Nostalgia and Moving Forward in a New Way

 Lately I've been have been really missing my days of running Chimera Travel full time. In part, it's the actual travel aspect. I haven't traveled overseas since 2018 (!), first because of pandemic, then because of IVF, and I miss it. My "on this day in.. " reminders on various social media show that this time seven years ago I was in Kenya doing things like a seeing baby orphan elephant feeding at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and taking a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Masai Mara. Nine years ago today, I was in Marrakech and surrounding area, enjoying the most delicious Moroccan food with a backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. I am sure that seeing photos from these trips day after day for a couple of weeks isn't helping my nostalgia. But it's not just the travel. It's running a business itself. It's having autonomy over everything from my schedule to the marketing and promotion of the company to the target audience to the core values of the company. It's getting to go to conferences and workshops to immerse myself in topic-specific education, both as an attendee and as a presenter. It's sitting on boards of directors where I met others in these industries, some of who became lifelong friends. And like the "on this day" photos, this is also being spurred on by reminders of those experiences. I've been spending a lot of time, either in person or conversation, with people who have this (extremely well-earned!) autonomy - my parents are now both retired and two of my four siblings run their own businesses. I also recently had coffee with a friend that I know from my entrepreneur/coworking days who also works in travel. We talked all about the travel industry, building our businesses, going to conferences and events, traveling to get immersion in different locations. During that conversation, I felt an energy, that type of hum you get when something is lighting you up, that I have't felt in a while. 

And yet, I don't really want to go back to running my travel business full time anymore. Maybe if, in a perfect world,  I knew I'd have plenty of clients and could make enough money to help pay the bills and support my household, and I knew I could grow the company to be exactly what I want, that might be the case. But I spent years trying to do that and it didn't exactly work out as I hoped. And also, I'm going through a sixth round of IVF. The hope, the whole point of that, is that this time next year we will have an infant. And that doesn't exactly mesh with traveling around the globe for conferences, African Safaris with hot air balloon rides. Which is completely ok because this is the stage of life I'm at - I would gladly put all that travel on hiatus to finally have our child. 

Still, that low level hum of "something" has persisted in the background. I've sat with it, contemplated it, journaled through it, used the tools and skillsets I'm developing in the To Be Magnetic work I'm doing, and what I'm coming to realize that "something" is exactly what it is at this moment. It's the feeling that I'm on the precipice of a change, of life moving forward somehow, but without any details. It could be my IVF cycle - maybe this will finally be the one that work. It could be something related to work or travel or yoga. It could be a new connection or community activity. Or it could be something internal. I've been doing a lot of work, with all of the methods I've mentioned above, plus meditation, yoga, therapy. I've reconnected with and am exploring areas of life that interest and intrigue me, working to get back to my truly authentic self.  Maybe the something is simply  that (which is not at all simple really).  Maybe it's the the movement back towards a me that feels authentic at this age and in this stage of my life. 

Interestingly, I find that I'm ok with not fully knowing yet. Of course it feels great to have an "ah-ha" moment, where you realize exactly what your next step, plan, goal, action, etc is. What I've realized through the work I've been doing, though, is that I've constantly been on the chase - always looking for what's next. And partly, that's my innate personality. I'm not someone who's great with status quo, I get bored easily, and I literally was a professional planner for years, so I enjoy having some semblance of a known path forward. But that has also at times made me feel almost frantic in the pursuit. There's something freeing about releasing a bit of that control, and sitting back to see what happens. To be clear, this is not a "you're exactly where you're supposed to be" type of message. I don't think the universe/creator/source/God was sitting there saying "let's put her through the heartbreak of five failed rounds of IVF and then she'll be exactly where she needs to be." Sometimes, shitty things just happen, and there's nothing more you could have done to make them not happen. It is also not a "the universe will just make it happen, you don't have to do anything."  Using the the IVF example again, I'm not going to have an immaculate conception. So far, the most in depth scientific/medical protocols have not managed to help me get pregnant. I'm certainly not going to just sit back and think "the universe will take care of this". I'm going to do every single thing my fertility care team tells me to do - all of the medications and shots and appointments and ultrasounds and everything else I can to give us the best chance.  What I mean is that I'm not feeling the urge to frantically chase "the next thing".  I can feel that something is coming. I am going to do the work in the areas of life that I'm committed to, towards the goals that I'm committed to. I'm also going to continue to do the internal work and to stay committed to getting back to my most authentic self.  But I'm not going to force it. I've spent so much time in my life desperately trying to make something happen, almost for the sake of making something happen. I often felt like a dog chasing its tail, constantly pursing things that clearly weren't showing signs of happening - not because I needed to try harder, but because maybe all along they just weren't going to happen in the way I was trying to make them happen. And I think if I'd really stopped to listen to my intuition, to my intrinsic knowledge, my authentic self, I would have been able to see that. Or perhaps, if I'd approached it from this space, things would have turned out differently. Either way, the frantic chase approach was not one that worked in the end. 

