Self-Kindness and Acceptance in 2022

Happy New Year everyone! Can you believe that were already in 2022?! It feels very futuristic to me, when I was young I was sure we would all be travelling in bubble cars in the sky by now (I blame Back to the Future Part II for that one).

I’ve talked before about New Year and chronic illness. I don’t tend to set new year’s resolutions in the traditional sense – too much opportunity to fail perhaps? I feel that this year especially I want to consider all that I still have and hold onto it, giving it all the love, care and attention it deserves. The past couple of years have often been punctuated by loss and my heart goes out to anybody who is struggling with the loss of family, friends, relationships, jobs, sense of self, their health… I understand. I’m so fortunate that I have not had to deal with the loss of loved ones, but I certainly feel that my sense of self and health has declined over the past couple of years.

Fighting – and not accepting – my MS

When I first started this blog, back in 2016, I was very determined to take my multiple sclerosis into my own hands, so to speak, and fight it with any means that I could. I was aware that my health was declining and my symptoms were increasing. I convinced myself that changing my lifestyle – namely by following the Overcoming MS Recovery Program –would be the key to reversing any symptoms and stopping the decline. I started following this in 2013, almost 20 years after diagnosis. I attacked my MS with gusto, immediately taking all of the OMS recommendations on board. Unfortunately, however hard I fought, it just pushed me right back.

The truth is, I suspect that I embraced the program a little bit too late in my MS journey. I have faith that helps those who have little disability to start with and, especially, those who start early in their disease journey and embrace it fully. I have seen amazing results with online friends who have managed to stop all disease activity on their MRIs and live for years without symptoms or relapses. I, however, as someone who was diagnosed almost 30 years ago, have continued to struggle. Long-term readers will know that over the past few years I have had to deal with the loss of my job (I took ill-health retirement back in 2018), increased physical disability and a bad fall with a subsequent broken collarbone and tooth. Add in a secondary progressive MS diagnosis, personal struggles and HSCT in 2019 and it is no wonder that I feel a bit broken in more ways than one! Not surprisingly, I haven’t been as strict as OMS encourages over the past couple of years.

New Year, New Way of Thinking

BUT! It is now 2022 and I have set myself an intention (a resolution?!) to give myself more love, care and attention. More acceptance. How do I know that taking daily vitamin D, meditating (albeit less frequently than previous years) and eating a largely – though not perfect – plant-based diet isn’t helping me in some way? Yes, my MS has declined, but how much worse could I be? That’s the thing with MS: it is random and unpredictable, even when you are secondary progressive. You don’t know if your decline is going to plateau or whether any new drug discoveries are going to help; you just have to keep having hope. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that difficult things aren’t happening, it just means that I can try and be as healthy and well as I can be despite any worsening symptoms or whatever is happening in my personal life. I need to recognise when things are difficult and subsequently set aside extra time to allow myself to heal and recover. I need to go easy on myself and not berate myself if things don’t always go as planned. I need to treat myself more kindly. To accept where I am with my MS.

The Yoga Class that Taught Me Self-Kindness and Acceptance

Something that I grew to love over the past year or so is yoga and, more specifically, yin yoga. This is a very slow, low to the ground practice where you get yourself into your position (asana) and then hold it for up to 5 minutes or so. I find it a great, meditative practice that really helps to stretch out my joints and muscles and focus on my breath. I’m aware that I’m not developing my strength with this practice. Instead, yin yoga is what works to support my mental and emotional health. One practice that I particularly like is the one below by Yoga with Kassandra; it focuses on emotional healing by using poses that are guided by the chakras in your body. Believe me, if you told me even a couple of years ago that I’d be working with my chakras I would have laughed and said that it’s not an area that I think very much about! But really giving myself to this practice and reflecting on the questions that Kassandra asks has made me think so much more clearly about myself and my health and what it needs – both physically and emotionally. Kassandra also encourages journaling in order to write down any thoughts that come up as you practice. It is something that I have always done, on and off, but really committing to it has helped.

My time thinking and reflecting during the above practice has made me recognise how I can move forward as someone with secondary progressive MS. I see that I have to take my own advice more often; ask for help more readily and not feel guilty if I have an afternoon sitting on the couch and doing nothing but watching a Netflix box set. I’ve realised that I can’t get everything I want to do done in one day: stretching, exercising, physio exercises, parenting, work… I have to strike a balance and decide what things really need to be done that day. I foresee work taking a backseat again in the future but, for now, I’m juggling a few hours of that into the mix.

My secondary progressive MS is very different to what it was like when it was relapsing remitting. There is so much more that I find difficult at this stage – simple things, like having a shower, getting dressed and standing at the kitchen counter to make the children a simple meal. I struggled with those things last year and I struggle even more now. I can either fight against that (and, believe me I do have moments when I feel very, very angry about how much harder things are now) or I can give myself more ease. Treat myself more kindly. Have pasta for a third night that week as it is quick, give in to wearing elasticated loungewear for most of the week or having a sink wash rather than a full shower.

ACCEPTANCE

So many new year’s resolutions focus on changing yourself. Get fitter! Eat better! Become a whole new person! But sometimes we just have to be. Accepting any limitations that we may have and doing our best to work with those limitations to have a fulfilling life, rich in things that are important to us.

For me, that’s time spent with friends and family as much as my health will allow doing activities that I enjoy and that bring me comfort, like listening to audiobooks, yoga, crafting and having movie nights with the kids. I’m not going to lie and say that I don’t get frustrated that I can’t do the things that I used to love – running, dancing, having the energy to stay up late – but I try to find new things to make up for losing this part of me. For example, my daughter and I have recently started going out for early morning walks (wheelchair ride for me) around the local beauty spot. That still lets me feel the exhilaration of fresh air that I used to feel during my early morning runs. Chair dancing to 90s dance music in the kitchen is still something I can do, though the kids call me ‘cringe’! Seeing my friends for coffee in the day rather than going out at night.

So, yes, 2022 is about kindness and acceptance. Not just being kind and accepting others and the differences between us, but also accepting me and how the 2022 Jen is different to the 2010 Jen. And that’s ok.

Do you have any thoughts about 2022? I would love to hear 🙂

Love and light

Young Carers Action Day 2022