Author: ballrebecca03@gmail.com

Hi! My name is Rebecca and I am sick. You’d never believe it (most days) if I didn’t tell you, but I have an autoimmune disease. Why are we so quick to think people have to wear their illnesses on the outside before we believe that they are significant enough to care about? I know the unspoken thing is, that the millions of us in this commuinty want to be heard and we need compassion. As confused as you may be looking at us from the outside, we are just as equally confused on the inside. We don’t understand why our bodies went crazy….we just know that they did.

For those of you who don’t know what the term autoimmune is, it basically means that our bodies fight against us by the way of attacking it’s healthy tissues and organs. Sounds fun, right? I’m actually quite lucky in my dignosis because I really do mean that most days you’d never know I was struggling with something if I didn’t tell you. Only on my worst flare up days, would I ever dare to let you know that I was in any pain.

In my early twenties I was in a car accident. A very bad wreck where it was nothing but God that kept me alive. In fact I walked away from it….to an ambulance who insisted I get checked out. I had bruising, a small fracture in my knee, and a concussion. My friend with me at the time walked away with only some bruising and a few burn marks from the air bag.

A few years from that accident I was still having pain in my leg. A doctor told me he believed that my knee didn’t heal properly, and that was causing the pain. That didn’t seem to make sense considering the pain wasn’t consistent and sometimes it would tingle like when a person’s foot goes to sleep. But, I wasn’t a medical professional so I said, “Okay,” and would continue to get a second opinion.

Seven years of testing and being made to feel like an absolute lunatic, an eye doctor told me, “I see something in your optic nerve.” Never would I have thought that my discharge papers would have read: Digonsis-Multiple Sclerosis. I was thirty-five, I had a seven year old and a ten month old daughter, and my life felt like it got flipped upside down.

Over the course of the next couple of years I still fought with this diagnosis. If it was there, fine, we’ll deal with it, but some doctors said, “lesions are located in the wrong places on my c-spine and in my brain for that dignosis.” I second opinioned myself long enough and I needed treatment no matter the issue. Lesions are now “in the right places” but I’m fortunate that I don’t have many considering that everybody has some.

In 2017 I had two of disks in my cervical spine removed because I had a nerve that was compressed. A year later, I was in pain again. I tried to active in the gym or by going for walks and hikes, but I couldn’t kick the pain. Nothing was really getting rid of it, there were just days that were better than others. Very recently, within the last ninety days, I found out that the pain I had been having stems from my second autoimmune disease: Ankylosing Spondylitis.

With that being said, these are not a death sentence for me. My MS is not the progressive kind, and frankly I’ll likely have more of an issue with AS because my back isn’t in great shape. Steroids are a part of my life now, which make me a little chubbier than I’d like to be, but considering how bad it could be, that’s a bee sting. When I do have pain, I have pain. It can get severe, has brought me to tears, and can last for days sometimes. But I also know this community. Many use walkers, wheelchairs, on pain medication everyday, and don’t have the best prognosis. I have bad days, but I have a pretty great life.

Remember that a lot of people have issues you might not know anything about. Mental health issues, physical health issues, etc. We don’t all wear advertisement signs telling the world our issues. So always be kind, try to be listen and be understanding, and maybe sprinkle some compassion when it’s needed.

-Peace and Love

This is a grounding techinque to help reduce anxiety in the present moment and in your immediate environment. I often try to add deep breathing in with this as well. Here’s what you can try when you start feeling anxious.-

*List five things you can see. Say them out loud and describe them.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List four thing you can touch. Focus on the sensation of touch; how does the fabric feel of your clothes, the chair your sitting on, etc

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List three things you can hear. Quiet your mind and focus. Try to notice the small noises you don;t usually pay attention to.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List two things you can smell.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List one thing you can taste. Maybe you can taste something from breakfast or your toothpaste.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

This works because you are actively training your brain to pull focus from what was upsetting you and focus on the task at hand. This can be repeated as often as needed.

