A Letter to Lyme Disease

You came into my life slow, but steady, until you thought you won the race. You hung everything important to me out to dry. My job, my career, my relationships, my family dynamics, my home, my social life, traveling, hobbies, my bank account, my determination and aspirations. All of it was deteriorated and replaced with ungodly symptoms and buckets of diagnoses. I was passed around like a hot potato; poked, prodded, gaslit, and steamrolled for years until they could finally figure out it was you. Couch bound, and dependent on my mother giving me showers. How could this happen to me? Why is my body trying to kill me? How much longer do I have? Was everything I experienced prior to this just a dream? Nothing took away my hope like you initially did. Nothing made me dread falling asleep at night for fear I wouldn’t wake up, like you did.

The thing is, I did wake up, morning after morning. Even if all I had energy for was my breath. And then I most importantly woke up to the fact that this wasn’t happening to me, it was happening for me. I was trying to survive a toxic lifestyle, and my body was doing what it had to for me. Make me sick enough to escape from it.

Thanks to you, I delved deep into my traumas, my nutrition, my environment, and relationship dynamics, including with myself and my body. I discovered the various root causes of what can make and did make me so sick. I cried from the grief of shedding my old identity, and lifestyle. The grief in my lack of worthiness of being healthy, happy and loved. I felt emotions I didn’t know I had. Emotions I never felt safe feeling. What we don’t shed tears for, we will eventually physically feel. I learned first-hand about the mind-body connection, and made a promise that I would always say “no” before my body would have to say it for me again.

Thanks to you, I’ve created a lifestyle and identity that embraces ease, over dis-ease, and thriving, over surviving. This is nearly a full-time job, and although it’s exhausting at times, I will happily opt for it over the alternative. I realized that the life and identity I grieved is what made me sick in the first place. I now mindfully choose relationships, jobs, products, environments, hobbies, entertainment, groups, treatments and treatment teams, self-love and activities that support my nervous system and make me feel safely challenged so that I can grow in the healthiest way possible. I follow my joy.

I meditate, I ground, I journal, I create, I move, I pray, I go to therapy, I go on journeys, I see spiritual and energy workers, and I constantly create new neural pathways. I use my voice and I choose my internal and external words carefully. The body hears everything we say.

Thank you, Lyme Disease for showing me that I am worthy of the life I desire. Even on challenging days, I believe I am healing. I know I am healing.

I hope you know that you’re healing too.