Five more sleeps until I head back to my new practitioner for my follow-up and begin treatment for Lyme. There’s a part of me that is more than ready to get this ball rolling and go after those little boogers in my body with a vengeance…. and there’s another part of me that is getting more and more nervous about this thing they call the Herxheimer Reaction, which is when everything gets a lot worse before it gets better, and that’s how you know it’s working…. how dandy is that? (gulp).
However, for the most part, I feel strong in the conviction that I’m headed down the right path, as scary and uncertain as it promises to be.
Plenty of people question me, only because they care… but the worst is when I question myself.
I have brief moments of wondering if I’ve made the right decision in pursuing this… or if I’m going about this the “right” way. The what-ifs start shaking their snarly fists at me, and I can’t tell what’s up from down. But who the hell do they think they are? They are certainly not based in truth or reality.
For a year now, I’ve had doctors tell me that I was facing a lifelong progressive disease for which there is no treatment or cure. And what’s more, I had given my power over to that idea…. I hadn’t realized just how much. I had surrendered with white flags, and virtually said, "take me, I’m yours," because frankly I didnt know what else to do. Fighting or hoping or pretending to know more than I knew took up way too much energy.
Now part of my healing is bringing my own wild sovereignty — that voice that says, "I’m fighting for my sacred ground here" – back to life.
Part of my healing is reclaiming that same moxie that coaxed me across the finish line of the triathlon almost three years ago in 822nd place. Afterall, it’s still there, even when I’m laying flat on my back.
Part of my healing is heeding my gut… listening closely to my body about what feels right and what doesn’t feel right… following the intuition that for a while got put on the bottom of a very long to-be list… and fully trusting that each choice I make will lead me in the direction I most need to go, whether I know it at the time or not.
Part of my healing is honoring that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of different experiences, and none of them are quite like mine. Only I know this here unique soul-scape like the back of my hand, and my path and outcome can’t be predicted by those of others. My story will unfold as it unfolds.
And part of my healing is acknowledging and getting honest about how the struggle has served me. Isn’t it odd how we determine the value of any given journey by how much struggle it involves? I’m finding that it’s harder to ask for help, it’s even harder to receive it, and it’s even harder still to trust that it will show up when I most need it, now that it’s “only” Lyme… as if the struggle of a progressive disease was what made me worthy. How very interesting, says the counselor in me, as I rub my chin and give myself a Freudian nod. There’s more to dig into there for sure.
It’s funny how us humans give our authority away…. I mean, there’s a time and a place to lean into the wisdom of others, but often times, before we know it even, we’ve compromised our own wisdom in the process.
We’re all muddling along, within a giant sea of opinions, experiences, advice, impressions, and assumptions, doing the very best we can given our circumstances. Even the doctors and the lawyers and the teachers and the president don’t know what they’re doing half the time. They are simply making their best guesses based on what they’ve learned along the way.
But ultimately, we are our own authority… we are the ones that choose where we muddle to next, and the choices we make for ourselves are never wrong, even if they look like “mistakes” later on. It comes down to what sits right within us. Always. It comes down to knowing that everything we need to heal the broken pieces of ourselves is all right here, built into us… which means we were never broken to begin with.