This time, I am allowing myself that space, that grace to listen to myself and the universe. I've been consistently more drawn to gentleness, slowing down, inward focus, finding quiet strength. There's a sense of ease in it - not in that it's easy, but in that it's not forced - and that feels beautiful, and like exactly what I need right now. 

So I'll look at the travel photos with fondness and nostalgia. I'll surely eventually plan some new travel (like the trip we took to Maine last year that was a balm for my soul). I'll remember the he excitement of running my business, and I'll continue to help the travel clients I have, and to teach the yoga classes that I enjoy teaching. I'll use the reminder of autonomy, how freeing it felt, when I'm about to commit to something  because I feel like I *should*,, or from a place of hustle/trying to hard, instead of because it feels intrinsically right, to determine if it's worth relinquishing more of that autonomy. I'll use all of these as guides. And then I'll step back and enjoy the feeling of "something", and  I'll allow my curiosity to delight in wondering what it might be, without the pressure to make it be one in particular, or to make it be now. 

A New Diagnosis & Old Ghosts

This morning, I felt like writing a post on here. If I'm honest (which I always try to be), this is the first time in a long time that I've really had the desire to blog. I've written my end of the year posts each year because it feels right to document the previous 12 months, and I imagine that someday I'll look back and be glad I did so.  But it's been ages since I truly felt inspired to post here. This morning, though, I did. And it feels really good to have that spark again, even if it doesn't last much past today. For years, I had a constant flow of inspiration. But then I started working a full time job and gave up running Chimera full time, had less time for advocacy, and just overall didn't feel super inspired. Also, ironically, I've felt more mentally stable in the past few years than I have in all of my adult life, and since my primary focus on this blog was my life with mental illness, my feeling more mentally healthy has led to less blogging. But I'll absolutely take it, hands down. 

Though I have been having a lot of "run away train brain" that feels like one long hypomanic cycle lately (thanks, IVF meds!), this morning's inspiration was due not to my cyclothymia or anxiety, but to another condition. Back in December, I started getting a huge uptick in migraine attacks. I used to have one about once a quarter, and I began having one or more a week. They lasted several days at a stretch, so I was rarely more than a few days without an attack. It was terrible. For anyone living with chronic migraine that experiences this on a regular basis, you are incredible for dealing with it, truly. What I noticed around the same time was that I was getting an increase in upper GI symptoms alongside my migraine attacks. At first, I just thought it was a change to migraine prodrome. I've always gotten a bit of a sour stomach before the major symptoms of a migraine attack hit, but this past year, I began instead getting indigestion. It felt like someone was inside of my stomach/diaphragm area forcing air up into my esophagus. I felt like I constantly had to burp, which was lovely. In December, with the increase in migraine attacks, it became more pronounced. Then I had a horrific migraine attack over New Year's Eve and Day. 

Pause: if you don't want to hear about GI symptoms/vomiting now is the time to stop reading... 

I started feeling the indigestion/air in my upper GI middle of the night Saturday night (the night going into New Year's Eve day). It felt like I needed to throw it up, and I did a tiny bit, but it continued to feel like I had food and air stuck in my stomach area. It continued through the next morning when the full fledged migraine attack symptoms hit - extreme dizziness and disorientation, head pain, nausea. I was completely horizontal. I couldn't eat anything or even keep down water, so it made no sense to me that I was still feeling like I had food stuck in my stomach. Finally, at around 2PM, when I hadn't eaten for almost 20 hours, I was able to vomit up all of the food from dinner the night before, which I'd had around 5PM. I am not a GI expert, but I know that my stomach should have digested the previous night's dinner by 2PM the following day, and that in itself was a bit concerning, but I figured it was all part of the migraine attack. The migraine symptoms hung on until late the following day, but at least I didn't feel like I had food and air stuck in my stomach and esophagus, and I was no longer vomiting up water. 

But, the upper GI issue never completely went away. The whole first week of January I could barely eat. I'd feel tons of pressure and air at my diaphragm/esophagus area. I assumed I was just taking an extra long time to recover from the migraine attack. It continued to the following week. I had already gotten an appointment with a neurologist - or rather scheduled one, as I couldn't get one until March so I still haven't been. After two weeks of barely being able to eat, and no other migraine symptoms, I decided I also needed to see a GI doctor. Despite having IBS, it's been a while since I've been to one, other than an obligatory pre-colonoscopy consult a few years back. I was actually able to get into someone a couple of weeks ago, and I got diagnosed with gastroparesis. Unfortunately,  all of the tests they can do to figure out exactly what's specifically going on - i.e. what might be causing it, etc - they cannot do right now. They all have some sort of radiation or require anesthesia which I obviously can't have during this cycle of IVF. So I got an answer, which I'm grateful for, but still left with a lot of questions. 