-Love and Light

Five ways to tell if you may have high functioning anxiiety-

1. You super likeable, in fact most people love you. But you tend to people please too much. You find it incredibly difficult to say no.
2. You often obsess over trival things that most people wpildn’t give a second thought about.
3. You beat yourself up over every single mistake you make. When you make a mistake you fear that you’ll continue to make it over and over.
4. You are fully capable to do anything you want. You are able to reach for and achieve your goals. But you often don’t try because you don’t believe in yourself.
5. Your thoughts are consumed, almost always, with the worst case scenario.

It’s awfully hard to have a happy and healthy life with these things weighing you down. Try to work on that. Need tips on how to deal with anxiety? Stay tuned. ..

Let’s be honest here. Some of us did not have the best upbringing. Some of us may have had inconsistent homes, or grew up with inconsistent parenting. This can often make insecure kids. And unfortunately that also often leads to insecure adults. Sometimes they have a hard time finding their place in the world. And some may struggle with finding their place in their own homes.

Some people, myself included, had terrible fathers. So when we think of God as this incredible father, this ultimate, most loving father who will love us unconditionally, it can be hard to fathom. It’s hard to fathom that we have such a loving God that everything bad we’ve ever done can be washed away and forgiven. God can love us unconditionally, yet the father that we have on Earth may have loved you very conditionally, and never lets you out live any mistakes you make.

I am telling you that there is unconditional love out there and that you are worthy of it……just in case you had forgotten.

As a therapist I hear things like, “It’s too late to do XYZ now,” or “If I were younger this is what I’d change in my life,” pretty often. As a human, the thoughts of, “I’m running out of time” scare me to death. Well, I suppose what really scares me is that I’m at the point where my life is half over and that I’ve already lived more days than I have left. Of course there is no way to know this, but let’s assume I live to what the life expectancy is for most people. That’s a hard reality. So I run, as fast as I can, to live as much life as possible until I can’t anymore.

The beautiful thing is that every day that God wakes you up, you have a new opportunity to do XYZ. This gives me motivation to do things that bring me happiness, even if I am doing some of them alone. Life has value and I don’t intend to miss any beautiful moments because I feel “too old” to have them.

I had planned on going to college directly out of high school, but it turned out that I needed to work for awhile before I could enroll. So at twenty-three when most people were graduating, I was starting. After getting my associate degree, I needed to leave school and work and did so until I started my BA program which I didn’t graduate from until I was thirty-one. After I got my Bachelor degree I was right back to work. And it took until I was thirty-nine to earn my M.Ed.

Childern was always in my plan. If everything else in my life fell apart, I knew I wanted kids and I knew I’d be an amazing mother. My upbringing taught me exactly what not to do, so I felt like I’d been in training for children all my life. I had my first daughter at twenty-eight. and my second at thirty-five. I had been told I was a high risk pregnancy with my second because of being in an “advanced age.” At thirty-five, people I graduated with were grandparents or had adult children.

And despite being previously engaged and in a couple of long term relationships, I was forty-one before I ever got married. Most people I knew had been married and divorced at least twice and still wasn’t living happily. That was something you could never deny about me; I didn’t do things I didn’t want to do and I took my time to make sure I was making a good solid decision at the time.

The point is to not allow time to work against you but for you. If you’re not on the same track as everyone else, who cares? Every day, every hour, and each minute that you are alive you have opportunities to create the life you want. It’s not too late, and when it is, you won’t wake up in the morning. Stop complaining about what you don’t have right now and get your butt in motion to work toward what you want.

“How time passes depends on how you move.” Albert Einstein

Abraham Maslow is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, psycologist. If you aren’t familiar with him, he is well known for Maslow’s Hierachy of needs. This is a pyramid that is used to explain human needs from basic needs to the desire to be the best version of yourself possible. Maslow says there are five levels: Physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging, Esteem, and self-actualization.

