Giant nuggets of health throughout 2024

Healing as it’s been happening. Beyond my wildest dreams.

Dec 08, 2024

For the previous 6 years, I’ve been reflecting on the year gone by.

It first began with the popular sharing of photos and shout outs on Facebook.

I saw one by a fellow chronic illness warrior who was a big support to me the year my life fell apart. My dad died and within 3 months I was disabled by an illness I’d only recently been diagnosed with.

selective focus photography of brown grass at daytime — There were golden strands in and amongst that darkness that I didn’t know were there. (Photo by Johnny McClung on Unsplash)

In many respects it could be argued it was the worst year of my life. But there were so many horrifying years that came before it, both before and following a breakdown I experienced in 2016, that in some respects, 2018 became the catalyst for the change my body had long since been screaming out for.

I’ve seen it recently stated that when it comes to those in recovery, we need to give credit to their good fortune. A fair point to make but one that I’d suggest that if we’re going to credit the good fortune of those in recovery then we need to credit the good fortune of those who are not yet sure if they’re on the road to recovery or are unsure of it’s possibility.

For me, as horrifying as it was, this year was one of those good fortune moments. Though it certainly didn’t look or feel like that at the time. I’ve come to realise that good fortune isn’t always dressed up as good fortune when you’re in it.

From the end of that year, I began to reflect on it in a way that it put me in touch with the memories made amidst the downfall of my life as I knew it.

Looking back through photos I simply couldn’t believe there were so many magical moments amidst the ashes of what once was my life.

The year before last, I wrote a piece in reflection of 2022. It is in this piece that it shows what a year in the life of the deeply healing looks like.

Last year was a year so big, so full of presence, so full of freedom and an ease starting to come in that I had never known, that I turned it into a book!

I’d become so caught up in the comparison trap of everyone sharing their insights, wins and reflections of their year gone by I might add, that I was beating myself up over not being able to get out a version of my own quick enough.

It was only in the surrender and the letting go, the learning to let myself winter – without the guilt, which for me, was an all-time first – that I was able to birth the creation of this book.

Want to learn to do the same? Order your copy here.

This year, I’ve written a series of reflections that are connected to my ever-improving health. To show you what this looks like beyond what most of us are told is even possible.

In January, after a period of overdoing it following the death of a friend the previous autumn, I wintered. I allowed myself to slow down to a point of deep rest. Only to realise that I have never enjoyed this level of health and wellness. Nor have I ever been as true to myself and I’ve been wondering ever since at the connection between the two. To celebrate my birthday on January 26^th, we went to the Lake District for a weekend away and I was able to climb two mountains on two consecutive days.

1^st February and I find myself typing 7,000 words for the writing competition I went on to win the publishing of my ebook, Unleashing My Inner Power through. Up until this point, I’d never come close to writing that many words in a day before. The energy I experienced in winter week – the most challenging time of my menstrual cycle health wise – increased to such an extent that I could go on a walking day out and climb a hill. I haven’t been able to have any kind of day out before, during or after my period for as long as I can remember. And certainly not one in which would leave me topped up health, wellbeing and energy wise.

Circle facilitation studies were in full flow come March and a voice workshop triggers something so deep in my psyche that I fall into migraine attack overnight. I automatically laid on my bed, affirming to myself “I surrender come what may. I’ve done enough”. It was so unexpected; I didn’t even realise I was going into attack. Yet my brain has been rewired to such an extent that it no longer goes into panic mode and the neural pathways know what they need to do to minimise pain, symptoms and duration.

All this whilst celebrating two years free from pain so agonising that I feel like I’m dying, wish I were dead or can think of nothing else than finding a way to end my life.

April holidays to Tunisia. Migraine attack on the last day – the same as our holiday to Egypt in March last year. Only this time, it was way less brutal. Last year, I still described a migraine attack as brutal (and it was nothing compared to the 24 years previous). This year, I would come to experience more of them than last year but in a way that I would only come to describe as merely unpleasant. Rubbish, yes, horrid even. But not brutal. Not agonising. Not disabling.

yellow and white trophy — I learnt a few years ago, I must celebrate the wins. They were much smaller then - though nonetheless significant. This practice helps during the darkest days. (Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash)

Over the summer, despite my ill days peaking to 8 a month and reaching their highest in 2 years, pain is consistently mild. Mild pain is very much my norm. Symptoms are always few. Despite the increase in ill number of days, my inflammation levels are the lowest I’ve experienced or known. The heat in my head is no more which feels a big win even on its own.

