I’ve noticed something lately. Every single person I see, asks me how my heart is.
“It’s great, you know, healing but I feel good"
It makes me smile inside and out when people care enough to check up on me. But I realised that I owe you an update also. Not because I feel that I “owe” it really, but because if I choose to be open about my journey, I need to be open all the way along.
My little heart is, in fact, healing. It’s currently sitting at a slightly uncomfortable resting rate of 120 beats per minute, which is about double what it was and should really be. This is just a side effect of having a few procedures in a short amount of time. Hearts don’t really want people poking around inside them, so they take a while to calm down after all is done. I’ve been assured that it will slowly lower over the next 6-12 months.
I cannot wait.
Day to day I feel very normal. Occasionally I’ll have a bad one. Some nights I find it hard to sleep so I just lay and focus on my breath, feeling my heart race and trying to distract myself from the mental games your head plays when your body doesn’t feel safe.
My absolute saint of a husband has had to cuddle me back to life on the rare mornings that I wake up feeling like I just want to hide. When the anxiety gets on top of me. My two best friends have dealt with the helplessness of hearing me sob and break down on the phone when I didn’t feel like I could make it through another migraine, more vomiting and sleepless nights.
Then there have been a few brief times when I have waited for Bo to fall into her day nap and I’ve just gone to my room and cried. Because maybe I didn’t deal with the emotional side of it all. I pushed the fear aside so I could be strong.
But now that it’s over I can look back and admit that it was freaking scary. I have flashbacks of waking up from my second procedure with my body shaking so violently that the nurses had to hold me down and I thought that they had broken something inside of me. The feeling I’ll never forget when they injected Adenosine into my vein and for a brief moment I felt all my organs shutting down completely and watched my poor mother as she watched me in the most pain I’d ever experienced. Lastly, the heartbreaking moment my husband walked into Emergency saw me looking like I’d just been electrocuted (because I had) and seeing the pain in his eyes, feeling so helpless.
But it’s over now.
I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t vent all of this to you. Starting this site, I committed to being an open book in the areas that I believed would help others to grow. I understand that in the world of social media perfection, it’s easy to feel inferior and I want you to know that we all have battles. Life is never perfect. But I know that if I hadn’t been doing the inner work over the past 2 years of this blog and my time as a coach, I wouldn’t have made it through this in the way I have. I’ve respected my feelings, taken time when I need it and been as open as I need to be. I’ve kept up with the things that make me happy. When I lost my vision for a few weeks I started downloading audio books. I spent time with friends who were happy to hang with me in my PJs all day. I drank smoothies and let Bo sleep in my bed with me during the day.
Right before all this happened, I was going through the first round of The Gratitude Transformation with over 140 beautiful souls taking part. Some of my friends think that my heart was so full because of the response that it couldn’t handle all the love.
They could be right.
So with a healing heart and a new found strength that comes with this type of growth, I’ll be opening up enrolment to the Gratitude Transformation Round 2 in one week. It’s time. I know you need it as much as I need to share it again. If you missed enrolment last time, this is your second chance and I can’t wait to share with you the tools I’ve used for years to keep me mentally fit and healthy.
I’m well. I’m healing, but 90% of the time, I feel normal. I’ve had my moments of feeling sorry for myself, but I’m ultimately glad that I’ve been through something like this. I know the people who are there for me. I know that the work I do, for myself and for others, keeps me strong. I know that I’m healthy inside and out, I just have a heart that’s a little confused.