Physiological needs are our basic needs. This would include the things we have to have in order to survive. Air, water, food, shelter, clothing, sleep, and reproduction. Safety needs are exactly that. This includes personal security, employment, rescources, health, and property. Love and belonging falls mid-way through the pyramid, and this is where a lot of people stop “climbing.” This includes friendships, family, intimacy, and a sense of connection. Esteem falls in line next. This is hard for all individuals in my opinion. This is respect, self-esteem, recognition, strength and freedom. Finally, we reach the top. This is the place that everyone wants to get to and has to reach all the other levels to achieve. Self-actualization which is the desire to be the best that one can be.

I first heard of this in college, and it instantly clicked. You start at the bottom level, achieve that level and move up until you’re at the top. Unknowing then how quickly you can fall down a level or even two sometimes, and sometimes that can happen and you have no control over it. For example: you lose your job, your safety needs are hit. If that isn’t replaced soon, your basic physiological needs can also be hurt. Then through no fault of your own, you start at the beginning, climbing the ladder alone and hoping to reach the top.

Most people get to level three/four pretty easily. It becomes a little harder then because then you add in other people. It’s true that the people in your circle can make you or break you. I am lucky to make it to level four most days. Truth be told is I don’t always respect myself and have a hard time feeling like I have a true sense of accomplishment. I am very much a “what if” person. A true coulda, shoulda, woulda soul. That’s at my core, and I tend to fight with that everyday. On the days I win that fight, I climb the ladder and hit self-actualization.

I felt that it was important to share this as it is a visual way for you to see why you may not be feeling safe or accepted, etc. Maybe you need to go down a level and make sure you check all the boxes before you try and climb the ladder again. And that’s okay. Remember, we all started at the bottom and that ladder is meant to be an ongoing traveling one.

-Peace and love

Bio Then

I remember taking a General Psycology class in college. I was so excited about that class because I had known from a very early age I wanted to spend my life helping people as a therapist. Day one- Our professor walked in and welcomed us by giving us an assignment to write a paper about who we are. Awesome. I liked writing and figured this was a paper I couldn’t fail because I was writing about myself. The next week I got my paper back and was surprised to see that it was bleeding. I’d never seen so many red marks.

I looked around the class to see fourteen other people, confused, also with red ink all over their pages. I didn’t get it. I felt certain I understood the assignment. Write a paper about who we are. I mean, It certainly seemed easy enough. The professor started going around the room, “Tell me something you wrote on your paper, please.” One person said, “I wrote that I was CNA who worked with the elderly on weekends and attended college through the week.” He shook his head. “What’s wrong with that, class?” No one answered him. No one knew. “She told me about her work, about her hours here. Is that who she is?” I shrugged. It certainly seemed like it was a part of who she was. A few other people went. He had the same response, “This does not tell me who you are. You?” I said something about having a hunger to learn and a need to feel inspired.” Nope. “Dig Deeper, who you are is your identity,” he said. And with that we were dismissed and given an opportunity to redo the assignment.

I returned to the next class to turn in what felt like a book. I shared parts of my life I didn’t tell those closest to me, let alone a basic stranger. The professor said, “This assignment wasn’t about a paper at all. This is about learning to know yourself. The good, the bad and the ugly of it.” We got our papers back, that he didn’t even read, and was told we’d get full credit for the effort of knowing who we are a little deeper.

What I remembered from that paper was that there was good, bad and ugly in it. I’d identified having low self-essteem and feeling taken for granted by most of the people I knew. I was someone who was craving true friendships as I didn’t really have any then. I had people I’d hang out with now and then, but none that I really trusted. I grew up in a house in Mason Ohio where happiness didn’t exist. My Dad verbally, physically, and mentally abused all of us. He’d beat my Mom, and my older brother and sister. He did some physically abusive things to me, but we left him when I was eight. He didn’t beat me like he did them. But it landed me in therapy. This is where I learned that this wasn’t normal and families didn’t live this way. This was when I knew I would be a therapist. My brother and sister stayed in Ohio when we left. They are thirteen and fifteen years older than me so they were old enough to decide on their own where they wanted to live. My Dad moved to a neighboring state, thirty minutes from where we moved after we left him. This was when he emotionally and mentally messed with me. Once, I remember, he took two dollars out of his wallet, threw it at me and said, “That’s all your worth.” And you know something? For a long time I believed him.

