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Mid-Year Reflections In A Year Of Pandemic: June Linkup
I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I joined A Chronic Voice’s linkup for the first time! I’ve been meaning to join this way for chronic illness bloggers to connect since, but life intervened (aka symptoms have severely limited my writing time). This month, I was thrilled that not only did I have the mental bandwidth to participate, but also that the prompts aligned with several things bouncing around in my head. Chronic illness in a pandemic presents its own unique challenges. (PS here’s my last linkup post.)
I hope you all are doing as well as you can be. Those of you who love the sunshine, I hope that you are also enjoying the warmer days. I love that the weather will be warmer (in upper 60s or 70s) for about three days, and then rainy for two days—this gives me a good dose of vitamin D when I can sit and walk a little outside.
The rain gives me a break from feeling like I *have* to get outside; we call that pressure to soak up as much warmth as we can “sun guilt” in the Pacific Northwest. The cottonwood trees had the air filled with tufts of white that looked like slow-drifting snow up until recently. Everything is blooming early, including my beauty bush, which is covered in bees and hummingbirds. (Ok, I’ve seen THREE hummers at once, so not exactly “covered!”)
In the world beyond my yard, things are moving ahead as Washington counties move into Phase 2 of coming out of quarantine/social distancing. (My county was added to the list June 5.) High risk populations are to “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” through Phase 3. I’ll talk more about this below.
Let’s dive in. The themes for this month are Searching, Hoping, Honoring, Traumatizing, and Responding.
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Things I’m Doing For My Health Right Now
I’m a huge advocate of being proactive when it comes to your health, so I today I’m sharing some of the ways I’m doing this right now.
Lately, I’ve had the feeling that no matter what I do for my health, it feels kind of futile. That’s one of the sucky things about being chronically ill—you can do all the right things, and still be, well, chronically ill. Plus, I’ve been dealing with the cold weather (one of my triggers), health set backs, and—oh joy—new symptoms. It’s frustrating and ironic when your health is one of the things keeping you from being proactive about your health.
Thus, this blog post. I thought it would be helpful to record the ways I can be proactive about my health, and how these actions do help, even if just in a small way.
Some of the items on my list may look a little random, or not the kind of things you would associate with “health.” Most of these things aren’t specific to helping any one health condition, like my dysautonomia, fibromyalgia, asthma, autoimmune disease, ME/CFS, etc. But I’ve been trying to pay attention to what is zapping my energy or causing me stress. Viewing a problem as an opportunity to improve my health helps in two ways: 1) this helps me clarify a goal (less energy output or stress) and 2) this helps motivate me to make positive changes (by reminding me that this is important to my overall wellbeing). This clarity and motivation is enough to break through my brain fog and exhaustion so that I’m able to work on my health.
My hope is that this post will help you take a look at what you’re doing for your own wellness, or inspire you to think of new ways you can include more self care in your life. And when you make that list, I hope your reaction is similar to mine: I might be limited in what I can do for my health right now, but I’m doing the best I can.
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Review: I tried a movie theater with recliners because of my chronic health conditions
I FINALLY got to see Avengers: Endgame a few weeks ago!
(Don’t worry, this post is spoiler-free!)
I’ll share what I thought of trying a movie theater with recliners for the first time, as well as some tips for going to the movies with dysautonomia, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and other chronic illnesses.
I had been wanting to see Endgame for weeks, having waited a whole year after that cliff hanger. I was carefully avoiding spoilers in conversations and online. (I had to quit Pinterest after seeing two spoiler-y things. And I’m glad I didn’t look up the meaning of two things I saw on Facebook—I figured they were Marvel-related, and after seeing the movie, I’m so glad I didn’t, because they were indeed spoilers!)
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May 2019 Musings – Regrouping, Investigating, Boosting, Setting & Reviving
I’m excited to participate in A Chronic Voice’s link up for the first time! Link up parties are a fun way for bloggers to connect and write about similar themes, and this one is geared towards those of us in the chronic illness community. I’ve never had a chance to participate in one before, so I’ve been eager to give it a try. Let me know what you think of this style of post in the comments.
The themes for this month are Regrouping, Investigating, Boosting, Setting and Reviving.
It was a nice change to have guidelines “assigned” for writing a blog post. (I think Andy Warhol was onto something about having a “boss on retainer.” Having the framework for a post given to me felt a little more structured—like having a boss vs. winging it on my own.)
