Training to Win Amidst Chronic Disease Step 3 - Spare no Sacrifice

This is a picture of our work station and kitchen table in the couple weeks after our move away from a toxic environment in the Spring of 2020. Our first move away from mold was an eight hour drive, this one was 20 minutes. This was harder beyond measure. We had to purge our lives of attachment to anything and everything we found to be a risk of bringing our problem with us. Our home in Georgia was not moldy, only the school was. This time the problem was two fold. Part of the physical sacrifice goes on in that Emilie has a full protocol for getting back from school to avoid anything thats been there being kept in the house without being immediately cleaned (the year of covid has been a blessing for us since she’s very rarely required to be on campus compared to normal). She’s had to switch from taking paper notes to all digital. She even has separate pairs of shoes for school and everywhere else, since sneakers are very hard to regularly clean and anything made of foam is basically not able to be cleaned when it comes to mold.

Emilie’s desk had been one of the only pieces of furniture we found salvageable from our situation. The folding chairs were brand new quick grabs to keep our butts off the floor. We slept on the ground for two weeks in an empty bedroom. Most of our old belongings are gone. We were already hip and ‘with it’ on concepts of non-materialism. Ive been a fan of The Minimalists Podcast since 2015 and I'm currently in deep on a 12 months and counting newfound love of Bhakti yoga. So the purge didn’t hurt nearly as much as the process, which took a tremendous toll to put it plainly.

The only thing Emilie says she misses much is a red folding lawn chair that was embroidered with a 4H state finalists logo from a special year of her past as a horseback rider. She has thought of it fondly at times since moving.

The only thing I miss is my book collection. I've been a reader my whole life and referenced many works quite often before getting sick that we had to get rid of. Emilie had a good number of titles as well. 20+ years of reading, and while I had culled a good amount of titles over the years, it was the first time I’d let any of them go before I was ready. We went from nearly an entire wall of bookshelves -about 8 feet wide from floor to ceiling- to one small row of books that now sits in our new living room. Everything from spiritual tomes and thoroughly dog-eared, underlined and annotated copies of Tim Ferriss’s books to childhood fantasy favorites, all gone.

The message here is that when you are sick, no matter the ailment, you need to change your frame of reference, and do absolutely everything you can to fight for your happiness. Change your surroundings, change the people you are around. Change your situation. Leave your job. Take a sabbatical or leave of absence. Drop out of school. Itll be there when you are better. Move to a different climate if it means you have a hope of recovery. Give up dates, nights out, snacks, movie rentals, birthdays, holidays, Hulu, ketchup, vegetables!.... anything you need if it means you might feel better or enable yourself to afford some hopeful treatment that you wouldn’t otherwise.

You have nothing if not for your health. You are nothing if not for your health. There is no greater suffrage than pain. Than loss of your mind. Than isolation. None. And that's what being sick does.

Prolong your time horizon. Place your personal intentions and preferences from when you were healthy aside.

Change as radically as necessary within the shortest reasonable timeframe toward engaging in healing.

You are not going off your chosen Path by focusing on self-preservation.

You cannot always push through without first honoring your need to promote vitality. You can only give what you got.

If you need time and space to sacrifice for your well being, you owe an apology to no one. Take it. I-WE-ALL - that is the order of Truth. You serve your purpose here in this life by getting your needs met first.

Tomorrow’s post we begin to learn to set boundaries and maintain personal solidarity amidst changing directions in life!!! Don’t forget that you are Loved, now and always. Thank you for reading.