Personal Advocacy
Personal advocacy is hard, often it’s heart breaking, and it can feel like a nightmare. When outsiders look in all they see is the disease, they miss the horror haunting our palace of peace. These visitors see our pain, but the totality of our circumstance is beyond them. No one can truly understand the magnitude of your agony, but it doesn’t mean they can’t empathize with your situation. If these visitors are your friends, help them help you. Give them an idea what it’s like to live life for a day in your shoes. Share your feelings and thoughts, face those inner demons, and reconnect with the people you love and love you.
Before discovering personal advocacy, our life drifts within a void. Slowly and without purpose we amble toward the ever-consuming maw of oblivion. In these moments, we teeter at the edge of destruction. We sit on a wall like old Humpty Dumpty waiting to fall. If we remain there we will break, and we will leave our treatment to the hands of all the king’s men.
Discovering personal advocacy doesn’t change our disease, circumstance, or pain. Instead it transforms how we live our life and walk our road. As an egg old Humpty Dumpty was destined to crack, shatter, and break, but in his true form he was something far more powerful and relevant. I don’t know if you know this, but Humpty Dumpty was a cannon. It was an object capable of causing great destruction and damage, but it served as a tool to protect and defend. In the seconds you feel thin as an egg and ready to break, know that you have the power of a cannon. You are unstoppable, powerful, and ready to overcome any obstacle. Sure, Humpty Dumpty eventually broke, but so does everything else. Be a halogen light, illuminate the night, make the most of your moments and find ways to be healthy along the way. If you sit in fear you will never have the time to shine.
Once on the road of personal advocacy we discover it is full of twists and turns. It’s a path of heart break, loneliness, and frustration. As we move forward, we begin to fill that void.
