As I was scrolling through my e-mails earlier today, I saw an announcement about the DDPRadio show topic for the night. (For those of you unfamiliar, I practice DDPYOGA and the DDPYOGA program was the catalyst for the beginning of my real journey toward good health. Hence the subtitle of my blog, "A New Me Via DDP.") The topic for tonight's show was to center around your "A-HA Moments": you know those metal pans to the head moments where your next step becomes so clear and you figure out the route for the next leg of your journey. Well, my A-HA moment for me was simple in the beginning. I saw that video millions of us have seen about a Veteran named Arthur who was crippled and began following DDP's program and saw miraculous changes. That moment, those few minutes, were everything I needed in order to understand what I needed to do to own my health again. And boy howdy did I ever run with it!
I ran hard and I ran fast! I began DDPYOGA in January of 2013. I did a lot of cleaning up in my diet and I worked out like a maniac. I saw immediate results and they were good ones. And I was happy. By my fourth month in, I was down 40 pounds; off one of my blood pressure medications; and my overall PsA symptoms seemingly were improving. Just a few months later, however, the weight loss had stalled and I hit a brick wall. I was so angry, frustrated, tired and bewildered. I was working so hard to make so many positive changes and there I was. Face meet wall.
It wasn't the first time such a thing had happened. I had hit those brick walls before. There was one significant difference this time; with this particular wall. Rather than say screw it and throw in the towel, I didn't. Well, not completely. I did gain back a lot of the wait I had lost. However, I didn't gain back all forty pounds and some additional. While I began making some poor food choices, they weren't all bad and I was still making better choices than I had been making before. For the first time, I hit a brick wall, caved a bit, but ultimately kept searching for a way through it or around it or over it. Despite all of the obvious setbacks, I was still trying to inch my way forward literally one minute and one inch at a time.
It took about a year of this brick wall struggle to realize I was really going to have to figure out what the extra key was for me. I firmly felt the AI diseases were the reason I had to find that extra key. I had to have an addition to my DDP Program to get me well. DDPYoga was obviously a keeper as was the clean eating. What else was there? Hmm. Well, there were my many illnesses and the many treatments I had to receive to survive the illnesses. I was not upset I was taking medication to remain functional, but I was upset that there appeared to be no end to the medications and no being funcational without them. I began following Brenda Nair's fight against breast cancer in 2014. Brenda made the very personal decision to fight her cancer in as natural a way as possible. She amazingly and bravely decided to heal herself with as few drugs as possible and focused rather on detoxing her body and healing through food choices, etc. Why my A-HA moment didn't immediately hit me over the head with that proverbial frying pan is beyond me. Maybe because I wasn't ready to full accept that might be what I needed to do for myself. Who knows!
But I did begin researching natural options to assist in my health recovery in 2014. I wanted to find out if there were thoughts or ideas out there surrounding the healing/treating/curing Auto Immune Disease in natural ways. And so I searched. And that's how I found my way to TrueNorth. And that's why I'm at TrueNorth now. The point in all of this rambling is this: Were it not for DDPYOGA, DDP, Brenda Nair, Arthur Boorman, Stacey Morris, etc., and that FIRST A-HA moment, I'd still be back there struggling somewhere at the starting line. And while it's taken me a little over two years to crawl to this point, there's some pretty awesome things going on in my life at this point.
- I'd weigh at least 42.2 pounds more than I did when I began DDPYOGA in January of 2013.
- I'd still be taking 11 different medications.
- I'd still be addicted to nicotine and caffiene.
- I'd still have blood pressure approaching critical points even with medication.
- I'd still be lost and struggling to find a way to get my health back.
We all have choices on what we can do to get our health back. I've chosen DDPYOGA and TrueNorth Health Center. These are my two big tools to get me where I need to go. You may like one, both or neither and that's okay. I'm not here to tell you what to choose. I'm here to tell you my experinces and my journey and let you know what has helped me. If these things can help you, that's great. If it needs to be something else, that's fine, too. The point is: you need to find your A-HA moment andmake it mean something. Every day you spend in misery is a day you won't get back. It's just lost. But there's no point dwelling on what's gone. Focus on what is yet to come.
