All Flared Up

I like to listen to podcasts when I go for my morning walks. This morning I listened to Are You Living a Good Life? from 10% Happier with Dan Harris.

In it, they talk about noticing and acting upon the positive disruptions in your life. Those small moments when you realize you need to pivot. A deeper knowing that you can’t keep living your life the way you have been.

Maybe you are on the completely wrong path. But maybe you are simply on a parallel path – one that is taking you in the right direction but not in the right lane.

My recent diagnosis of Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH) has been a huge disruptor for me. At first, it felt catastrophic – completely life altering for the worse. This is an illness that can only be treated with life-long immunosuppressant medication, according to Western medicine. If I stop taking the medication, my doctor told me without mincing her words, I will eventually go into liver failure and need a liver transplant. This doesn’t leave me with very much choice, or at least the feeling of a choice.

I have good days and bad days. Yesterday and today were/are bad days. I am bone tired – partly because I don’t sleep well and partly because of the illness. (The night-time hot flashes of menopause don’t help either.) When I am this tired, my brain simply doesn’t work and it feels like someone is pulling a knitted hat over my eyes and ears. I can see through it, but everything is fuzzy and the world looks and sounds dampened. On bad days, I act and speak in ways that others perceive as unkind and this breaks my heart because despite giving it my best effort, I end up falling far short of how I want to be.

This type of disruption leaves me questioning everything: my words & actions (are they worth the energy I need to expend?), my job (is the feeling of failure related to a reduction in capacity because of my illness or is it simply my perfectionism rearing its ugly head?), my relationships (are they supportive or are they draining me?), my behavior (is it the day-to-day stress that makes me snappier than usual, is it menopause, or is it the exhaustion from not being well?).

These are the things that run circles in my mind. In German, they actually have a word for this: Gedankenkarussell, a thought-carousel. These are the problem-filled, doomsday thoughts that run on a loop in your brain, the ones that bring up questions which can never really be answered. The ones that make us feel like we are experiencing things that are not actually happening.

Maybe, the change that this new disruption is inviting me to entertain does not lie in the answers to these question anyway, but rather in the way that I am perceiving them. Maybe the change that is required has much more to do with my mindset, then the inner workings of my mind.

I have a mentor now, thanks to the Autoimmune Hepatitis Association. She was diagnosed with AIH over a year ago and she described our situation like this, “Unfortunately, we are in a club we didn’t ask to join. But, knowing we aren’t alone is so comforting.”

What if I start to see Autoimmune Hepatitis as an “elite” club that I am privileged to be a part of. One that has given me a new friend in my mentor. One that is reminding me to take better care of myself, because I have to now. One that is allowing me to reevaluate what really matters in life – because, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, life is tragically short. No matter how much time on this planet you have, it will never, ever be enough.

So, I today I will start choosing to see myself as a member of an elite club that only 0.016% of the worldwide population is a part of.

May I be open to all of the ways it can and will positively disrupt my life.

And may I act with the necessary courage and determination to turn those disruptions into the celebration of a new, even better version of myself.