Writing From the Couch — Part 5 of 5

Previously in this series: Part 4: Recluse Felt Safer Than Unreliable

For a while, I thought I had figured out why all of this happened.

Maybe illness stopped my old life because I was supposed to find another one. Maybe God was pushing me toward something I never would have discovered otherwise. Maybe there was a purpose buried inside all those years on the couch.

Then I found animal communication and energy healing.

And something clicked.

This is it.

This is what I'm supposed to do.

Maybe this is why.

Somewhere inside myself, I think I made a bargain with God that I didn't even realize I was making:

Okay. I found it. Now can I get better?

I poured myself into this work.

I studied. I practiced. I learned. I gave it my time, energy and love.

And somewhere in there, I genuinely thought finding my purpose might heal me.

Maybe passion would give me my energy back. Maybe doing what I was meant to do would somehow correct whatever had gone wrong. Maybe all of this physical illness had been pushing me toward my calling, and once I finally got there, my body would release me.

It didn't.

Autoimmune disease doesn't care how aligned you are.

Chronic pain doesn't negotiate with purpose.

A damaged neck doesn't repair itself because you finally figured out what you want to do with your life.

I found something I love.

I found something I'm genuinely good at.

And I was still sick.

And that has left me with a question for God that I still don't know the answer to:

If You gave me this gift, why give me a body that sometimes makes using it so difficult?

Why let me finally find what feels like my calling after so many lost years, only to make consistency so hard?

I don't know.

I wish I had a beautiful answer.

I don't.

Maybe illness pushed me toward this work. Maybe I found this work while I happened to be ill. Maybe there is a larger purpose behind all of it that I can't see yet.

I don't know.

Some days I trust God. Some days I question Him. Some days I'm profoundly grateful for what I can do. Some days I'm angry about everything I can't.

Those things coexist inside my faith.

I'm no longer interested in inventing a beautiful answer just because unanswered questions make people uncomfortable.

There is something I want to make very clear, especially for anyone reading this who has worked with me—or is considering trusting me with an animal they love.

I am very good at what I do.

It has taken me a while to become comfortable saying that without immediately trying to make myself smaller.

I'm a good animal communicator. I'm a good energy healer. I've studied, practiced and poured an enormous amount of myself into developing these abilities.

My health doesn't change that.

What my health changes is how much I can do and how carefully I have to protect my ability to do it.

When I have an animal communication session, preparation doesn't begin five minutes before the appointment.

It often begins the night before.

I protect my sleep and rest. I manage my food so I don't have blood-sugar crashes. I stay ahead of symptoms using the medications and treatments available to me. I try not to spend my energy on things that can wait.

I schedule sessions earlier in my day because that's generally when my energy and cognitive clarity are better.

I protect the time around them. I avoid unnecessary errands and obligations. I keep my environment quiet and minimize distractions. I pay attention to my body.

And sometimes I say no to something else because I've already decided where that day's best energy is going.

It's going to you and your animal.

During an animal communication session, I enter a deep meditative state. The outside world becomes quiet, and my focus narrows.

I communicate with the animal, and then I come out of that state and talk with their human about what I received.

That's why I don't leave my ability to show up well to chance.

Because I prepare for my sessions and protect the time and energy around them, I actually don't need to reschedule very often.

If I am experiencing a flare severe enough that I know I can't give you and your animal the clarity and attention you deserve, I will reschedule.

I'd rather move an appointment than give you less than my best.

On a day when I have one or two animal communication sessions, those sessions may be my day.

That doesn't mean they're literally the only things I do.

It means that's where I've chosen to spend the usable physical and cognitive energy I have.

Afterward, I may not run errands. I may not answer messages. I may not get business administration done. I may not be able to help my husband or my mom with something I wanted to do. I may spend the afternoon on the couch.

That's the trade.

And I make it intentionally.

A client sees an appointment on my calendar.

What they don't see are all the other things I may have chosen not to do so I could show up fully for that appointment.

When I sit down to communicate with your animal, I'm not giving you whatever happens to be left of me that day.

I've protected that part of me for you.