"I continue to be amazed by our bodies' ability for self repair... Our bodies want to be healthy, if we would just let them. That's what these new research articles are showing: Even after years of beating yourself up with horrible diet, your body can reverse the damage, open backup the arteries - even reverse the progression of some cancers. Amazing! So it's never too late to start exercising, never too late to stop smoking and never too late to start eating healthier." ~ Michael Greger
A-HA. See. It's not too late.
Showing posts with label starting over. Show all posts
Showing posts with label starting over. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Friday, February 27, 2015
Finding my way north
I am all things southern. There is no doubt about that. Some might go so far as to call me country as a turnip green. I'm proud of being southern. I love my twang; sweet tea; my Grandmother; front porch swings; crickets chirping; church on Sundays; my silly southern sayings; and so on. For as much as I love my home state, my twang, and everything else my life encompasses in the Bible belt, turns out to get closer to my goal of true health, I had to find my way north.
True North isn't just the name of the facility where I am staying, it's a frame of mind; a state of being. My journey the last two years hasn't just been about yoga and eating right and even DDP will tell you there is more to it than that. It's also been about finding myself again amidst the struggles of my every day life: learning to react and adapt. But waking up daily in a body that has no desire to do for you what it was designed to do is a real struggle. And this journey of finding my true path to health has been an arduous one at best. Despite the every day struggles though, I have continued to crawl my way forward one millimeter at a time. Even when it appeared I was going backward, I was still moving forward because over the last two years, I have still never thrown in the towel no matter what life has thrown at me. Dallas taught me that for sure. I still haven't given up.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me I'm not known as the person with the best track record of Lady Luck being on her side. So, when middle Tennessee was hit last week with a freak ice storm, meh, that was par for the course. Why wouldn't we be hit with the first ice storm in around a decade the week I'm supposed to hop a plane and fly 2000 miles further into my journey? Why wouldn't my infusion appointment get canceled because Vanderbilt clinics were closing down for the first time in, I don't know, ever. Then my flight was canceled anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... Of course there were people all over who I am sure were much more inconvenienced than I was, but in my moments of "of course the universe centers around me and my needs," it just felt like twelve more ridiculous road blocks I should not have to be dealing with. There were issues in getting flights rescheduled; issues making connecting flights when my new flight was delayed days later due to de-icing on the runway; and so on. After rising at 2:30am my time, my 22 half hour quest to make it across the country, finally came to a close last Saturday night when I arrived at 1551 Pacific Avenue Santa Rosa, CA.
My first week at True North comes to a close in just over 24 hours. It's been strange. I spent the first few days fighting off migraines and sinus congestion and jet lag. I slept a lot. I mean a lot. I've enjoyed the cleanest eating I've ever had in my life and I've enjoyed quiet. There's been a lot of quiet. Today was my first day on juice. I'll have two more days on juice and then I'll begin my fast. I'm shooting for 30 days of fasting. In my research into fasting, 30 days seems to be a fairly magical point at which the auto-immune system can potentially reset. That's what this whole leg of the journey is about: resetting that thing inside me that works so hard to keep me from moving forward.
It's a fair assessment to say I've been called crazy a time or two in my life. A fairer assessment might be that I've been called crazy more than a few times. And I'm okay with that. There was a period in my life when I wouldn't have been okay with that; when I would have been bothered by someone's disapproval of me. I'm beyond those kinds of worries for the most part these days. I knew when I began sharing with people I was seriously considering an extended water fast the word crazy might get bandied about. And it did. And I'm okay with that, too. Now that I'm doing it, I'm sure crazy is being tossed around a bit more. What chance wouldn't you take though to get control of your body back? What place wouldn't you take yourself if you knew there was a chance you could cast out a demon that had plagued your existence for almost half of your life? What wouldn't you do? Would you take that chance or would just spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been. I've made some mistakes in my day to be sure, but there's little wondering what might have been going on between my ears. I'm pretty sure every day that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be in life. Today's one of those days.
