Things have been a blur the past few weeks because its been so busy! The month of June is one of those months where you both love it and hate it! With the school year coming to an end we have all the usual year end things happening and at the same time we can’t wait for summer holidays to start. Just get me through the month and all will be good. Throw in the tail end of our cottage build and finding time to practice self care has been really hard. I just have to keep telling myself I’m almost there!

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that today I’m not doing so hot, and doing everything I can to fight off pain and keep myself functioning. Sometimes I think that this is when I do my best writing however because it helps me tap into the reality of what I deal with every day! I have always tried to live life with a chronic illness with a positive attitude, to be an example to those around me that life is still great in so many ways!  That will never change! I promised myself one thing when all of this started and that was to make a difference in other peoples lives! To learn as much as I can about CRPS and take that information to as many people as possible, being a voice in the process to those affected by this illness!

Sometimes this disease gets the best of you and it takes nothing to get mad at it! Why? Quite simply because every single day it reminds you that its there and that its trying to steal from you. The key however is that I won’t let it. Even on days like today where I’m having a bad day with pain, I focus on being positive and not letting it steal from me. That’s where surrounding myself with people who are positive and help me to focus on the good things is so important. I can’t stress that enough because it can be so much easier to pick out all the bad stuff that’s going on. I try and look at all the good things I have in my life like my faith, family, or circle of amazing advocates that I have around me. They’re always there to pick me up when things get really frustrating and when I want to naturally go to that negative place!

I’ve also said it a million times and I’ll say it again and again God is the single most positive influence through all of this. When nobody else can be there in those really hard times for me He can be! I’ve said a lot of prayers through this journey and will continue because I know He hears them all. When things seem impossible at various times He makes them all very possible. Too many times I didn’t have the answers or the obstacles that were in front of me seemed just too difficult to get passed! However every time I ask God for help a path or a door opens for me to get through or that answer becomes quite clear. That isn’t chance or something random that happens. That’s God answering prayer!

Some of my fellow advocates have gone through journey’s that seem just too unbelievable to be true! I don’t see them that way at all. Often some of those stories have brought people really close to death. I look at them and see a testimony that a person has and the power to speak into someone else’s life. This again is God working through a person and using that person in a certain way. I know talking about faith isn’t very easy for some people but for me it is because I believe in the things that He has done and is doing in my life. I have experienced first hand the way that He works in my life and through others. So when people tell me that they are all alone I tell them that your never alone because the truth is that you aren’t!

I always tell people that even though I’m going through all of this every second of every day I couldn’t feel stronger on the inside. Again I believe that this is something that God has placed within me in that He has enabled me to face or handle anything! There are days like today where its a struggle and that the pain is intense, but God never said that there weren’t going to be hard days or ones in which we don’t have to face adversity!