The past few weeks I've been trying to be mindful of the GI doctor's dietary suggestions - be careful of fats, watch acids, increase protein, eat small meals more frequently. There are also a ton of dietary resources out there gastroporesis, and all of them seem awful - not the quality of the resources, but the dietary modifications they suggest (essentially they say I can eat white carbs, which is exactly the opposite of my IBS dietary needs, and mashed up foods).  Add in being a vegetarian, having to take into account dietary suggestions for IC and IBS as well, and going through IVF, in which I'm trying to makes sure I get all the proper nutrients and vitamins and everything else, it's been tricky. So I've been trying to figure out the best lived experience balance. I do not mash up everything baby food style. I do try to limit fats and watch acids. I try foods out that I know are healthy and important for me as a vegetarian trying to get pregnant. I see how they feel and if they feel ok, I continue with them. If they don't, I try to find substitutes that offer similar benefits. I eat smaller portions and try to eat more frequently, although I often feel so bad after eating even just a small portion that I can't force myself to eat until the next meal. 

In the past month and a half, I've lost quite a bit of weight. I won't lie, at first I wasn't bothered by it, because, before the diagnosis, I thought things would just go back to normal once I got back to usual eating patterns. But the weight loss has continued. It's not felt super alarming, but I have noticed clothes fitting looser and looser. Still, it didn't feel like anything drastic, and I figured it would likely level out at some point, especially as I've been trying to push myself to eat a little bit more when I can. But this morning, I looked in the mirror, and I was alarmed. I had been doing a light workout, so had on a top in which I could see my shoulders and arms (something I don't see in the mirror a lot in winter). I felt like I looked borderline sick. Not my face so much, but my arms and shoulders were skinny and almost angular in a way that they rarely are. I'm an 'athletic build" by nature.  But I had a sudden flashback to my early 20s, photos of me skin and bones, when I suffered from both severe IBS bouts and disordered eating. Back then I lost about 20 lbs between the two, and I'd only been a little over 100 lbs to begin with. I remember years later seeing pictures from that time and thinking "how could I have not realized how sick I was?" Of course, that is the nature of disordered eating, and why it's disordered - because the brain doesn't even necessarily see the weight loss, and even it does, it doesn't recognize it for what it is. 

Luckily, this time I'm in a significantly better place mentally. I am no where near as thin as I was back then - in fact, I'm probably close to the weight I was naturally before the disordered eating and IBS bouts started. But seeing my shoulders and arms look skinny,  less muscular, more angular my brain sent off warning flags that I need to pay more attention to the weight loss. I'm grateful that this time around, nearly 20 years later, the semi-rapid weight loss is something I recognize as concerning, and not something to be celebrated. I know that it's something I need to keep an eye on, and that I have to work hard to make sure that even if I can't eat a lot, I'm getting in the proper vitamins and nutrients, proteins and healthy fats, to the degree that I can without the fats causing extreme discomfort. It will always be a tricky balance for me to keep an eye on my actual weight (as in numbers on a scale), because I know that doing so was a major obsession during the disordered eating years. Since being in ED recovery, I've rarely weighed myself unless obligated to do so at a doctor's office or when required to do so after egg retrieval to make sure I wasn't experiencing OHSS. But I may need to find a temporary truce with the scale, to monitor my weight loss and make sure it's not too rapid or intense. (Yes, I can see how clothes are fitting, but I've been into more comfortable, slightly looser clothes lately, and that makes it tougher to gauge). I'm extremely grateful to be in a place where I feel I can do this. 

This gastroparesis diagnosis has been a difficult one. Moreso than most of my other diagnoses. It came at an extremely unfortunate time (though really there's no good time), with my having recently started a new round of IVF. It's bringing up old ghosts from a time in my life in which I was the least mentally healthy version of me, and even though I'm seeing them from the other side, recognizing the ghosts for what they are, remembering the place I was once in can be extremely emotional. I'm grateful for the knowledge and perspective I have now, for the many tools I have in my mental health toolbox, for the support of those closest to me, and for all of the resources I have through my advocacy efforts, to learn and understand this diagnosis better. 

And while I'm not generally a "look at the silver lining" type of person, because I think it tends to diminish someone's difficult experience, this morning's glance in the mirror and subsequent shock inspired me not only to double down on my efforts to stay as healthy as I can with this condition, but to blog about it as well. And the blogging itself - that's a part of my history that actually feels good to be revisiting, even if the cause for doing so, not so much.