My reflection today:
“What It Means to Live with Illness”
“Illness, especially when it’s invisible makes us question everything that is familiar, socially acceptable and comfortable.
Illness makes us re-examine our entire life, its priorities, meaning, and legacy.
Illness strips us of who we are, or at least who we perceive ourselves to be.
Illness leaves us exposed and naked because everything familiar is now a potential enemy.
Illness forces us to delve into deeper layers extracting the ideals we were raised with – ideals that hinder our emotional, spiritual, and physical health along with those we accumulated along the way.
Illness involves a process of self recovery – bursting out of old patterns and developing new ones that serve our newly created self.
Illness forces us to fearlessly examine the things in our life that are not working – then use that information to build and move on, not beat ourselves up for past choices.
Illness allows us the opportunity to recognize the true healing only comes when we fully love and respect who we are and, in turn learn to set our own standards for what we will and will not accept in our lives.
Illness gives us the opportunity to test our creative navigation abilities – finding a new path when suddenly the road we’re familiar with comes to a dead end.
Illness builds compassion and appreciation – you can’t have true compassion and appreciation if you haven’t experienced the loss of health.
Illness helps us recognize that the only thing we can’t afford in life is to be around negative people – negativity is contagious, often times invisible illness! “ Gloria Gilbere, ND, DA. Hom, PhD
A good portion of this rings true. In 1967 I entered the Sisters of Mercy, in 1968 my Doctor recommended that I leave because I had been in the hospital for 14 days bleeding internally. In those days it was called regioenteritis, today known as Chrohn’s disease. Fortunately, I had an excellent gastroenterologist who with treatment, got me to
remission. Thank God, in 1973, I was able to re-enter the Sisters of Mercy. Some days I wondered where is God in all this? As I reflect back, God was present in all of it.