What are you doing today?

How I’m Celebrating Thanksgiving This Year

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I just love the idea of setting aside a day to celebrate gratitude with family and friends. However, in the past before I recovered from fibromyalgia, it was an ordeal.

Thanksgiving before Fibromyalgia Recovery

My husband and I would go to a family member’s house, and I could just see the looks of pity and disbelief about what a waste of human I had become. To be clear, no one actually treated me like that, that was my own loathing self-talk at work. Near the end of my illness, I was so bad off that I had to make arrangements with my mother-in-law ahead of time to lay down after dinner. The house was so chock-full of overnight guests she let me use her bed. My sweet mother-in-law was very accommodating.

Sometimes in my normal day-to-day life, my life didn’t seem so horrendous. But then the reality of my situation became exposed to the awful light of day when someone asked some form of the simple question, “What do you do all day?” My illusions shattered by the light of that question, especially if it was posed by someone whose opinion mattered to me.

Trying to answer that question with any semblance of dignity was impossible. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I was sick. I tried to hide it as best I could, but for the people who knew me well, the life I was leading was just not me. I felt like I was in a black hole and that I was just enduring life. Being asked about my days on the occasional holidays highlighted the fact that my life sucked.

So between Halloween candy, overindulgence during the holidays, lack of sunlight and of course an already raging case of major depression and anxiety, by the time February came along I was usually in a black pit of despair. I never wanted to actually commit suicide, but I certainly didn’t want to keep on living that way, I just didn’t want to be alive anymore if this was my reality.

This went on for about six years and then one year was different. In December of 2007 I met holistic therapist Victoria Smith. In January I started what later became The Healing Cleanse™ (as detailed in Freedom from Fibromyalgia: 7 Steps to Complete Recovery) and within three weeks I felt so much better, I thought I was cured. I was far from cured, I had a long way to go, but I continued on The Healing Cleanse™, and other healing therapies, for nearly a year and every one of the symptoms of fibromyalgia and the coexisting conditions disappeared. (I teach about this in-depth in my book Freedom from Fibromyalgia: 7 Steps to Complete Recovery.)

Thanksgiving Now

Fast forward seven years from then, and my life is completely different. I am living the life of my dreams! I have everything I have ever wanted and more on its way. I have a child (I was infertile before), I have an exciting and fulfilling career that aligns with my life mission, I have lots of friends and go to parties, I travel, and I exercise because my body WANTS to move.

I am not saying all this to brag or make anyone feel bad. I am looking to inspire and motivate, to show what is possible. The way I am celebrating Thanksgiving this year is by participating in a 5 mile run. (You can read about my Half-Marathon Miracle here.) Now I run because I love how it feels and how I feel afterwards.
My body loves to move. This is a real thing – a healthy body WANTS to move. (When I was sick, every fiber of my being screamed at me to be still.)
So instead of feeling dark despair by the time February comes along, I am hosting the first-ever of its kind world-wide Fibromyalgia Telesummit Janurary 26-28th, and then the teleseries course 3D Fibromyalgia Healing in February. And then later on into March, I will be a keynote speaker at a medical conference to instruct medical doctors about how to go about helping their patients heal from fibromyalgia.
Wow! What a difference!