A person I admire once said, “Once you stop fighting your illness, you will allow acceptance to emerge.” I guess I had never looked at illness that way before. Society tells us to fight illness to our last breath, but is it really a fighting attitude we should have? This thought was something I began to ponder after hearing this statement. It took me months to process and understand what fighting vs. acceptance meant for my Crohn’s disease.
When I first received a diagnosis, I thought I had accepted my chronic illness because I was popping pills around the clock, but I was unwilling to make any lifestyle changes and continued to work 15-16 hour days in a Wall Street career. I still went out with my friends, clients, and colleagues many evenings and nights because that’s what 20-something-year-old brokers did. What I didn’t realize is that I was in denial as to what life with a chronic illness meant. The “chronic” aspect of my illness was something I had just not processed.
During this time, I chose to focus entirely on my career and on living life to the fullest. Meanwhile, my body was begging me to slow down to give myself a chance to heal. As my disease spread, and I needed surgery after surgery to deal with excruciating symptoms and recurring illness, I thought perhaps positivity alongside a fighting attitude meant acceptance. However, what positivity for me really meant was that I thought I could crush this disease and beat it like people beat cancer. Again, I hadn’t accepted that this is a chronic illness; while there may be ups and downs, long-lasting remission is the best we can ask for as there are still no cures.
So how did I come to terms with and finally accept my illness and its chronicity?
Eventually, I started seeing a mental health therapist. My therapist talked me through moments of fear, grief, solitude, and deep and utter sadness. She explained to me why it was necessary to accept treatment and why it was necessary for me to be proactive about my symptoms. She taught me that there was no one right way to heal, that everything happened in its own time and with the right combinations of therapies.
I also started attending support groups. In the beginning, I didn’t speak at all. I just listened and heard people crying through their medication trials, surgeries, and daily symptoms. Then, I saw them come out on the other side feeling much better and living their lives again. Even though I barely spoke, I took it all in and it gave me hope that maybe one day, I too could be living a full life again. There was something so extraordinary in the power of relating to one another; it made me feel more accepting of myself and of my condition.
I started journaling and took a creative writing course for fun. Writing about my experiences made them real; it made them something I could touch and say, yes, this was traumatic, but I now write this down using pen and paper to release from me the traumas that once gave me nightmares. The creative writing course director asked us to share our writing assignments with the class, and as nervous as I was, seeing my classmates accept my experiences and better yet, accept me for who I am, felt validating. It made me feel like I could accept myself, hold myself, and carry myself through whatever further massacres my body had to face.
Going through these stages of therapy, support groups, and journaling/writing, I began to truly understand what acceptance is when living with Crohn’s disease. Acceptance is not fighting our diagnosis; it is a journey of loving ourselves and recognizing that we must heal from the physical and emotional wounds our diagnosis may have brought us. That acceptance is what ultimately allowed me to own my Crohn’s, and that acceptance gave me the strength and confidence to begin doing the advocacy work I do today.
So, own your Crohn’s and remember that acceptance is a critical part of our chronic illness journeys. It doesn’t matter how we get there; what matters is that we take the steps to help us cope best with our ailments.