The Rollercoaster of Battling Lifelong Chronic Illness

I write this article not as a naturopath, but really, as a patient.

Mostly because I sometimes think about how many people I see battling complex and challenging illnesses these days, often while carrying an already heavy life load and all the other responsibilities that come with it. It is a hard journey.

As I go through my own health journey with Lyme disease, I am continually reminded of the enormity of the mountain we are sometimes asked to climb to heal. I have been on this journey for a long time, and there are things I understand now that I simply did not have the knowledge or perspective to understand when it all began.

Looking back, I think getting hit by a car when I was 17 was the point at which everything started to unravel. Knowing what I know now, I suspect Lyme was already present in my body, and that the accident may have been the tipping point that sent me into a downward spiral of extreme sensitivities and health challenges.

I have always been a sensitive person. I was sensitive on every level, emotionally, physically and spiritually. I was an empath, very spiritually open, and deeply affected by the world around me. I do think there is a connection here. When you are someone who feels deeply, takes a lot in, has an open heart and wants to help everyone (sometimes rescue everyone, including yourself), it can be a lot to carry.

I have always felt that this sensitivity is part of who I am. But I have also come to wonder how much it has influenced the way my health journey has unfolded.

The thing is, I knew something was not right.

Even after I recovered from the physical injuries from being hit by a car, and had replenished some of my energy, I still did not feel like myself.

By the age of 20, I had a whole collection of symptoms. Fatigue, recurring illnesses, gut issues, depression, anxiety, chronic pain. The works.

I was very fortunate to return to a naturopath I had seen in my childhood, who helped me get onto a protocol that brought me back to a certain level of functioning.

Because at that point, things were pretty intense. I was experiencing frequent numbness and episodes that felt like Bell’s palsy, with symptoms coming and going in waves. I remember wondering, What on earth is happening to my body?

I remember crying during a ten-minute trip to the supermarket because it was simply too much physically. I remember completing a lot of my university degree from bed, with a laptop, because sitting at a desk was too much for me.

And yet, I kept going.

I became incredibly disciplined with my diet. I took my supplements, made lifestyle changes and did the work. I was also put on what I believe was a life-changing, and possibly lifesaving, course of pulsed antibiotic therapy at the time. Looking back, I wonder whether this helped bring the underlying Lyme infection under a degree of control.

I also did a huge amount of spiritual and personal work. Reiki, becoming a Reiki Master, inner work, wound healing, and all the other things that became part of my journey.

My spirituality has been a really important part of what has kept me going. Over the years, I have spent so much time doing inner work, exploring my beliefs, healing old wounds and learning to understand myself on a deeper level. It has not always been easy work, but I do believe it has given me a resilience that I am incredibly grateful for.

I think having a spiritual foundation has helped me navigate the uncertainty, the setbacks and those times when I have had to dig deep to keep moving forward. It has helped me find meaning in difficult experiences, reconnect with myself when I have felt lost, and hold onto a sense that there is more to life than what I am experiencing in my body at any given moment.

That does not mean I have always felt positive, or that I have somehow spiritually transcended the reality of being unwell. Far from it! I have had plenty of moments of frustration, exhaustion and wondering what on earth is going on.

But the inner work has given me something to draw on. And for that, I am grateful.

I threw a lot at healing, because I had to. And I think all those years of inner work have helped build the resilience I am drawing on now, as I navigate another chapter of this journey.

And eventually, I got to a place where I could function again.

I would say I was around 70%, although that could fluctuate down to 60% or even 50% at times. But I was functioning. I worked full-time as a teacher for a couple of years, until that became too much. I learnt then that I had to tailor my life around my body. I needed to eat in a way that supported my health, manage my energy and recognise that I could not simply push through everything in the way other people seemed able to.

It was not necessarily the life I had imagined, but I managed.

My thirties brought a period of relative stability.

I would say I spent much of that decade functioning at around 70%. I had more stability, and my life was moving in a direction that felt aligned with what I wanted. I was studying naturopathy, developing my understanding of health and following a path that felt meaningful to me.

I was not necessarily well, but I had found a way to live.

And sometimes, when you have spent years struggling, finding a way to live your life despite your symptoms feels like an enormous achievement.

Then came COVID.

For so many people, this was a real turning point. For me, it felt as though my body had been sent straight back to where I was at 20.

The gut symptoms returned. The exhaustion and numbness became intense again. And then there were new symptoms: vein issues, more pain, a feeling that my brain was struggling, and memory problems that I knew were not normal for me.

I knew something had changed.

Then I developed C. difficile colitis, and I remember thinking, Why? Why would this happen to someone who is health-conscious, looks after her gut and is not particularly old? Why was my body struggling so much?

It was another turning point, and eventually, my path led me to Lyme disease.

I completed a kinesiology course, and Lyme came up during that process. Following this, I pursued formal testing, and there it was.

After so many years of struggling, you might think having an explanation would feel like a godsend. And in some ways, it did. There was something incredibly validating about having another piece of the puzzle.

But I also found the diagnosis daunting.

When you have spent years living with symptoms, adapting your life, trying different things and simply accepting that this is how your body operates, putting a name to it can bring up a whole new set of emotions.

Suddenly, there is more to understand, more to address and potentially a much longer road ahead than you had hoped. More to the point, there are also the potential long-term implications of Lyme disease and the importance of understanding what it means for your health going forward.

There is relief, yes. But there can also be grief, frustration and a sense of, Really? Is there more?

And then comes the realisation that there is more work to do.

Not that I had not been doing the work already. I had. But there is a difference between managing your health and embarking on another round of trying to actively support your body towards deeper healing.

It means bringing in new practices, exploring protocols, finding the time to do the extra things that might help your body recover, and trying to work out what is going to make a difference without overwhelming yourself in the process.

