Today is my birthday. June 20th.

I am celebrating myself, and it has taken me a long time to give myself permission to do so.

I moved from Tennessee to New Hampshire in 2017 for two reasons. One was to be with my partner at the time who lived here, and the other was to get "adequate" treatment for what I thought was Lyme disease.

Throughout the last 15+ years, I have struggled with the following chronic symptoms:

Anxiety, depression, constipation, bloating, chronic hives, back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, repetitive stress injuries, chronic fatigue, abdominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, endometriosis, tension headaches, POTS, dizziness, heart palpitations, TMJD, and chronic tinnitus.

Shortly after moving here and completely transitioning my life, I realized that the partnership I landed in was a toxic one. I also started treatment for Lyme, which was basically over 1000mg of doxycycline per day for a year.

A year later, my physical gut and emotional heart were both incredibly unwell.

I look back at that time now, and think how rugged it was. But at the time, I kept my head up, even though I was in survival mode and completely struggling with my mental health, there was some part of me that was resilient.

In short, I left that toxic relationship, quit the ineffective antibiotics, found a full time job as an undergraduate in community mental health, and found an affordable rental to live by myself.

These last 6-7 years I have done the deepest digging and unraveling of the layers of my psyche.

I did not know how much unprocessed childhood trauma I was holding in my nervous system, and these years of solitude here in New England during the pandemic have been a time of deep inquiry and internal processing.

In 2021, I started the three year Hakomi Somatic Therapy training which was a segue out of this darker chapter of my life, and into alignment with my center. Embodying the principles of Hakomi Somatic Therapy in my practice and in my life continue to humble me while stimulating my growing edges.

In honor of my 38 years around the sun, I want to offer you all a little something. This is relevant to you whether you struggle with chronic pain, mental health challenges, or just the inherent challenge of being a human.

First of all, I just want to support you to know that it's okay to be right where you are, as imperfect as you are, as hard as life can be. When something just continues to be hard, there's something to pay attention to. There's likely something that is deeper and more profound than your rational mind can understand.

I encourage you to keep listening. Keep showing up to whatever your process is, and just noticing what's here. So you feel so depressed that you don't want to get out of bed today? Okay, how can you meet yourself right where you are? In bed, needing rest.

What is trying to emerge?

What is wanting to happen? Is deep rest needed? Is it the spaciousness to take your time to actually feel what your needs are? Is it the knowing that there's some deeply repressed emotional territory that needs to be felt? Is there a sense that you are needing to execute boundaries from a place of integrity versus behavior patterns rooted in survival? Is it that your inner child really needs to feel protected, safe, and cared for?

Keep listening.

There's nothing to figure out, nothing to fix, nothing to do. Just keep showing up and tuning into your body. What do you notice as you listen from your heart? As you listen from your gut? From your spine? From your bones? From your fluids? From your cells? From your feet?

And, just a caveat here that systems of oppression can make life unjustly hard for many for reasons that have nothing to do with any lack of self awareness. There are tough places where developmental trauma meets societal oppression, and many people don't have the privilege and resources needed to simply overcome this.

If you do struggle with chronic pain, what would it be like to embody your symptom free self? Do that now. Who would you be if you were symptom free? Be that person now.

When you have struggled with chronic pain, depression, and/or anxiety for a long time, your brain can easily go back into the old, worn, familiar beliefs that you are stuck, that you are not okay, and that you will never get better. If those beliefs show up for you, I encourage you to challenge them (no thank you, dear brain). Our brain likes what is familiar, even if it's actually harmful.

So, if nothing else, I encourage you to plant a seed here. What would your life be life if you were symptom free? Where would you be? Who would you be around? What would you be doing? What kind of energy would you be embodying? Are there things in your life that need to shift for this to happen?

I wish I could say that I am 100% pain free. I'm not. But pain no longer interferes with the quality of my life. I still get flare ups from time to time. I have days where my symptoms show up, but they are 85% milder than they used to be.

There are two things about this that I know: 1. Pain means there is something I am being invited to pay attention to. 2. After having pain for over 15 years, it is a steady process of those symptoms slowly dissipating with time.

I hear stories of people having very sudden relief from their symptoms, and while that does happen for some folks, it doesn't happen that way for everyone. So please don't be discouraged if you are a slow, steady processor like myself.