'M.E. myself and I' by Anna Redshaw

I am often so cautious to add a disclaimer to posts about progress or snippets of positivity. Without one, I have people in my life who assume I am “cured” or that my life is easy. But I am learning that I am not responsible for the ways others interpret me. (And I am also learning to stop making assumptions about what other people might be thinking!)

So today, for me, I just want to share some of the gifts this almost-decade of illness has given me.

• Patience.
• Empathy.
• Gratitude.
• A bouncebackability.
• Pride.
• An ability to laugh with real humour at situations I cannot change.
• An even-more-wonderful-than-before relationship with my parents.
• My husband.
• Strengthened friendships with those special few.
• Guinea pigs! An excellent selection of only colourful clothes.
• A chance to try out a pixie cut!
• Time with my grandparents I wouldn’t have had if I was well and working.
• Perspective.
• Increased feistiness over injustice and inequality.
• Most recently, an increased sense of self worth.
• A range of novelty slippers.
• The most supportive people I could ever image who live in my iPad; some of whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in real life.
• Happy tears. So many happy tears.
• A new definition for what makes a ‘good’ day. A level of appreciation I’d never known.
• A seemingly unconquerable soul.
• The knowledge that you can feel more than one feeling at any given time.
• Time.
• The opportunity to relearn things or experience things again as if for the first time. (Most people only get that once in their lifetime.)
• The awareness that I am a work in progress, and should always be one.

No disclaimer.