Falling off the Wellness Wagon

 I had eaten mostly clean for a solid year. After nearly half a decade of stubbornly inching my way in that direction, all of the small changes I had made culminated into a beautiful year of self-love, and self-care. I felt fully energized and engaged.  For the first time in my life, I was happy and content. It was a miraculous experience, and I felt a drive to share it with everyone I loved. Everyone deserves a chance to experience a happy energetic life.

This year I fell off the wellness wagon. When you are on the wellness wagon, you are making a clear effort towards self-improvement, you are on a journey of becoming the best version of yourself and you don’t have to be perfect to be on the wellness wagon, you just have to try. But a series of major life events began to take their toll on my willpower.

  I had been at the top of my game, and the first thing to knock me off the wagon was a bicycle accident. It wasn’t terrible but I sustained a couple of fractured ribs and some whiplash. There is something about being slammed to the asphalt off a bike that will ground you in more ways than one. 

I continued to redirect my efforts and stay in self-care but then I learned the distressing news that my body was leaning towards cervical cancer. I had put off following up on my abnormal pap for at least four years. I always hated going for those damned paps.  There is something about a stranger poking around in my lady parts would trigger severe anxiety and I just couldn’t bring myself to go. Now that I was in a place of self-care, I knew that I had to face this fear.   I knew that I had to follow up because my health could be at risk. By the time I could bring myself go, those cells had mutated three stages into a moderate form of pre-cancer.

 That was another wake-up call for me. The news that I had pre-cancer was hard to wrap my head around. It was like that part of my body had physically up and quit on me. It broke open a pandora's box of scar tissue left over from the IUD that had migrated up into me, and unhealed emotional wounds. I believed that if I wanted to heal physically, I would have to also begin the work of healing emotionally. That was the hardest part.

I am grateful that I got a hold of myself in time to really do something about it. My latest follow- up lab results proved hopeful; the pre-cancerous cells had improved by a stage. So if anything, this incident has become a major force driving my practice of self-care, self-love, and willpower.

 Shortly thereafter, my father was hospitalized, and we almost lost him. Tension was building in my family and I could feel myself getting more and more frustrated. I think that tension went straight into my neck because during this time, my neck went out and wouldn’t stay put.

That was the final blow. It was a drain emotionally, physically, and financially. Weekly chiropractor appointments afforded me temporary neck relief, but I had to stop working out and lifting weights, which had been a major factor in my stress management. This multi-faceted frustration became a kind of  perma-anger, which underscored everything that went wrong in my life. I began indulging in negative thought patterns, and I found myself stress eating again.

So there I was again, in the darkness, not a wagon in site. I knew this place well, and it was not a place I intended to stay. I had not completely given up, and I wasn’t broken, I was just tired.  It was time to re-group and game plan, time to modify and simplify, time to find that wagon, and get back on it.

     We all go through our cycles when our reality isn't so stable, and our wellness ebs and flows.

You may find yourself in the darkness, outside the wellness wagon too. I just want you to know, I'm right there with ya. I've got a flashlight, and another perspective. Now lets go find that bitch!