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What gives you hope? How do you hold onto a spark of light when you can’t swallow, can’t eat or drink and the life you knew has been completely rearranged? So much of the experience of Dysphagia is loss; loss of a normal bodily function, loss of the pleasure of eating and drinking, loss of social contact, loss of your own self image as capable, competent, independent, attractive, sexual. How do you re-engaged with life, work, and love when your experience of yourself has been so profoundly changed? Can you still have hope in the face of Dysphagia? What will it look like now that the life you knew is gone?
People survive all kinds of life-altering difficulties we know it can be done….but what if you want to do MORE than survive…you want to THRIVE and feel joy and passion and…HOPE again. Hope is the only thing that tempers depression, assuages anxiety, calms fear, and invites peace. WHATEVER the status of your condition….YOU are always getting better, moving forward, getting stronger..that is the nature of life and of healing.
This was the challenge that lay before me during the 6 1/2 years I was tube dependent, so I am the LAST person to raise my “embrace you deficit” Pom-Poms. But I am the first to assert that although Dysphagia may have taken over your life…IT IS NOT YOU! It is a condition you have. Who YOU are is so much BIGGER than anything that can happen to you (and what has happened to you is beyond shitty). Ride those waves of depression and when they set you back down, refocus your energy on taking care of your:
BODY: nutrition, exercise, vitamins, sleep, massage.
MIND: books, lectures, classes.
SPIRIT: music, nature, faith, yoga, meditation, tai chi.
HEART: love, laughter, friendship, pets, whatever else works to build you up and strengthen you in every way.Polarize around those things, people and experiences that bring you strength, clarity, courage, and joy. You may not know the final outcome of your Dysphagia, but you DO know that even though the loss is great, life and your ability to be reshaped by your circumstance and come out of it bigger, better and more alive is greater.
We often think that miracles have to be biblical in scope, not so. You are here in whatever condition you are. Awake, alive, breathing and fighting for another day and as long as you are doing THAT…..there is hope.
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