Continued from Journey to Wellness Part 1

 

Then, two years later my life hit rock bottom.

Stress, death, stress, death, death death, death!

Grief gallops you out and around places you’ve never seen before. One minute you’re up, next you’re slammed down by another wave of grief that blindsides you. Running, running away from the pain. Running into one obstacle after another.

And grief and loss go hand in hand. My sense of purpose had been connected with my loved ones who had left this world.

I had lost myself.

I remember at one stage I just couldn’t go on any more. I piled on the blankets and took to my bed. I had no energy and couldn’t eat. I went deep down inside myself, to heal my wounds, just like a cat. When something is wrong they sleep, their healing powers naturally help them feel well again.

It was winter and the house was freezing, condensation on the windows as I hadn’t the energy to light the range. It felt like the house was crumbling down with me inside it.

I had to find my way back to me.

I listened to one of Louise Hay’s tapes over and over from under the blankets and the main words that slowly connected with me were

“No-one else can eat your food for you”
“No-one else can drink your water for you”
“No-one else can live your life for you “

Eventually, her words gave me the strength to get up and go on, to put one step in front of the other and trust my life again. Louise Hay helped me nurture myself when I needed help. (Later when I was back on track I was very lucky to work as a Louise Hay facilitator with groups of people on their journey living with a cancer diagnosis.)

I sought help from a grief counsellor.

In the beginning, because I’d never been to a counsellor, I thought she was going to fix me. Then I realised she wasn’t and in reality, she seemed very young and didn’t have any experience of grief herself. At first I felt frustrated! But then I began to notice that as I talked to someone who could just listen, I was becoming freer of my own thoughts, thoughts that were beating me up.

I felt that I was finding a way to grieve in my own way. My confidence began to flow and I made a new start, training in both computer skills and health crisis counselling at the same time.

Bang! Just when I finished both trainings, I crashed.

Whilst on the one hand I had learned many new ways to deal with my stress, chronic illness, negative thought patterning, my anger, my fear, my pain, I’d also spent months practically ‘chained’ to a computer looking for lost pixels. Total opposites!

My mystery illness surfaced yet again.

Once again my immune system was compromised, my energy frequency dropped. I could just about keep the fire lit, eat a little, lie in the window seat and watch the clouds go by. I told myself that this too would pass. This time I really listened to my body, felt the pain and heard my voice tell me to stop pushing.

My body made me slow down because up until that point I really didn’t know how to.

This marked a real turning point for me. Slowly, slowly like the passing clouds, a new vista was born. With a new vantage point and understanding, I was able to give my body the time it needed to rest and repair and I got my life’s full energy back at last. And this time I was not going to slip back into old patterns.

I sometimes wonder how would my life have been if I’d noticed the triggers earlier?

I realise now that I had lived with constant, subconscious, frustration; had stuffed down the grief; had felt pressure to fit my ‘square’ self into the proverbial ’round’ hole; spent too much time sat on a chair, staring at a screen; spent too much time coming up with the right answers to the wrong questions.

Well that was more than 20 years ago and in that time I have learned so so much, including the incredible benefits of Biomagnetic Therapy. I discovered that Biomagnetic Therapy worked the best for me in my quest to maintain a strong immune system. I felt inspired to undertake training to become a Biomagnetic Therapist and I am honoured, that through this therapy, I have been able to help many people get their life back from Lyme disease, indeed many other health conditions, and continue to maintain their immune system.

I understand how it feels to be unwell and I am living proof that you can get well again.

 

 

Anyone currently dealing with grief may find this website to be quite helpful: https://whatsyourgrief.com/people-say-the-wrong-thing-grief/

I lived in London in the early 1990s working three jobs, it was just something I did. I never gave a second thought about my health. I didn’t have to, as I had what I describe as ‘mighty’ energy to work and party.

1995 was an extremely hot summer and I could get no relief from the heat, so I went to the Ladies Pond in Hampstead Heath for a swim. The next day I was starting a new job as a Milliner, after my college studies and on the way, out of the blue, I lost my energy and fainted on the train.

The doctor came, but wasn’t sure what was wrong with me. He thought it could be viral meningitis, but wasn’t sure. Of course, if it was a virus, antibiotics cannot help as they work with bacterial infections and not viral ones.

No one knew what it was, it was a mystery illness!

I was in bed for months. It’s only now that I recognise the signs of Lyme disease – the bulls-eye rash developed on many places on my skin, pain in my joints, photophobia. I had to stay in a darkened room, my hearing became ultra-sensitive. If someone was whispering in another room, it sounded to me like they were shouting.

Worst of all, I had zero energy.

My fatigue was chronic. I could hardly muster the energy to get up out of bed. My brain health was severely diminished. It was shutting down. Overnight in my early 30s I had become an old woman and had to be supported to take even one step. I really thought I was dying.

When I look back I’d been in Ireland in 1994 working in the costume department at Ardmore studios on a film called ‘Spacetruckers’. That was 14 hr days, 6 days a week while sleeping on a camp bed in a friend’s house. So by the time I got bitten by a tick, my immunity was low and I didn’t realise it.

Thankfully, my friend Penny came round and helped me get to a top Chinese herbalist.

The herbs were so bitter! I remember I had to sit at the cooker to prepare them as I was so tired, and the smell!

Now I realise that they saved my life and cleared the Lyme symptoms. Slowly, very slowly I came back to life.

In those days people hadn’t heard of Lyme disease affecting people in England and Ireland. It was thought to be an American disease you got from a deer tick. Now we know that many people get bitten in Ireland and all over the world too. Often people neither have the rash or see the tick and still get sick. Many are diagnosed with Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Rheumatoid Arthritis or Multiple Sclerosis (MS.) or simply ‘mystery illness unnamed’.

Eventually, we moved back to Ireland where I found myself in a stressful home and work situation. My vitality relapsed. My elbows stopped working I couldn’t even brush my hair, the pain of using my arms!

The tests were showing markers for Rheumatoid Arthritis and the doctor wanted me to start taking antibiotics. I said no. My body was exhausted. As soon as the theatre production I’d been struggling to work through went curtain up, I went curtain down, to rest.

For the first time, I listened in to what my body needed for a change. I rest, I rest, I rest.

Then one day a month or so later, out of the blue, a change happened.

I was in the market and I heard the man who sold olives say to the customer before me, that he needed a helper on the stall for one day a week. My ears pricked up and I think I’m ready for 1 days’ work a week, I’ve rested. I don’t feel the chronic fatigue so badly, my arms are stronger, my joints are working better, energy is coming back. Baby steps!

I offered myself for the job and started the next week. I ate a lot of lovely olives, lots! Oodles of good olive oil and jugs of fresh carrot juice. I went for the next rheumatology check-up and the doctor was surprised as there were no markers for Rheumatoid Arthritis showing up in the tests.

I was delighted and my health improved, I felt alive and well again!

Then, two years later my life hit rock bottom.

Continued in Journey to Wellness Part 2