A Chronic Voice – October 2022 Writing Prompts

I was delighted when Sheryl from “A Chronic Voice” sent out the October Writing Prompts , as it had been a while since the last one and I know that Sheryl has been going through a lot this year. I love participating in these linkups, reading about other people all over the globe who are going through similar issues with chronic illness and the resulting sense of solidarity and community.

I’ve been struggling with my mental health for a few months now, which has had a knock on impact on every area of my life. From reading others’ link up posts, I think there are a lot of us having a hard time at the moment for one reason or another, but this reflects the reality of living with chronic illness.

Disabling – as well as it being great to see Sheryl back, I was even happier than normal to see the prompts this month as I had been finding it impossible to write anything at all for my blog. It’s been a couple of months since I posted anything. I have been struggling with my mental health, my sleep has been even worse than normal and so the interest and the inspiration to write haven’t been there. In fact, only last night, I was considering giving up on my blog, shutting it down, disabling it. But seeing the prompts come through and remembering how much I enjoy reading the stories of others, I felt drawn to putting pen to paper once again.

Enabling – in lots of ways, 2022 has been a transitional year for me and I have been releasing lots which no longer serves me. During the course of this year, I have been slowly clearing clutter throughout the house, donating items to charity or selling them and using up a lot of my craft supplies, in order to clear out space. The thinking behind all of this is to create both the physical and the mental space to enable me to heal. I know that by having a less cluttered environment, it will help me to focus my energies on nourishing activities which I hope will help me in the long run.

Committing – I don’t have the best of track records when it comes to committing to new habits and it can be so hard to stick to anything new when you’re barely functional due to pain and a lack of sleep. This year, I have overhauled my diet and have managed to stick to it, even though it has made no difference whatsoever to my pain levels, which I hoped it would!

Communicating – this is something I haven’t felt like doing much of lately! Not just my lack of inspiration for my blog, but I’ve not really wanted to meet up with friends recently either and when I have had to attend medical appointments, I have had little patience for explaining the same things over and over again! I’m not sure why all of this is, but right now, I have a strong urge to hunker down, stay home to focus on my own inner healing.

Reinventing – self-care is something I find incredibly difficult as there is always something that needs to be done and I usually put myself last on my to do list – I know this isn’t right and I know that self-care is especially important when you’re living with a chronic illness. I am attempting to begin prioritising self-care, and in particular, embrace meditation. I have dabbled in the past but have never managed to develop a consistent practice, and this is something that I’d like to change. I have just signed up to a supportive online spiritual community in the hope that this will help me to focus on putting self-care and mediation practices higher up my own reinvented agenda.