Drastic Transition a Blessing in Disguise: 10 Life Changing Lessons

Looking back to move forward. Everything is connected.

It makes no difference how long I've been online or how much I have dealt with people, I always find the first blog post to be the toughest. What to say and then wondering, will people be interested? Anyway, here I am on steemit, so here goes.

It has been a tough 8 months since we moved from Hamilton to Cardona. We moved here for my husband's job, and found out that the job wasn't what it was presented to be, so we are in transition. Uprooting an established business is no easy task. While I love the town of Caledonia, its only now that we are starting to get settled.

Put simply, huge transitions in life can either make you or break you, and to be honest, I did not think we would make it through this one. It is, however, funny how the universe works, and it is so true that when one door closes another one opens.

While the move had been difficult and the job for my husband, very disappointing. I would not change a thing. I have learned more about trusting the universe in the last 8 months than I thought was possible.

I have been working with people as a psychic reader and a spiritualist medium for 11 years. In that time, I was very blessed to have a successful business. I started in Toronto in 2006 and then moved to Hamilton in 2012. Relocating again in November 2017 has proven to be a bit more difficult.

For the first time in my life, I found that my health was in a really bad place because of chronic pain. Now anyone that knows me also knows that I have cerebral palsy. I have been through many struggles in my life, but additional chronic pain has been one of the most difficult challenges I have faced yet. My understanding is that people with cerebral palsy, do not get progressively worse, like people other disabilities, like multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy, but our bodies do age faster and we feel things more intensely at a younger age because of how our neurological systems have been messed up because of the damage done that resulted in the cerebral palsy in the first place. For me, its been like my nerves are on fire or I am tingling all the time. It is particularly bothersome when the tingling is in my hands because I lose the sensation of being able to feel things when I am picking them up or typing on the keyboard. It has been so difficult that I have had to start using voice recognition software to input what, I want to say it in a word document, an email or even this blog post on steemit.

The hardest part of dealing with chronic pain was I had no idea what was happening or why. It was like one day I woke up and the pain was just cranked up and there was no way to turn it down, never mind off. I am not one to complain, it is simply a matter of my body changing and me having no idea where all the changes were going to take me. Realizing that things can change in a heartbeat, and that the things you take for granted that you have always been able to do become nearly impossible is very scary and humbling.

For me, the most humbling experience was when I was at my worst, and my husband had to help me get dressed in the morning. For me, there was nothing more frustrating and frightening, then losing my independence. My husband is a wonderful man and he has no problem taking care of me, but I have a problem with being a burden to him which is what I thought and felt at the time.

For me, there was no choice. I had to find out, what was happening, why and what to do about it? The need to know what was happening and why, and learning how to manage with my new limitations sent me on a 2 year journey back into the medical establishment. I am very grateful for the help that I received. I wasn't ready to be incapacitated. We (my medical team and I) are still trying to sort out what is going on. It seems like I may have fibromyalgia and I have yet to find, the exact set of protocols that will manage the plan fully. With this as the backdrop the hardest part was that I was just newly married. Jeff and I got married in 2014 and the next year I started having difficulties. So what do you do when everything you know is turned upside down?

Looking back on it now, I realize that I have been very fortunate to be a very spiritual and aware individual because on top of living with a new condition of chronic pain (between August 2014 and January 2017) my husband and I watched 10 different people who we loved dearly, die. Some of the transitions were expected and others were a complete shock.

For me personally, my fragile health and all of these deaths pushed me to the absolute limits of what I thought I could take. At some point, though, I had to ask for help from the universe. I also had to believe that things happen for a reason. People pass when they're supposed to most of the time and changes such as health deterioration are huge catalysts that require life changes.

As I look back, I realize that I learned many things or, maybe I just rediscovered them. In the next few blog posts I will share the most important lessons for me, with the hope that sharing my experiences will help others who may be going through very tough life transitions.

While I was going through the motions of life, I did not realize how much self care I had stopped doing. I was so busy helping others with the readings and trying to be there for everyone in my personal life, that I forgot about taking care of me.

If you had asked me then would I go through this journey, I would have tried to avoid it so I wouldn't have to deal with the stress, but now I realize just how much I needed to reorganize my life to make myself a priority. I needed to take care of me same way I tried to take care of clients, family and friends. Sometimes drastic life transitions are blessings in disguise.

So what did I do that allowed me to get through this most physically and emotionally painful part of my life? Well, I changed the focus from everyone else and everything else and trying to plan for years ahead to simplifying things. I put the focus on me and what I needed in the moment and began dealing with the day to day as best, I could. I did not focus on the distant future. I did not have enough energy fot that. Specifically, I was forced to slow down in a number of ways so that I could recover.

For me, slowing down and focusing on what I needed came out of the 10 life changing lessons listed here.

1. Making my health a priority.

2. Cutting down on work.

3. Cutting out unnecessary spending and cleaning up debt.

4. Learning to say no.

5. Eliminating stressful situations and people from my life.

6. Allowing myself downtime, time alone, as well as time with people and pets who I love.

7. Learning to let go of the need to have control and to have everything figured out all the time.

8. Forgiving myself and others for not being perfect.

9. Rediscovering my joy through my hobbies.

10. Returning to a simple and healing spiritual practice.

Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog post on steemit and please be sure to come back when I write more about each of these, 10 life changing lessons.