Jessica Simpson Dimure Heels
Courage - the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation.
Living with a chronic disease is challenging.
Living with a chronic autoimmune disease is challenging.
Living with a chronic autoimmune disease that has no cure is most definitely challenging.
I've dealt with health issues for what seems like my entire life or at least as far back as I can recall. For the most part, I take it in strides and deal with the punches as they come. There are definitely moments though that I get knocked down pretty hard - knocked down mentally and it takes me a little bit of time to find my courage again to roll with the punches. I am stuck in one of these moments right now and am working on fighting my way out. The problem is, I have been trying to do it by keeping my mind occupied on other things throughout the day and then nighttime comes and my mind has nothing to keep it busy anymore.
My mind starts racing of what the future holds. If there is no cure and this is my current status - where will I be a year from now? I try hard to not think about the what ifs of my condition, but it's hard. Especially when I look at my family and most definitely when I look at my children.
I had about a year and a half of 'normalcy' - where I wasn't really dealing with anything medically. That I felt strong. Felt strong physically, emotionally and mentally. That strength was when I was training. Now unless you are committed to a healthy activity - where you are taking care of your mind and body - I don't know that you can truly appreciate the feeling I have now of emptiness. The last year has been a challenging one for me and my health has most definitely affected my ability to train. It has actually prevented me from being able to train for most of this past year. I miss it. I miss feeling strong. I miss it.
Right now I am craving my training more than ever. It has been my therapy, my stress reliever. Something is bothering me - go to class and punch it out. Place an image on that heavy bag and just annihilate it - defeat it and draw upon my strength to remove the stressor and make myself stronger. I can't do that right now, I am not able to sustain enough nutrition to just get through the day and function - let alone training. It wouldn't be responsible of me to force my body to do it and I most certainly do not want to put undue stress on my Sensei or those around me.
So in the meantime, I am trying to draw upon some other things in my life to assist me in rebuilding my courage. The courage to face each day and the challenges that are inevitably going to come my way. This disease is going to prevent me from having anymore normal days. This is now my new normal - unless the government or pharmaceutical companies decided to allocate funding to finding a cure for this condition. The reality is, funding is dedicated to those conditions that affect a lot of people - and don't get me wrong, I want funding allocated there too so that more lives can be saved and quality of life improved. It would just be nice to have a larger group of individuals wanting to find a cure for my condition too. But for now, I will find a way to deal with my new normal and find a way for my courage to return.
"Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose"
Tom Krause
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