A beacon of light or an extremist

So i have been wondering, if you really believe strongly in something and try to live what you believe, in every way possible, i.e. walking your talk, are you an uncompromising extremist or just trying to do what you think is right and what is best for you and those around you? I know it can't be easy sometimes for those around me who feel that i don't 'fit in' and am not 'doing what everyone else does' in certain things but i think that is surely all down to perspective and for me is the point. I am talking about complimentary health and healing modalities, an 'unseen' world and a connection to nature and the earth that more and more of us are realising is crucial to health. This includes our food and the idea that we need more organic living, light filled foods to feel healthy and vibrant which in turn will also protect our environment. Am i missing something here or have not many of these ideas become quite mainstream? AND hasn't Quantum physics not started to prove many of the things that ancient cultures have known for a very long time and small pockets of people have been trying to promote and live by since? But back to my point surely if we all did things just because 'everyone else does them', then there would be no diversity, new inventions, discoveries etc and perhaps no healing. Surely you have to follow your heart and try to do what you think is right in each moment.

I can see that it might make life much easier sometimes not to be 'different' or to challenge the status quo (really is that what i am doing? It just seems natural to me and i am certainly not doing half the things that i could be doing) and sometimes in certain situations i would love that too, but what is normal anyway and this feels so important to me that at the moment that i don't feel i have a choice if i want to get 100% better or if i want to live some of the dream that i have for my life and work. It has taken me a long time to come anywhere close to knowing what that is and now that i have had some glimpses i really don't want to let that go. I suddenly feel that i need to do what i think is right and to talk about it. I am not asking everyone else to do it too, i am just saying this is what i am interested in, this is what i do and this is what has worked for me so far and i want to be allowed the space to talk about this and to work with these things without retribution.

We all have our own unique journey, perspective and way of doing things, for right or for wrong, the point is surely that it would be nice sometimes to be acknowledged for the journey. Ok i would like to be acknowledged for my journey. Instead of being rubbished and told that what i believe in and what i do is just 'hippy pointless rubbish',that what i have chosen to do in life is a waste of time but instead that there is some value in what i do even if it is not mainstream enough for some people or accepted. Just ask, you may find that it's not all rubbish that there is something more being offered and that i have learnt something along the way.
The key of course is to believe enough in oneself and what you are doing that it doesn't matter what anyone else says. It is all water off a ducks back...most of the time!

O.k enough of the angry rant. I wrote this a couple of months ago when the first huge emotional shift from eating more raw/living foods (about 80-90% raw) was happening and after i had had my first Life Alignment session- www.life-alignment.com, but more on this later. I know there will be many more emotional layers that will come up to be healed, but for now there have been some essential things that have come up for me, one of them being the fact that i need to believe in myself and value myself enough to do what i think is right. Although i want to do things as sensitively as possible i no longer want to do things just because they are right for other people and because i am worried what other people will think. Fear can be a very limiting emotion and i feel i have lived by it for far too long.

To live as much as possible in a way that makes your heart sing and your soul soar is surely the way that most people want to live and ultimately what life is about. To live life in alignment with your dreams and visions is also a huge part of this.

I have been struggling for a long time with Chronic Fatigue and i have never truly allowed myself to acknowledge it or the role that it has played in my life, until now. Even at my sickest i felt i had to keep struggling to appear together and ok even when that was far from the truth. Partly because at the start i had no idea what it was and all the doctors initially just kept telling me that Prozac was the answer. Well to me that wasn't good enough, it wasn't any where near a solution, why didn't they look any further into things or take into account all of my symptoms.It was not the holistic approach that i felt medicine should have. I had zero energy and i mean zero energy,not just the fatigue from say not sleeping for a couple of nights, this was a mind and body numbing fatigue that went right to my core and into every cell and part of my body and being. I was also in pain, my whole body hurt, my muscles, my bones, my head, my stomach etc etc so that generally i felt like i had been run over by a bus. My skin seemed to be in constant detox which vainly i hated. I was hyper sensitive so i often felt like i had system overload just having someone speaking to me so i often had to retreat to a darkened room, if i was not there already. It was as if my body had no filters and even the smallest thing seemed to stress it into a melt down/oblivion. Nothing was functioning as it should and i was only 19!