It is a lot.

And the thing is, life responsibilities do not disappear just because you have a chronic illness.

When I was 20, I was living at home, and the expectations on me were relatively minimal. Now, I am a wife, a mother and a naturopath. We have a family to care for, a household to run and a living to earn. There are patients who need me, appointments to prepare for, emails to answer and all the other things that come with running a business.

These are real responsibilities. They do not simply go away because I need more time to rest.

Some days, doing the work for my health feels overwhelming. Other days, I feel excited and catch glimpses of what might be possible.

And then there are days when I find myself wondering why I am resisting something as simple as sitting in the sun for 20 minutes.

Why does something that is supposed to support my health sometimes feel like another job on my to-do list?

Why am I making myself do something that I know will probably make me feel better?

I think part of the answer is that we are already on a treadmill. We are carrying so much mental load from everyday life that even the things we do for ourselves can start to feel like another responsibility.

When you have a chronic illness, healing itself can become a job.

There is the time involved, the mental energy, the planning, the remembering, the researching, the supplements, the appointments and the practices you are trying to fit into your day. And then there is everything else that life demands of you.

Take housework, for example.

Honestly, what is that? It never seems to end.

You want to live in a clean, comfortable space that supports your health. There is washing to do, things to put away, surfaces to clean, and about a hundred other jobs that nobody necessarily sees but that still need doing.

Sometimes, you have to confront your own perfectionism. You have to accept that your house might not look like a magazine cover, that there will be rooms where the mess is hiding, and that there are things you simply have not got to yet (maybe never!).

And maybe that is okay.

There will be plenty of time for a perfect house. Perhaps, right now, that is not where my energy needs to go.

Although, of course, there is the added conundrum of having my naturopathy clinic at home! So I cannot let it go completely.

I am fortunate that I love my work and have some flexibility to create a schedule that supports my health. I have a supportive family and friends, and there are many things in my life that I am grateful for.

But holy crap, it is hard.

I think sometimes we can look at someone who is managing to work, raise a family, run a business or maintain some semblance of a normal life and assume they must be doing okay.

We do not always see what it takes to keep all those plates spinning. We do not see the energy that has been spent, the things that have been sacrificed, the rest that is needed afterwards, or the internal negotiations that happen just to get through an ordinary day.

And we certainly do not always see how much work is happening behind the scenes to try to get well.

So, where does this leave us?

I am writing this for those of you who feel as though you are always on a health journey. For those of you who have been doing the work for years, who have made the changes, tried the protocols, learnt about your bodies and kept searching for answers.

For those of you who look at the mountain in front of you and wonder, Will I ever get there? How long is this going to take? And how do I keep doing all of this while still living my life?

I wish I could tell you that I have reached the other side. I have not. I am still on this journey, working through my own health challenges and trying to find the right balance between doing what I can to support healing and recognising the limits of what I can realistically manage.

But there are things I have learnt along the way.

The small steps matter. The practical, actionable things we can consistently do to support ourselves matter. The way we speak to ourselves matters. Finding boundaries, learning to say no, and working out what we genuinely need to prioritise are all important parts of the process.

And so is recognising that we cannot do everything at once.

Sometimes, we need to take another step forward. Sometimes, we need to pause, reassess and give ourselves permission to do less. Sometimes, we need to acknowledge that we are exhausted and that getting through the day is enough.

Healing is not always a straight line. There are periods of progress, periods of stability, setbacks and times when we have to go back and look at things from a different perspective.

And perhaps one of the hardest parts is learning to live in that uncertainty, without knowing exactly how long the journey will take or what the end point will look like.

I am still learning that.

And perhaps there is a gift in all of this, too.

For me, one of those gifts is that it helps me become a better healer. It gives me a deeper appreciation of what my patients are navigating, particularly those who have complex, longstanding health conditions and who are trying to hold together so many different parts of their lives while working towards feeling better.

It reminds me that healing is not just about a protocol, a supplement or a list of things someone needs to do. It is about the person, their circumstances, their capacity, their family, their responsibilities, their hopes and the things they are carrying that other people might never see.

My spirituality and the inner work I have done over the years have also given me a resilience that I am deeply grateful for. They have helped me find perspective, reconnect with what matters and keep going when things have felt incredibly difficult. I do not believe that means we need to find a positive lesson in every struggle, or that we should always be able to rise above what we are experiencing. Sometimes things are just hard. Sometimes we are exhausted, frustrated and completely over it.

But I do think the work we do on ourselves can give us something to draw on when life asks more of us than we ever expected.

This journey has also humbled me. It reminds me to look at what is genuinely important, what I can let go of, and what I want to treasure along the way. It has taught me that I cannot do everything, that my capacity has limits, and that perhaps I do not need to be quite so hard on myself.

I do not have all the answers. I am still figuring things out, just like so many of you.

But I am learning that we need to make room for healing within our lives, rather than expecting ourselves to put our lives on hold until we are well.

And in the meantime, we need to give ourselves a little more grace.

Because this journey can be a long one. And we deserve to live our lives along the way, too.

I am still working on finding that balance myself. I am trying to fit in the protocols, the supplements, the rest, the time in the sun, the inner work and all the other things I know I need to do. All while being a mum, a wife, a naturopath and apparently the person responsible for making sure the washing does not take over the entire house.

Some days, I manage it better than others!

Perhaps that is part of the lesson, too. We can take our healing seriously without taking ourselves so seriously all the time.

I am still climbing the mountain. I am just learning that I do not have to conquer it all in one day, and that it is okay to stop for a rest along the way.

And if the washing piles up while I am resting in the sunshine? Well, perhaps that is just going to have to be okay.

Although, given I run a clinic from home, I might have to draw the line somewhere. There is only so much mess that a lifelong neat-freak can spiritually transcend! 🌿