“It’s not easy to start again after losing our health and losing so much of our familiar life. It requires so much hope – and hope can be difficult to come by when we get used to feeling so down and so sick. Because of the cards we’ve been dealt, it can be hard to find a logical reason to have hope. But I am learning that we don’t actually need a reason to have hope. We don’t need evidence or logic as much as we may think we do. We don’t even need to fully understand or define what hope is. We just need to believe that hope exists. We have to bravely decide to give in to hope, even when we can’t see it or touch it – even when we don’t know if it is there. When life is dark, we have to believe that there is something still worth living for right around the corner. This delicate belief is what will move us forward. It is what will remind us that each sunset is always, without fail, followed by a sunrise. “
Gracefully Ill: Finding Peace in the Chaos of Chronic Illness
I wrote this book in the hopes that it would bring others comfort – through a perspective that looks beyond physical health to emotional health & coping. Putting all of these thoughts into words ideas onto paper brought me so much comfort and reassurance too – I was able to remind myself that the specialness & preciousness of life can still co-exist with the heaviness & loneliness & fear of feeling ill all of the time.
If you are in a hard space emotionally, physically or both, I truly hope that this book can set you on a path towards finding some form of comfort in your body and in your life. I hope it can remind you of how bravely you are coping and fighting, and of how life still has hope, even under these circumstances that you may not have been expecting.
I have learned so much from this illness & from my close friends & spoonies in this community who also face this difficult, sometimes frustrating, sometimes painful life. And through writing this, I have also connected with my dear friends who don’t have chronic conditions. It is has given us a way to understand each other and to talk about some of these experiences.
If you choose to read or share Gracefully Ill with a friend or loved one, I hope it can open this same sort of honest and kind communication for you & I hope that it can remind you that you are absolutely, under any circumstances, alone.
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