Flare & Flourish

                                                         7 Months on LDN Hello dear readers and fellow warriors  Today I want to share my honest experience after 7 months on LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone) for fibromyalgia. I’m currently on 2mg, and while I’m also on a variety of other medications to manage my symptoms (a story for another day), this post is just about my journey with LDN. Let me start by saying this: it’s not easy to explain how it’s going—because “better” is such a loaded word when you live with chronic illness. At first, I wasn’t even sure if it was doing anything. With fibromyalgia, it’s hard to tell when something is helping or when the symptoms are just going through one of their unpredictable cycles. But like always, I kept track. I take notes for my rheumatologist, making sure I report anything that changes—even if it’s ...

  Thanks to My Psychologist (and How It Helped Me Live With Fibromyalgia) There was a time when I felt like a blank space. Not broken, exactly — just empty. I woke up, got through my days, smiled when I had to, and told everyone I was fine. But inside, I wasn’t living — I was surviving. My mind was constantly spinning, my body was constantly aching, and I felt disconnected from both. Then I met my psychologist. She didn’t hand me a miracle cure or promise that life would suddenly make sense. Instead, she gave me something better: tools. And slowly, those tools helped me build myself back from the inside out. Learning to Trust Someone With My Whole Life When I first started therapy, I didn’t know how to open up. I’d spent years pretending I had everything under control. Saying “I’m struggling” felt like admitting defeat. But my psychologist never made me feel weak for feeling deeply. She listened — really listened — to my chaos, my fears, my overthinking, my pain. She didn’t rush me...

  We All Have a Backpack Here’s something I’ve realised about life: We all carry a backpack. Not a literal one (though, mine probably has snacks and a charger), but a mental and emotional backpack — the invisible one we take everywhere. Inside, we pack everything we’ve been through. Our memories. Our lessons. Our heartbreaks. Our tiny victories. Some of us carry grief that weighs a ton. Others carry anxiety that hums in the background like a phone on vibrate. Some people’s bags are full of things they never asked to carry — trauma, chronic pain, or invisible illnesses like fibromyalgia. And yet, we all keep moving. Everyone Packs Differently Some people pack light — or at least it looks that way. Their bags seem tidy, zipped, maybe even color-coded. They smile easily, seem calm, and handle things gracefully. Others are carrying bags that are bursting at the seams. They’re holding it together with tape and stubbornness. Every day is a careful balancing act — trying not to let someth...

                                                                      A Comedy (Sort Of)   From the outside, I look like I’m thriving. People say, “Wow, you’re so productive!” and I smile like, “Thanks, I only had three mental breakdowns before lunch.” Welcome to the glamorous world of high-functioning anxiety, where we do all the things while our brains quietly scream in the background. Now sprinkle in a generous helping of fibromyalgia, and you’ve got yourself a fun little cocktail of chaos: one part panic, one part pain, and a dash of “why do my bones feel like they’re on fire?” Cheers.   When Your Brain Says “Run” and Your Body Says “Nah” High-functioning anxiety is that overachieving friend who can’t chill. Fibromyalgia is the friend who literally can’t move. Together, they make a killer duo — like a...

Moments that shift the ground under my feet so suddenly. There are moments in life that divide everything into “before” and “after.” you wonder if you imagined the world ever being stable.For me, that moment came in a hospital room. My husband had just undergone surgery to remove his gallbladder. The procedure went well. He was stable. We were preparing for discharge. I was packing his bags—so ready to take him home where we could rest and begin healing together. And then, the world stopped spinning. In the blink of an eye, he fell—off the hospital bed, hard—his body seized, blood on the floor, his eyes rolled back, and I screamed. I screamed like I never have before, trying to hold him, trying to wake him up, trying to call for help. Nurses rushed in. Alarms. Movement. Chaos. And I stood in the middle of it all, not as the patient this time, but as a wife watching the man she loves lie unconscious, motionless, with no warning, no explanation. They took him for an emergency MRI. I stoo...