There She Goes Again!

What do I know about challenges?
About the challenges of others that step up, trip, fall down……
I only know about living with epilepsy - not the seizures
unpredictable and violent
but avoiding them 
keeping my life manageable for me so I am healthy
so my family no longer have to worry about dire consequences.
They may tell you if you ask them.
For any of us there was no ‘Handbook of Living with Epilepsy!’

But that is the only way I can relate to my clients ~
not just with the seizures and the consequences of an uncared for life, but with the principles of the recovery of living that so many have found ~
I tell my story every day in bits and pieces, here and there, when it fits the situation.

I suspect ~ I strongly suspect ~ that many times the words ‘there she goes again!’ ~ decorate the air behind me as I walk  away.

This is the challenge for them
to hear me one more time as they come to me one more time
speaking the principles of my health recovery plan that I have learned from them

This is the challenge for me - (I hear my self say ‘there I go again!)

speaking the principles of my recovery plan so they fill the air around me in gossamer words that disappear into time and memory

talking about the ten plus years that it took me to understand my responsibility to myself and to my family.
remembering that any one who does not have epilepsy cannot know the insides of epilepsy because they only see the behaviour that goes with it.

When I am well ~ and have been for over 15 years now ~ epilepsy becomes merely a shadow but like the shadows in any good horror movie, epilepsy can loom large and smother my life.

To forget the challenge of living a seizure free life despite the calls of friends, and yes family, to join in late nights, a glass of wine, red eye flights, not enough recovery time at the other end of a flight, working night shifts!, working till eleven pm only to get up and work at seven am ~ and so much more. Oh yes - arguing and fighting about things not important or maybe even that I’m wrong or heaven forbid that I’m right…..flashing lights without warning,  steady pounding noise,……….

But I’ll not go on and on any more - at least tonight.
Living with epilepsy or, like my clients with addiction or any chronic condition, sometimes really bites!

“Even the littlest things were now a challenge, one I didn’t understand.”

~ Sarah Todd Hammer