We've all heard the often trite message regarding walking a mile in someone's shoes before judging, blah, blah, blah. The truth of the matter is that we will never be able to walk a mile in another person's shoes. The similiarity of our struggles can be of some measure in our understanding of what others have gone through, but no two people will ever go through an identical situation and have an identical understanding or intepretation of that situation once it's come and gone. Both of their understandings will be shaded, shaped and colored by a million factors that began occurring in each of their respective lives from the moment they were born forward. For me, this leg of my journey I'm on is about two things only: discovering my true north and bringing along anyone else that I can to do the same. Welcome aboard the crazy train!
True North isn't just the name of the facility where I am staying, it's a frame of mind; a state of being. My journey the last two years hasn't just been about yoga and eating right and even DDP will tell you there is more to it than that. It's also been about finding myself again amidst the struggles of my every day life: learning to react and adapt. But waking up daily in a body that has no desire to do for you what it was designed to do is a real struggle. And this journey of finding my true path to health has been an arduous one at best. Despite the every day struggles though, I have continued to crawl my way forward one millimeter at a time. Even when it appeared I was going backward, I was still moving forward because over the last two years, I have still never thrown in the towel no matter what life has thrown at me. Dallas taught me that for sure. I still haven't given up.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me I'm not known as the person with the best track record of Lady Luck being on her side. So, when middle Tennessee was hit last week with a freak ice storm, meh, that was par for the course. Why wouldn't we be hit with the first ice storm in around a decade the week I'm supposed to hop a plane and fly 2000 miles further into my journey? Why wouldn't my infusion appointment get canceled because Vanderbilt clinics were closing down for the first time in, I don't know, ever. Then my flight was canceled anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... Of course there were people all over who I am sure were much more inconvenienced than I was, but in my moments of "of course the universe centers around me and my needs," it just felt like twelve more ridiculous road blocks I should not have to be dealing with. There were issues in getting flights rescheduled; issues making connecting flights when my new flight was delayed days later due to de-icing on the runway; and so on. After rising at 2:30am my time, my 22 half hour quest to make it across the country, finally came to a close last Saturday night when I arrived at 1551 Pacific Avenue Santa Rosa, CA.
My first week at True North comes to a close in just over 24 hours. It's been strange. I spent the first few days fighting off migraines and sinus congestion and jet lag. I slept a lot. I mean a lot. I've enjoyed the cleanest eating I've ever had in my life and I've enjoyed quiet. There's been a lot of quiet. Today was my first day on juice. I'll have two more days on juice and then I'll begin my fast. I'm shooting for 30 days of fasting. In my research into fasting, 30 days seems to be a fairly magical point at which the auto-immune system can potentially reset. That's what this whole leg of the journey is about: resetting that thing inside me that works so hard to keep me from moving forward.
It's a fair assessment to say I've been called crazy a time or two in my life. A fairer assessment might be that I've been called crazy more than a few times. And I'm okay with that. There was a period in my life when I wouldn't have been okay with that; when I would have been bothered by someone's disapproval of me. I'm beyond those kinds of worries for the most part these days. I knew when I began sharing with people I was seriously considering an extended water fast the word crazy might get bandied about. And it did. And I'm okay with that, too. Now that I'm doing it, I'm sure crazy is being tossed around a bit more. What chance wouldn't you take though to get control of your body back? What place wouldn't you take yourself if you knew there was a chance you could cast out a demon that had plagued your existence for almost half of your life? What wouldn't you do? Would you take that chance or would just spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been. I've made some mistakes in my day to be sure, but there's little wondering what might have been going on between my ears. I'm pretty sure every day that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be in life. Today's one of those days.
We've all heard the often trite message regarding walking a mile in someone's shoes before judging, blah, blah, blah. The truth of the matter is that we will never be able to walk a mile in another person's shoes. The similiarity of our struggles can be of some measure in our understanding of what others have gone through, but no two people will ever go through an identical situation and have an identical understanding or intepretation of that situation once it's come and gone. Both of their understandings will be shaded, shaped and colored by a million factors that began occurring in each of their respective lives from the moment they were born forward. For me, this leg of my journey I'm on is about two things only: discovering my true north and bringing along anyone else that I can to do the same. Welcome aboard the crazy train!
