The things I worried about last week are no longer my worries this week, and it’s both liberating and unsettling.
I feel like I have lived a lifetime of emotions and feelings in the last 9 days. Days which have been accompanied by an abundance of thoughts - some based on facts, most of them not. It’s strange what happens when your body lets you down and you are forced to rest, when you have nothing but time to think.
No ability to lose yourself in reading - because your droopy, dry eye won’t allow it for any length of time. No ability to bury yourself in a feel good binge worthy Netflix series because you guessed it, the droopy dry eye and the foggy head makes focusing hard.
But there in lies the anomaly - is it my body which has let me down, or my thoughts and beliefs which have let down my body?
Image credit: Andrew Bui on Insplash
Beliefs, emotions, thoughts - it’s the topic of my weekly Words for Wellness newsletter for next Wednesday. If nothing else my illness has forced me to reassess what is important and to stop being so damn afraid.
🔥 Fear
Fear is when illness wracks your body and makes you scared of knowing whether you’ll cope with the challenges - when your mind begins the fast paced worry dance and you live in fear that there is worse to come as the hours become days and you know it’s likely weeks and months of recovery ahead.
Or worse you’re already ahead of yourself worrying about the likelihood of a recurrence before you’re done with the original version.
❤️🩹 Guilt
Then comes the guilt when you realise that it’s supposedly a temporary illness and many of those sending you their best wishes and support have faced much worse and will continue to live with much worse. You feel embarrassed for how overwhelmed you feel, and question where your resilience went.
Guilt also that people want to help and support you because they care, and you simply want to go to ground and bunker down, and to not see or talk to anyone.
🍀 Acceptance
Acceptance is a hard won emotion, and it takes a longer time to settle with you. You’ve searched far and wide for answers and reasons, and mostly solutions. After all, there has to be a medical or physical reason why you’re experiencing this? Or not, there’s so little evidence or reason as to why people get Bells Palsy.
Realising there is no simple answer is hard. You feel different and changed, and are no longer sure of who you are. But you do know you’ve realised what matters most, you’ve discovered what’s important.
💎 Trust
Trust is shaky and yet inevitable when you’ve given yourself up to the spiritual path and found acceptance. You know everything has its place, you can’t control what comes your way, can only trust that it will become clear in time.
You build your trust knowing that you’re strong and that you will come out the other side of this experience healed. Admittedly it may be with a slightly droopier eye than before and a slightly off centre countenance than what you started with.
Trust is not knowing everything, getting it right or being certain it will work out the way you want it to.
“When we bring in an attitude of trust (which is similar to letting go) we allow ourselves to embrace the spontaneity of the moment. When we open ourselves to trust we give ourselves room to grow and to learn.”
Trust is what empowers us.
Ways to develop our trust in the Universe
🌻 Let go of the need to control circumstances - life is unpredictable and you can never be sure what will happen. There’s magic in the unknown.
🌟 Pay attention to the signs and synchronicities - feathers, signs, words, books, people, all of them are clues that the universe has your back.
🌻 Embrace the challenges - feel the fear of what you’re facing and do it anyway.
🌟 Say yes to opportunities - the small things will often lead to the big things, don’t question them just say yes and figure out the how and why on the way.
🌻 Be grateful - let go of the need to complain and find the lessons in your path.
🌟 Forgive the past - not necessarily the people or the actions, but yourself for how you reacted and what you felt. It’s time to let the emotions and feelings go and move forward. You’ve got this!
🌻 Release the need to lead with ego - stop putting so much thought into what people think of you. Let go of the need for perfection and let go of the need for control. All to often we become comfortable in knowing and we resist the unknown, there’s so much to be found in the unknown.
Keep smiling, Fi 🌻
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This is the first issue of my new weekly Words for Wellness newsletter which will be available every Wednesday.