Releasing what no longer serves you.
You get to live your life, with your chronic illness - and journey through healing - in exactly the way you want to.
It’s easy to fall into a grief that focuses on all that chronic illness has ‘taken from you’ (under the umbrella of all the expectations). It’s actually quite an assumed emotion; that we should almost be in constant grief over a ‘life lost’… but what if you let go of all expectations of what you think your life ‘should’ look like, how you ‘should’ live with chronic illness, and leaned into the life you actually live?
What if there was no ‘life lost’, instead, just life? Yours. No one else’s.
A life you opened yourself up to loving and accepting.
A life that, of course, hasn’t been without struggle, but a life that allows you to see the nuance within that struggle. And a perspective that allows you to see that struggle as part of a multi-faceted life.
I really do believe grief can be a celebrated and embraced part of living with chronic illness, but it’s better when you’re doing it in a way that serves you.
Have you ever found yourself feeling sad or pissed off at things that, when you really look at them, don’t really fit with who you are, after all?!
I know I have, and still do! Like, sometimes I’ll be taking a day to hibernate and rest, but I’ll be thinking about what I could or should be doing - what other people might be doing - and I’ll find myself feeling resentful about resting.
Then I remind myself, this is a choice! This is how I’m choosing to spend my life today, and I get to enjoy it! What are all the things I can focus on about this day that bring me all the joy and cosiness?
And this is where we get to delight in a bit of full circle action.
In knowing that I am human and no matter how much I know this stuff, I’ll never get it perfect and that’s OK… I get to have a mini-grief moment! For the time spent resenting that rest, for the words I perhaps said to myself when I was feeling like my life wasn’t good enough…
I get to feel what I need to feel and move through those feelings, welcome in compassion and understanding, release what hasn’t been serving me, and get on with the good stuff!
A final note before we begin today’s journalling… So much of the way we feel about chronic illness can be based on how we believe we ‘should’ feel about living with chronic illness…and it can also be about the way we believe we ‘should’ be living life, and the resulting efforts to squeeze ourselves and chronic illness into that life.
A practice I find invaluable is wiping the slate clean of all expectations, rules and assumptions. To give myself the freedom to think about how I would live my life it was only down to me. To question how my actions and stories reflect my true beliefs and desires.
I love to remember the saying ‘everything is figureourtable’ - Marie Forleo. Once you release yourself of all the things that don’t fit, taking forward only what does fit, you get to figure out how to make those things happen, and how to do those things with joy and pleasure, no matter how novel or obscure.
Practice.
What are some expectations, rules or assumptions that you carry around with you? E.g. I must ‘make the most’ of every day and strive to live my ‘best life’.
Do they feel aligned and like they serve you? Or are they heavy and get in the way of you living authentically?
If they don’t feel aligned, what is it about them that jars? E.g. What standard is ‘making the most of my life’ set on? Whose ‘best life’ am I aiming for?
What are you, therefore, releasing/letting go of? E.g. The notion that I’m wasting my life if I’m not ‘making the most of it’ and striving towards living my ‘best life’.
What feels more aligned? What do you choose to carry forward? E.g. I choose to let go of any ideas of a ‘best life’ and instead focus on and embrace my life, itself, just as it is.
One step further…
Where do you find these expectations/rules/assumptions are most prevalent? E.g. certain type of account on social media, certain social media channels, certain people you interact with…
How can you make those environments safer? How can you protect yourself within them?
Before you go, I’d love you to think about how it would feel to have a ceremony to help you release what doesn’t serve you in a deeper way? Maybe you want to light a candle or some incense and write these things out on a piece of paper before (responsibly!) burning them. Maybe you want to go out into a field and say out loud ‘I release myself of…’. Maybe you want to make a public declaration?
I salute you in choosing your way…
With much love,