As a person living with fibromyalgia, I spend a great deal of time thinking.  My thoughts go from the mundane (what can I eat today that won’t cause me to suffer?) to the extraordinary (what would it be like if I could fly alongside the birds outside my window?)…okay, maybe not so extraordinary.

The point is that when my body won’t act according to the demands of my brain, I spend my time reflecting on the present and then on the future. In so doing today, I came to realise that something within me had shifted.

For the firs time in a long while, I was thinking, whole-heartedly and fearlessly, about my future.

I was imagining myself travelling.  No, not just around my neighbourhood, but to distant places like Japan and South Africa.  I was seeing myself working again with young people, writing, teaching, meditating, advising, and generally being at peace and being happy (which I am now)…

It was amazing.  

And then I realised that this, this freedom to imagine, to dream, was something that I had thought had been taken away from me by illness.  I had preoccupied myself with thinking that I could do no more than I had already done with my life.

After all, I had overcome some major challenges with my illness, had given up my old ways of living, had moved to another country, immersed myself in a new culture and language, and begun studying again.  I’ve even been able to work a bit.

Isn’t that more than enough to hope for?

No, it isn’t.

I still have my dreams and my goals AND I can still realise them.  Even if I don’t exactly know the how of each step that it will take to achieve my dreams, I know that the first step is simply to acknowledge that I CAN achieve them, regardless of illness.

So, live whole-heartedly and fearlessly today, despite the challenges, despite your inner critique, despite the naysayers. Having fibromyalgia doesn’t mean that you have to stop living!

Live for You, live for Now, and live for Tomorrow!