Grieve and move on!

When confronted with the diagnosis of a chronic health condition like fibromyalgia, we can often grieve for the stronger, healthier person we were before it and it's like any other form of grief. 

We are angry, we bargain, we accept it, we move on. The hardest part in moving on is linked with acceptance: we have to find our new normal. 

I find there's a period of anger and denial, then acceptance. And it varies with each of us.  

Acceptance is the pathway to moving forward. So it is critical that we come to acceptance by focussing on what we have left, rather than what chronic illness has taken away from us.

As in all grieving, no one can say how long it will take us to come to acceptance, but it must come so that we can find our new normal and live our new life in that new normal.

What chronic illness takes from us is more than the physical. But even so, despite feeling down emotionally, we should and must focus on what it hasn't taken.

I have days where I still mourn the loss of basic abilities like home cleaning, showering and walking far. Today is one of pain with fibromyalgia to the point that I can't straighten my fingers and even my eyes ache.. 

My to do list today is not big, but it. is. what. it. is.

• Clean the kitchen
• Cook dinner
• Shower sometime before bed

Country life is sweet

I love our little country township. This is the main street. It consists of a few houses, a Post Office and a general store.

Although very small, the town always has something happening- today it was a nursery stall where plants and vegetables to cultivate are sold cheaply.

It is not uncommon to go to the Post Office and be walking among free range hens, pecking in the nature strip or front garden of the people's homes.

The Post Office is staffed with super friendly people and is pretty busy. Due to small population here, the mail is not delivered by a post man, but is delivered to PO boxes which we hire.

I have got permission from our landlords for Chris to make some waist high raised garden beds and I am planning to buy some vegetable seedlings for that soon.

Just across the Post Office there is a lovely park which has just been allowed to be visited after Covid rules lessened. I will be taking the grandchildren there on the approaching school holidays.

This little Post Office is within easy walking distance from our place. As soon as I get some spoons back with this fibromyalgia flare, I am going to try to walk it there and back. 

If I run into difficulties, Chris will be able to see me from our front porch and he will pick me up.

It does seem laughable that a short walk has to be timed and emergency procedures in place, but such is the life for a fibromite with barely a spoon to stir her aching old bones. 

I tell myself, "It is what it is!" and accept it but it still hurts. It's sort of like having a laugh instead of having a good cry.

I will get to walking it as it's fun to play with the hens who are quite gentle and tame. Country life is sweet!