During New Year’s, it is impossible to take more than a few steps without bumping into someone’s resolutions. For us Lymies, it’s a bit different; we didn’t actively choose to change our lives, but our lives changed enough for decades of New Years’.
Instead of adding more to my plate, I have decided to take this New Year to be mindful and focus on dealing with managing the changes I have been through. As someone who is on the recovering/remission end of Lyme, I know the importance of being mindful for myself. I am not talking about meditating every morning (although I do hear it’s amazing), but rather focusing on not dropping the ball on eating well and making sure I still move around and don’t get caught in the same stress traps as before.
Since the process of recovery began, my body is still new to me. It still does certain things like shake when it’s tired and I don’t know if my joints will ever fully experience a pain-free day. However, my new body has taught me patience (granted, that one wasn’t much of a choice), being a better problem solver and appreciating the little victories more. When I bend down to pick something up, I’ll grin at my husband- both he and I shaking our heads in grateful disbelief that this movement that was impossible a year ago, is now something I no longer need half of the fire department to do. Sure, I may walk slower than my 90-year-old grandmother (a verified fact, but she’s very feisty), but I am so happy to have the privilege of having most of my body back.
In this New Year, I would encourage many of you to look inside to see how you are managing all of your life changes. Perhaps instead of making a resolution to do more, one can resolve to continue to do the same things, but be more aware of their experience doing so. Taking an internal inventory and acknowledging how we can manage the changes having a chronic illness has had on us, can be a very relieving experience.
Instead of looking to add more to our already full plates as people with a chronic illness, or even people in general, I invite you to manage what has been put before you already. Learning to manage change is a skill, much like any other skill it takes practice before we become decent at it. However, once we are able to learn to manage what life has given us, I believe the stress we carry around will be less and in turn, make us less pressured and more focused on the present. Happy New Year’s and Here is to whatever 2017 has in store for us!