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Steph's Way To Well
After much research and discussion, my husband and I have come to a decision. In mid-February, I will be going for in-patient treatment. I am excited. I am nervous. I am terrified. I am thrilled. The range of emotions I feel can't really be articulated although I'm trying. I'll be away from my children and husband and out of work for a minimum of four to six weeks. The only feeling I don't have in regards to our decision is uncertainty.
I've spent the better part of a decade chasing my tail and trying to get well. I have made forward progress; I have given up; I have started and stopped; I've made more gains; and then I've felt loss again and again. Despite the fact I am still not where I want to be a year and a half after beginning my latest journey, I am still miles ahead of where I've ever been before! I actually feel pretty good about that!
Despite the lack of forward progress I would like to have seen to this point regarding weight loss, general health, etc. since I began this, my final journey toward good health inspired by a couple of guys named Arthur and Dallas, there is one very real thing that hasn't happened that has always happened before. I still have refused to give up. Even in every moment that I appear to be failing, I am consciously aware of every aspect of my health and how everything I am doing is affecting my health. While that sometimes leads to some guilt, it also keeps me ever cognizant of new and different choices and, most importantly, the ability to be open to new ideas that could lead to my ultimate goal of good health.
I'm going to work on getting back into the blog every now and then before I go to treatment in February. I also plan to blog the journey through my residential treatment program.
In preparation for my trip, I have begun a t-shirt campaign through Teespring! I am hoping to help raise funds to help defray my medical expenses since insurance will not pay for a 30 day residential stay that will cost about the same or less than one of my infusions that I have to have every five weeks. For the foreseeable future. Maybe even the rest of my life. I'm unclear on how it makes sense to continue paying for infusions but not residential that could negate the future need thereof. But, I digress. So, just in case you are interested, I'll share the link. Get yourself a cool shirt. Or not. But feel free to share the link!
http://teespring.com/stephswaytowell
Have a good night. I'll see you soon!
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I've spent the better part of a decade chasing my tail and trying to get well. I have made forward progress; I have given up; I have started and stopped; I've made more gains; and then I've felt loss again and again. Despite the fact I am still not where I want to be a year and a half after beginning my latest journey, I am still miles ahead of where I've ever been before! I actually feel pretty good about that!
Despite the lack of forward progress I would like to have seen to this point regarding weight loss, general health, etc. since I began this, my final journey toward good health inspired by a couple of guys named Arthur and Dallas, there is one very real thing that hasn't happened that has always happened before. I still have refused to give up. Even in every moment that I appear to be failing, I am consciously aware of every aspect of my health and how everything I am doing is affecting my health. While that sometimes leads to some guilt, it also keeps me ever cognizant of new and different choices and, most importantly, the ability to be open to new ideas that could lead to my ultimate goal of good health.
I'm going to work on getting back into the blog every now and then before I go to treatment in February. I also plan to blog the journey through my residential treatment program.
In preparation for my trip, I have begun a t-shirt campaign through Teespring! I am hoping to help raise funds to help defray my medical expenses since insurance will not pay for a 30 day residential stay that will cost about the same or less than one of my infusions that I have to have every five weeks. For the foreseeable future. Maybe even the rest of my life. I'm unclear on how it makes sense to continue paying for infusions but not residential that could negate the future need thereof. But, I digress. So, just in case you are interested, I'll share the link. Get yourself a cool shirt. Or not. But feel free to share the link!
Have a good night. I'll see you soon!
Body at War
2015 is going to be a really big year. I'm turning the tables. My body's been at war with me for a decade and a half. I'm soon going to be at war with my body! Details coming soon on how I plan to turn this thing around and get back to what this blog was started for: a healthy me.
Stay tuned. You don't want to miss it!
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
The Other Side Of Fear
One of my biggest fears in life is failing. If I begin something and fail, and I begin again and fail again, well, I guess we all are in touch with that emotion at some point in time. I fail every day. It's an arduous task starting over. I know because I do it every day. One day, soon, I will shake the fear of failure and make it to the other side. I know it.
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