At the time I worked through college as a residential staff for people in the DDID population. I loved it. It’s when I started to feel needed. I worked as often as I could because I needed the money, but also just because it made me feel good to be there. At this time my Mother started getting sick with COPD. I helped take care of her when she had to go to a doctor’s appointment or the store, but at that time, she was still independent. She did however date a man that reminded me of my father. He didn’t want me to be home because he was jealous of my relationship with my mom. At eighteen I told her she’d have to make a decision because I couldn’t go through living like that again. This man had abused my Mom like my dad did and raised his hand to me a time or two, and although he shoved me once, he never hit me. I remember like it was yesterday Mom saying to me, “Well, Beck, if I have to choose, I will choose him.” I was devastated. She said, “One day you will leave and get married and have your own family. And I don’t want to be alone. And the truth is when things are good with him, they are good and we are happy.” She failed to mention that when things were bad they were also bad. Very bad.

I moved from home at eighteen and into an apartment with my boyfriend of a year at that time. He was the second guy I had ever had real feelings for. The first died in a car crash the summer leading to my sophmore year, and he was buried on his eighteenth birthday. When I moved in with Jeffery, I felt like I had won the jackpot. He was so sweet to me and we had the most fun together. So it was clear when he asked me to marry him, I didn’t even need to think twice. But, after time, we were young and mistakes were made. I used to think, we were young and dumb and didn’t even really know what love was. But the truth is we did love each other. He’s still one of my favorite people. He did a lot for me as a person and loved me through the mess I was. I haven’t ever forgotten that.

I knew from working with people, I wanted a family. After my first real heartbreak I also knew I didn’t want a husband. I didn’t want to set myself up for more heartbreak of any kind. I wasn’t a confrontational person, I just avoided drama and things or people that might hurt me. But I knew I wanted kids. That’s where I was in life and what I wanted for my future. I wanted to help people, I wanted to be a therapist, and I wanted kids. Those things would have made my life complete. Get those things and I’d be set. I’d found a road to follow, and planned it to a T. Although I am very spontaneous, when I have my mind made up, it’s hard to steer me in a different direction.

Bio Now

I have two beautiful girls. A close relationship with God. Both of my parents have transitioned, My Mom to Heaven I believe and I hope that my Dad straightened his life out to where he is there too. My mom lived with me for almost ten years before she passed in 2017. I still grieve her loss. I found strength in it as well. I no longer avoid conflict and will advocate for anyone who needs it. I am a mental health therapist and feel like I really do make a difference in this world. That has always been my goal; to leave the world a better place than it was when I got here. I surprised myself by walking down the isle in 2021 to a man I met in those early college days. I have the family I always wanted. That’s a blessing.

Forty-five, and I am just now able to think of myself as middle-aged. I am happy to report that I am content in my life. And while there will always be aspirations that I chase, if none of those come to fruition I’d be alright with that too.

I have worked hard, and I mean very hard, to be the person that I am. It’s hard to be a parent, have a career that can be draining emotionally at times, and be a Christian living in a world that is filled with choas. I am forever grateful that God gave me the good sense to know what my blessings are. My kids are very happy and healthy. I have a husband who loves me and loves my girls like they are his own. My brother and sister are still living and have decent health and a good career. My Momma isn’t in pain anymore and I believe she is happy watching over us from Heaven. I have the best friend in the world. One that I trust, one who will not go behind my back and be someone else, and treats me like family.

So, this assignment did was it was supposed to do. I faced a lot of reality then that I had buried because I thought “repressed” was a safe state to be in. I thank the good Lord that I was wrong and that I now have clarity in my life. I figure if I am forty-five now, somewhere around the halfway mark, I could view it now as a success story. I am perfectly imperfect, flawed in every way, and in love with my life. I hope that someone reads this and can see a life that wasn’t great in the beginning, can change and be extraordinary.

All My love-