Merry Christmas, Feeling Great – Hope You Are Too
I’ve been meaning to explain my disappearance for a good two months. I want to do that today, because it’s Christmas and I’d like to give my kindle book away for free (I’ll put a link to Amazon here
I’ve been in remission/recovered for a solid chunk of time now, but I’ve also played it very safe and been a good little health nut. I had developed a phobia of travelling AKA being away from my medicine cabinet and bed, but one day, in October, I did what I hadn’t done in 6 years; I got on a plane.
I started my Eurotrip at a yoga retreat in Portugal called Omassim. I practiced yoga and meditation 4 hours a day, wrote in my journal and ate vegetarian buffet food all day long. The combo was better than any detox or talk therapy I could have back home. I had a few supplements with me at this point.
I went to a writing workshop near Wales next. After years of Lyme research and writing, I decided to write something fictional and explore my imagination. I met quirky Brits who appreciated my weirdness and humor, which was a massive encouragement for me to follow my childhood dream to write novels.
At this point, I could have flown home. I was out of supplements, and my planned retreats were done. But I felt healthy – mentally, and more importantly, physically. Up until this point, I had strengthened my yoga practice, feasted on tons of good food, explored my dreams, felt appreciated and useful, and journaled out a lot of my mental baggage. I was ready for more.
I flew to Ireland on a whim. It was the cherry on top. I completed my trip with tons of laughs with some of the friendliest strangers in the world. I drank Guinness every day for weeks, went to comedy shows and traditional music gigs. I hiked the beautiful hills on Glendalough (pronounced glen-da-lock) for days in peaceful solitude while I listened to my beloved audiobooks.
It wasn’t all grand – I had a bad experience in customs, slept in crummy places, got locked out in the cold, had a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life moment halfway through. But I did all of this without relapsing. For me, this was a surprise. My two week trip turned into a two month trip.
I get why there are so few people on the web who are recovered from Lyme.
It’s not that they don’t exist, but they want to move on. I’ve enjoyed learning about Lyme and health these past few years, but recently I didn’t want to think about any of it. I really, reallllly enjoyed trusting my body and not logistically choosing what to eat and how to live and basing it all on the textbooks and forums and doctors advise I had absorbed in the past 6 years. This trip was an unlearning. I unlearned defining myself as a “sick girl” and learned how to be a healthy one. Not by consciously “doing healthy things” but by knowing when it was time to stop resting and time to live, laugh, let go, develop new skills, meet new people, get in touch with the world and get out of my comfort zone.
I was working on a second book with co-author Joey Lott, but I’ve asked him if we could press pause. I don’t want to abandon health blogging and coaching, but I want to explore the non-logistical side of health, get my head out of a textbook, tape up my medicine cabinet, and experiment with health in a new way; with a pint of Guinness and a yogi heart.
Merry Christmas 