My health limits how much I can do.

It does not diminish how well I can do it.

There is another part of all of this that I'm still struggling with: somewhere along the way, I tied an enormous amount of my worth to what I could do.

Being useful. Productive. Dependable. Giving. Working. Helping. Contributing financially. Taking care of people. Keeping my word. Pulling my weight.

Those weren't just things I did.

They were part of how I knew I mattered.

So when my body took away my ability to do many of those things consistently, it didn't just change my life.

It changed the way I saw myself.

There are days when I look at my life and think:

All I do is sit here and breathe air.

And on those days, I don't feel peaceful or grateful for simply existing.

I feel useless.

I know how harsh that sounds. I also know I would never look at another chronically ill person and measure their worth by what their body allowed them to accomplish.

But this is one of the places where what I believe about other people and what I feel about myself don't always match.

And this is where the well-meaning YOU ARE ENOUGH messages tend to lose me.

I understand what they're trying to say. I even agree with the idea when I'm applying it to someone else.

But eleven years of grief over a body and a life I lost cannot be resolved with a pastel square on Instagram.

I don't need a meme telling me my worth isn't connected to productivity.

I need to figure out how to actually believe it.

The question I'm wrestling with is much deeper:

Who am I if I can't do?

And maybe underneath that:

How much do I have to accomplish before I allow myself to believe my life counts?

I don't know yet.

I don't want to end this series by pretending I've transcended all of this.

I haven't.

I still want to work. I still want to contribute. I still want to help my husband. I still want to be there for my mom. I want to answer my friends. I want to travel. I want to build my business. I want to use this gift God gave me.

I want to climb things again.

I want more life than my body currently allows me to have.

And I don't think admitting that means I'm ungrateful for the life I have.

It means I'm grieving the life I lost while still trying to build something meaningful inside the one I have now.

Not because chronic illness taught me some beautiful lesson I couldn't have learned another way.

I don't know that it did.

Not because I believe God made me sick so I could become an animal communicator.

I don't know that either.

And certainly not because I've finally learned to be perfectly content with my limitations.

I haven't.

I show up because when my body allows me to do this work, I love it.

Because connecting with an animal makes me feel more alive. Because after years of trying to figure out where I fit, I found something meaningful.

Something I'm good at.

Something I can give.

My illness and my calling exist in the same life.

Some days they coexist reasonably well.

Some days they fight over the same small reserve of energy.

I haven't figured out what all of that means.

Maybe someday I will.

This series itself is an example of the life I've been trying to explain.

I didn't sit down one afternoon and write it.

It took me months.

I worked on it when my head and body allowed me to think clearly enough. I stopped when they didn't. Then I came back when I could.

And because my energy is finite, working on this meant other things didn't get done. There were things I wanted to work on, people I wanted to respond to, and ordinary responsibilities that had to wait because I chose to spend some of my limited capacity here.

That's one of the things about chronic illness people don't always see.

When I accomplish one thing, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm suddenly doing better.

Sometimes it means I chose that one thing over five others.

This series was one of those choices.

It mattered enough to me to finish.

And there may very well be someone reading these words right now who has a message from me sitting unanswered while I was working on them.

If that's you...

Now you know why.

I haven't beaten chronic illness.

I haven't discovered the secret.

I'm not walking into the sunset healed, enlightened and grateful for every terrible thing that happened because it “made me who I am.”

Some of it was simply terrible.

Some of it still is.

I still grieve the woman in those climbing photographs. I still get angry. I still question God. I still disappear sometimes. I still hate needing help. I still want my old life back. I still wonder who I would have become if my 40s hadn't floated by while I was sick.

And I still don't completely know who I am now.

But I know I love this work.

I know I have something meaningful to give when I am able to give it.

And after eleven years of struggling to explain where I've been, I'm finally telling the truth about it.

Not as an excuse.

Not as an inspirational before-and-after story.

Just as the truth.

And I'm still writing this from the couch.

[Part 5: I Found My Purpose. I'm Still Sick. — What Purpose, Faith, Work, and Chronic Illness Look Like When There Isn't a Neat Ending]