I am a Miner

’a process of extracting useful minerals…’

I watch others and mine for coping skills, health habits, and hoping I could be the person I imagined myself to be. Why am I not a… doctor, lawyer, journalist why am I not a super mom? why am I not a major breadwinner? Why am I not a triathlete? These have been serious questions in my life. A life of feeling like I was a failure. Little did I know I am a winner. It’s not what I am not doing that’s causing my illness.

When I watch others go to work on the daily I often ask myself ’why can’t I work a whole week?’ The people who attend regular fitness classes are they superhuman or serial killers?

often I feel like I am unreliable but now I know it’s my migraine that is unreliable.

After a few weeks of a migraine it never dawned on me that I perhaps I shouldn’t compare myself to these achieving people Sans Migraine. Let’s face it, there is a 100 pound weight slamming into my head as fast as my carotid artery will allow and with the superhero skill to puke in a teacup and finish the grocery shopping. I think I am officially crushing it. I bet those non migraneurs would have stopped what they were doing and gone home to rest until they felt better. As I wrote this I realize how sane that is. Sound advice indeed but when anyone has a chronic condition ( insert your variety here) there are shades of feeling crappy. This is not a competition I wish to win, it just is the way a person with Chronic Pain lives. Negotiating sometimes hourly before have to tap out for the day or week. The worst feeling is failure. Failure to perform, show up, be at work, remember conversations, a hike, birthdays and everything In between. The lists in my head I make ‘when I feel better’ never happen and plummets me further into depths of failure.

Those of us who have a chronic condition have an exaggerated sense of FOMO. Also, it’s because we ARE missing out. So I Mine for the secret to perform with consistency. I mine for tips on how people make it through a day, a week, a month with success and joy. What do they eat? What do they wear? Do they pray? Sing? Dance? Paint? Eat 7 almonds with a magnesium

chaser?

Drink chicken blood? First I have to change what success looks like for me. ( says a therapist). Well here we are

together. If you have a chronic illness, it is not who you are it is what we live with.

My goal is to learn to live with chronic illness from my own experiences and yours. I am not going to live with Chronic Pain without Chronic Sanity.

Share what you have learned living with Migraine and or Chronic Pain/Illness.