Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely” - Carl Jung
Awhile back, I was asked to be a panelist at an event on the emotional impact of chronic illness, specifically Inflammatory Bowel Disease. After myself and my fellow panelists answered a few questions, it was time for the main event. A featured keynote speech was given by a man who had done some incredible feat while living with Crohn’s disease. It was clear he had given this speech before, and it certainly was inspirational. Cue Rocky Music as he explained how he had successfully climbed a mountain, or completed a triathalon - to be honest I do not recall what feat he accomplished, because it did not seem like anything I would ever be able to do. Despite his best intentions, and the importance of his message: yes, those of us with chronic illness can succeed, there was something that deeply troubled me about this presentation.
My suspicions of the potential harm these types of motivational speeches can do was confirmed when a middle aged lady timidly raised her hand with a question. She asked the same question I was thinking, and her words were both earnest and profound: “I have Crohn’s too, but I will never be able to accomplish this type of athletic feat. I struggle greatly with my illness and it limits my life in many ways. Am I only supposed to view myself as a success story if I am able to achieve something like you are describing?”
It was clear that this seasoned motivational speaker was not expecting this type of question, and stumbled for words. In that moment, I related much more to the woman in the audience than the man I was sharing the stage with. I had no heroic story to tell, just my own experience of physical and mental challenges that continue to afflict me on an ongoing basis.
Maybe I was a fraud and should get off the stage. I was sure that was no success story.
🜃
I went to the forest to cure myself. At that point, I was working as a yoga teacher and wellness coach, and had just started a podcast on re-integrating and re-humanizing the healthcare system. I was writing, and publicly speaking about my journey with wellness. But deep down I felt like an imposter, a fraud and a failure. Because I was not cured. Far from it. The medical trauma that I had experienced as a child with cancer still lingered and left its shadow in every realm of my life: from body image and relationships to my professional life and mental health. This trauma was severely compounded by a diagnosis of IBD at 17 years old, followed by years of intense pain and despair as I struggled to find relief. I still experienced lingering physical symptoms that could debilitate me in pain and keep me so fatigued. would teach a yoga class in the middle of the day, and then be so exhausted afterwards that I would have to lie down for several hours to recover. I kept this a secret: I figured if anyone knew, they would stop coming to my classes. During one of these classes, a student and new friend told me that I was the most energetic person that he had ever met. The gulf between who he saw and who I felt myself to be was so vast that I could hardly bear it. I believed myself to be a sick imposter posing as a happy and healthy woman and it was becoming increasingly excruciating. I was still the sick girl I believed myself to be, despite the smiling veneer I presented to the world. My symptoms were still with me, so what could I possibly say or provide of value to others?
I could not bear this feeling any longer. I suddenly left my life behind and ventured to the forest so I could cure myself once and for all to become the person I believed everyone thought I was. The only acceptable version of myself I could imagine was the eternally happy, healthy and energetic yoga teacher and wellness coach who could climb Mount Everest and perform a triathalon. Anything less could never do. So, once and for all, I had to cure myself. My life and worth as a human being depended on it.
🜄
It was at the halfway point of my retreat, 30 days in, that it became unavoidably clear to me that I was failing at the task of curing myself. I was still experiencing the frequent painful, embarrassing and uncomfortable symptoms of a colitis flare-up. This coveted cure I was desperately seeking was simply not going to happen.
I knocked frantically and loudly on my favourite retreat staff-members office hut door. He was eating lunch with his coworker, both of these men at least a foot and several hundred pounds larger than me. But they were afraid of me in that moment. I started yelling, and crying, hyperventilating, shaking. They looked at me with compassion and love in their eyes. I had been the girl with the smiling mask for thirty days living in this national forest. There was no mask left, it was just me completely coming undone in front of their eyes. I was holding nothing back, and all the medical trauma I experienced as a young girl and adolescent came flooding back. One of the men said to me: “why don’t you write a letter to doctors?”, which I did, but that is a story for another day. They were patient and kind and held space for me to lose myself in my grief.
Despite all the years of hope, of different treatments, of therapists, of naturopathic remedies, of drugs, of surgeries - it was all completely a waste. I was sick. I was incurable. I was a failure.
I stormed out of their hut when it was clear that there was nothing left to say. I ran to the horses who were minding their own business in a far tucked away corner of the forest. I sat on a patch of grass as far away as I could manage to continue my breakdown. I don’t know how long I sat their drowning in my tears as this elusive cure from chronic illness faded in the distance. It felt like years, it felt like mere moments. Time had lost all sense of meaning, for my life as I knew it felt like it had ended. There was no hope left for me.
All of a sudden, I looked up and Mille the mule was staring back at me. Millie didn’t quite fit in with the other horses; she was smaller, and she was sick. Her eyes were runny and red and she was feeble, not as strong and capable as her horse-mates. She was staring at me defiantly, as if she could read my mind and was posing a question to me: “Yes, I am sick. Yes, I am smaller than the others. But am I a failure to you?”
I touched Millie’s face gently through the fence. No, Millie, I thought. Millie: you are beautiful, you are alive, you deserve to be here. You are sick, but you are not a failure.
She telepathically replied to me: Well then, so are you. So do you.
And we just stood like that, together - me and Millie for what felt like hours and what felt like mere moments. She would not leave my side, and a profound shift took place within me that day, in those moments with Millie. We were there together, and we accepted each other exactly as we were. And that was enough.
🜁
I cannot erase my past, or the ways in which physical and mental health issues have shaped my life up to the present day.
I will never be cured. But I say that now with a sigh of relief, rather than resignation.
Because, I am no longer fragmented.
These are all parts of me:
The woman with chronic illness
The yoga teacher and wellness coach
The lover
The fighter
The advocate
The girl who is so incredibly sensitive, and whose sensitivity is most acutely felt in her tummy
The woman who must take naps in the middle of the work day
The most frightened little girl you could ever imagine
The strongest woman you will ever encounter
All parts are welcome, all are included, all make up who I am.
I will never be cured, but I am a living and breathing human being who feels both love and loss
I am here, and that is enough.
🜂