I experience a happiness like I’ve never known. Happy at home, in my own surroundings. Immersed in nature, living the simple life. My boyfriend of 18 months says we hardly spend any money. I’ve had to learn to adjust to life this way. Only to find that I much prefer it. My health and happiness benefits as a result. I even dream of happiness in my sleep. It all comes from within. My happiness does not depend upon and is no way subject to the external or what’s going on around me.

In practicing a chakra meditation and forgiveness, I clear a block so big that there is no stopping me from publishing a book that I was only able to write in the first place because I soothed myself by saying “no one will ever read it anyway”.

I’ve been practicing forgiveness since I first learned of it in Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. Only this time its to do with my mum and it takes me 3 times to forgive, even though I have been healing the mother wound deeply for the past few years.

The belief I had attached to some childhood trauma was that “I can’t do what I love, I will get hurt”. It is this fear of getting hurt over doing something I love that has been – in part – preventing me from publishing my books. This year I have 3 of them in total in first draft and a fourth one ready to write. It is the fourth one that global publishers Hay House have an interest in. Yet my guidance is forever telling me to stay true to vision and it is the book I am on with publishing next that is in full alignment with that.

silhouette of bird on rock during golden hour — “Remain patient” is the caption with this photograph. A powerful message. (Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash)

Come September and I have to make the decision to come home early from a trip to the North East – again. We miss the very event we went up for because I was ill for 4 days straight. I am no longer unwell for that many days in a row anymore. It’s a bit of a blip year in that respect. Yet when I look back on last year and step back to review the wins, I can see so many of them are there. In addition to migraine attacks no longer being brutal this year, I find another win is that I was ill less days this month than last month.

Unleashing My Inner Power has been published and I am feeling an immense amount of vulnerability, finding myself insecure as hell. I’ve been resisting sitting with my emotions some weeks over the summer but I pull it back and turn it around this season. I never quite know what the link between how I’m feeling is with illness, I only know that there is one.

Another whopper of a celebration this month is that it’s been two years since I experienced pain that I’d consider comparable to childbirth, kidney stones and gunshot wound (according to the Migraine World Summit’s pain scale shared in 2022). Where they are a 6/7, with cluster attack being at 9.5. My lifetime usual has been a 9 - 7 or 8 on the less brutal ones. I’d say I’m down to well under 5 this year, maybe 1, 2, 3 out of 10.

October brings with it a massive level-up in my healing. I keep trying my best to slow down, given that nature outside is showing us exactly how it’s done. It remains a forever practice and sharing my struggles in slowing down continues to be my highest read and most engaged blog of all time. I celebrate the success of sharing the biggest insight that I missed by witnessing a space within that I now have for grief to surface. I cheerlead the f*ck out of myself for having had created the space for emotion to bubble up and rise in such a way that my health continues to benefit.

When you consider celebrating success, would you ever connect to the witnessing of how you feel as being part of that celebration?

Over to you

Now is an ideal time to pause and reflect. Ponder on the year gone by. The highs, the lows, the insights. Check in with your belief system. Get clear on your priorities and wishes for the year ahead. Create a vision you have for your health.

In what way will you reflect on the year gone by?

How will you connect with the memories and moments of magic, even if they were small and fleeting in a similar fashion to my own back in 2018?

If, like me in every year of times gone past, you’d benefit from support doing that, I created a 3-part journal to go alongside transformative memoir, Unleashing My Inner Power.

This short memoir shares with you what my year looked like before the one you have read about here. This year has been what’s come on the other side of all the years prior where I learnt to step into my inner power by daring to dream and flying fearless. I had no way shower ahead. No testimonial of anyone who had done it before. I bumbled along in the darkness, in the great mystery of the unknown. I taught myself as I went. I learnt the hard way so you don’t have to.

The way I have approached it is by no means the only way to go. It is in the how, however, that I believe we will come to witness so many more in recovery than what we do now. Unleashing My Inner Power is one way I share with you how to create the beginnings of that possibility.

Order your copy now for Christmas and complete the journal over the festive holidays. This deep work is so aptly aligned with the ending of one year and the beginning of the new.

Your future self will thank you for it.