I am still not entirely sure what the exact cause of the Chronic Fatigue was but i do know that it is more than likely a combination of things such as the huge amounts of steriods and antibiotics i was given after a bike accident, vaccinations before i went to India and then getting the Epstein Barr virus, a liver virus and various parasites that i picked up when i lived and travelled there as well as emotional and spiritual stuff which i believe also had a deep impact on my body. All of it resulting in a struggling immune and digestive system and all the things i have said above as well as a host of other symptoms.
So i didn't want to take anything like Prozac that i felt would take me more away from myself than i already felt and i knew that i wasn't just depressed. What i needed was for what i was feeling to be acknowledged and the idea that there might be something else going on to be looked at, you don't just feel this way out of choice.

I also didn't ever give it the space it needed or deserved as i was scared that people were right and that if i just put in a little more effort it would all go away or if i pushed a bit harder i could at least lift my head off the pillow, have a coherent conversation,get to the bathroom without collapsing,get up those stairs or get to the shops without needing to get a taxi home just a couple of 100 yards, it all depended on the stage or whether i was having a bad day or a relapse. I never gave myself a break as I worried that if i didn't keep pushing to find answers and to do things then nothing would improve, but i also thought that perhaps if i pretended everything was ok then somehow it would be. I struggled with the lack of understanding all round because it isn't an understood condition or definately wasn't then and i definately did get depressed by it all. There often seemed no rhyme or reason to it, why was i a bit better one day but the next would totally collapse. I also wanted an expert to just tell me what to do. I did gradually learn how to manage things better and began to see which things would always have a big impact and make me need to clear my diary for the next week, day or for hours afterwards. Knowing yourself and allowing yourself to do this is crucial.

Some have described it is an invisible illness because it isn't nescessarily obvious what's going on from the outside and it is hard to explain to others what is going on, even after years of experiencing it, as i find people aren't good with chronic illnesses. The attitude can often be "aren't you over that yet, didn't you have that years ago? etc etc". Perhaps the lack of help and understanding was a gift in disguise as it made me take things into my own hands, i didn't want to feel this way and initially no one could help so it was up to me. I decided that i needed to look at it from all angles or rather that's what happened as one thing led to another, from the physical to the emotional and the spiritual too. I discovered quite a few truths about myself and i started to see that i actually wasn't the awful person or the failure that i felt for a long time but i actually had a place in this world and i had some wonderful things to offer.

I have slowly got myself better in increments over the last 10 years,with the help firstly of the amazing doctor who initially diagnosed me and made me feel that i wasn't going mad,some wonderful complimentary therapies&practitioners,some great friends, my wonderful family and an unendingly understanding boyfriend,who i am so lucky to say is now my husband. I also had to change the way i did many things such as it being imperative to use natural things particulalry in terms of skincare products as i became highly senstive to everything, changing what i ate and looking deeper into the emotional and spiritual stuff that i had not previously addressed or had tried to bury. It is an ongoing process. It has been an amazing journey to discover who i am at my core and what i want to do with my life.

I would say that it still affects me but it is minimal in comparison to how it used to be and i have days when things are so good that it is not an issue at all. I have hardly ever said i can't do this because of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, i have never wanted it to be an exscuse for anything, but perhaps acknowledging it fully is also part of the healing process and giving myself a break for feeling this way is also crucially important to this.
It is a journey and it has been an important part of my journey. I hope that each day that i work on things that it will improve and life will just keep getting better and better.

One person i really admire for taking the initiative to find her own solutions and therefore taking back her power is Bethany Hagensen. Bethany was paralyzed from the waist down for three years due to an adverse reaction to a tetanus shot, complicated by Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, Fibromyalgia, Osteoporosis, and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. The medical system eventually failed her and Bethany decided to try the raw vegan diet, with no expectations of anything fantastic coming out of it. What she experienced was beyond her greatest expectations. Restored health, mobility and a spiritual awakening followed within six months of changing her lifestyle. Bethany is now walking with no assistance and has a very different life.
Have a look at Bethany Hagensens story here or here  and see the following website which is a trailer for a film about her healing story: www.bethanysstory.com.

A beacon of light or an extremist? Perhaps it's not just the lens through which you view life, but the fact that in order to be a beacon you also need to be extreme....just a thought.