So, using A Chronic Voice’s five writing prompts for this month as a jumping off point, here’s what has been going on with me lately.
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Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging And Why You Should Blog Before You’re “Ready”
As promised in my round up about my first year blogging, I’m sharing tips I wish I had known from the beginning of my blogging journey. Be assured, this post isn’t to dissuade you from starting your blog. In fact, I think you should start a blog before you’re “ready,” and I’ll explain why.
On my Facebook page, I asked if anyone had questions about my first year blogging. One of the questions was: “What was your reason for starting a blog?” Answering this question is the perfect background for why I think you should start blogging before you’re totally sure what you’re doing.
One of the topics I blog about is dealing with chronic illnesses. I have several, and they’ve become progressively worse the last several years. The first one to get diagnosed was thyroid cancer. These illnesses have threatened to squash my dreams of being a published author. I think the first time I said I wanted to write books, I was in kindergarten (and then I promptly wrote a book for a friend and a play that my friend and I acted out while my dad taped us on the camcorder.) It’s been one of my dreams ever since.
Despite becoming more sick, I was (and am) determined to keep writing. As you might have guessed, it’s kind of hard to finish writing a book when you struggle just to function during the day! And while I’ve published a handful of poems, I’ve not yet gotten a book out into the world. I started to feel frustrated. Even when I pushed myself to write, my words just stayed stuck on my computer. I felt like I wasn’t accomplishing anything. No one was reading a single word I wrote, unless it was a kind friend or family member offering to look over a story.
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My Criteria For Comfortable Clothes & What I’m Loving Right Now
Finding comfortable clothes can be a major challenge, especially when you have a chronic illness (or two, or three…).
I have fibromyalgia, Raynaud’s and asthma, among other things, which all contribute to my needing clothes that don’t cause any of my health conditions to flare up.
And, as I talked about in this post, it helps me to when I wear clothes that look fashionable because looking presentable makes me feel better. As Gretchen Rubin has talked about in her podcast, wearing clothes that look like clothes (vs. pjs) improves your mood.
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I receive a small portion of sales, at no additional cost to you, if you click through and make a purchase.
Here are some of the things I look for in clothes:
Soft/breathable fabric—a must for comfort, as well as to help with my issues with temperature regulation. I’m usually freezing. I aim to buy mostly cotton clothing, but it’s surprising how hard that is to find anymore.
Not too tight or restrictive—I already have pressure points and difficulty breathing—the last thing I need is for my clothes to make this worse! A good, flattering fit helps me to look and feel my best.
Makes me feel my best—for me, this means non-pj shirts. To be honest, I usually wear pajama pants around the house because they don’t hurt my hips, so if I’m wearing a “normal” top, I still feel like I’m “dressed” and ready for the day. (If you’re most comfortable in pjs due to pain/illness/etc., the last thing I want to do is make you feel badly about it! Taking care of yourself with your wardrobe is the most important thing.)
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Superpowers You Gain From Chronic Illness and Chronic Pain
Just for fun, I thought I’d write a post about all the “superpowers” we (unintentionally) gain when we develop chronic health conditions.
My massage therapist and I joke that I fight crime in my sleep. It’s a much more fun explanation for why my muscles freak out (the real reason: fibromyalgia). We joke that this is why I have brain fog too—I’m so deep undercover that *I* don’t even know that I’m a secret super hero, so I must be getting my memory wiped every morning. Sounds legit.
This got me thinking that, hey, those of us in the spoonie community really do have our own set of superpowers. And no radioactive spiders are even required! (Thankfully, because I hate spiders…and as for radioactive—been there, done that!)
I hope you enjoy these tongue-in-cheek examples of our superpowers. Because in all seriousness, each of you are fighters to get through each day with chronic illness and chronic pain.
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Why I’m Making Christmas Cards in January
Since Christmas, I’ve still been in a Christmasy mood. Which has been nice because it has made the season feel like it’s lasted a little longer. I was very unwell Christmas day, so this has helped. I still felt like making Christmas things, and I’ve actually had a little bit of energy this month to do so.
It has also helped that my parents got us a Sizzix embossing/die cutting machine for Christmas, which has been so fun to play with. Plus, it’s made card making very easy. (And watching tutorials on YouTube for using fun card cutouts while I’m crashed in a recliner has been inspiring. It’s nice to feel like I’m learning something and getting creatively inspired, vs. just being stuck recuperating.)
