety is brings out in my body.

Post-Break

What’s incredible to me is the ability to be so excited about something, to be willing to put time, money, heart into a project and/or a passion yet when it comes down to really moving it forward – to showing it off to family, friends, strangers – so many of us back down. Which is what I’ve done, over and over again. I’ve allowed my fire to be smothered by my own assumptions and projections of what other might think of me and stopped any idea of what I previously wanted to go after. With feeling all of that, and allowing seven months between posts, why am I back at it?

An old friend from high school began blogging about her life, and you know what I thought? Why did I stop doing that?! It seems like such a simple way to share, and it’s so wonderful to read for someone who is seeing her posts. Why should I believe that anyone would feel differently about my own blog? So here I am, feeling a re-ignited joy and determination for sharing my wellness, my story, and my continuing journey through finding health as told by my body.

There was a reason I wanted to really focus on all aspects of life, not just nutrition, because in my opinion, it’s all connected. Stress of what people think, well that leads to adrenaline, which leads to any number of outcomes (for me is goes anxiety+emotionally eating+self-hate/self-doubt). Our minds, bodies, emotions, and environments are all created with each other in mind, yet that seems to have been forgotten over the development of Western medicine – or worse, not taught in the first place. This is something I’m still trying to really grasp in my every day moments, but it always comes back to me one way or another, usually after I’ve slipped back into my old habits (see a common equation posted a few sentences ago). Finding a balance between want and need, between yes and no, it all effects who we are as a whole. And leading a holistic life has a major requirement of constantly finding the harmony within ourselves. This is not an easy task, at least not here, in a society that values quantity over quality, at least not for me.

So I’m back, posting again because every time I try something new, whether it continues on or stops dead in its track, I learn something about new about myself in every area. So I’m going to continue on, and I’m going to keep pushing through my fear. Because this is what I want to do: I want to share my experiences and struggles in the hope that it helps others through their own. I want to create a community of holism like many others in the world.

Look out for my next post. It’ll have better detail of what has been happening on my side of the screen!