Courage

Physical Health:
I am continuing to try to figure out my next steps on this health journey. I officially ended my relationship with my former main practitioner. I didn’t want to stop working with her, because she cared more than any other medical practitioner I have had in the last 8 years. However, I knew that we had reached a point where her knowledge and skill sets were no longer helping me move in the right direction. It is never easy to end a relationship with a practitioner when they really care about me, but it was the next right decision.

My husband and I have have been exploring next steps for about 2 months, but nothing has felt right. One practitioner has a lot of knowledge, but he has yet to put forth the effort required to make meaningful change to my situation. I have completed some of the testing he ordered to see where that takes us, but I haven’t decided whether or not I will continue being his patient. We also had a quick appointment with a secondary practitioner that works with my chiropractor/acupuncturist, but she doesn’t seem to have all of the knowledge and skills I need at this stage of my journey. What I know for sure is that every practitioner has gaps in knowledge, skill set, work ethic, or all of the above, and I am doing my best to weigh the pros and cons of each option. Until I feel like an option is right in my gut, I will be staying right where I am on top of this huge mountain of uncertainty and taking each next right step as it comes.

Home Building Process:
Let’s just say that it is going. My husband and I have had to take the “kind, but assertive” approach lately. When I explain what is happening to those closest to us, they are all frustrated for us. It has been more than the typical “building a house” chaos, so we are taking a lot of deep breaths and keeping our eyes on the (hopefully) prize at the end. We had prepared ourselves for the usual chaos that happens in the process of building a house based on the stories we have been told, but several professionals in our orbit have told us that the home building process we have been on so far has been abnormal.

What would it be like if our lives ever fell into the “normal” category? We no longer have any idea what it feels like, in any area of our life, to live the life of a “normal” person. 🤣

Emotional Health:
You can guess how much fun it is to hang out on a huge mountain of uncertainty for an undetermined amount of time in addition to the 20+ years we have already been doing it. 🤣 However, we keep being told that we are managing it really well, so I guess we will give ourselves a pat on the back.

I was reading an article the other day written by Amanda E. White, LPC, on the topic of mindset. She wrote about how the “mindset” approach our society is promoting right now is not the answer everyone thinks it is. Back in the 1980s, there was a push to improve self-esteem. The thought was that self-esteem was the cure for a variety of our society’s problems. As a result, there was the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality in the late 1990s and 2000s. According to a bunch of theorists, if we simply helped everyone feel better about themselves, then our world would be a better place. Needless to say, self-esteem didn’t end up being the answer they thought it would be.

Amanda’s article was equating the self-esteem movement of the 1980s and 90s to the self-optimization movement of the last decade. The self-optimization movement has involved telling people that they just need to be more productive, more efficient, and/or manifest harder to get the life they deserve. If someone is struggling, they just have the wrong mindset or aren’t working at it hard enough.

I have long despised the “mindset is the answer” chorus that runs throughout our society, because it can place blame where blame shouldn’t be placed. Yes, mindset is extremely important, but it is not the answer to everything. I have been told by countless trained professionals over the years that my mindset is one of the best they have experienced for someone in my situation. So, if mindset was the answer to everything, then my health situation would have been solved a long time ago. As Amanda reiterated in her article, sometimes the circumstances are the problem, not you. I am grateful for the reminder this week!

Brutal. Continuing to live on a huge mountain of uncertainty. Being the guinea pigs for our builder’s new system.

Beautiful. Taking each next right step as it comes on the health journey. Taking the “kind, but assertive” approach to the new house. The reminder that sometimes circumstances are the problem, not me.

Just another day of . . . This Brutiful Life: The Brutal & Beautiful Moments of My Life.