Musings on New Beginnings

The theme for Grand Rounds over at Chronic Babe on March 4 is New Beginnings and that got me thinking. Fibromyalgia has led to more new beginnings in my life than anything else and, in a weird way, I have to be grateful for all the opportunities that the condition has brought me.

My career has probably had the most upheaval. Before I got ill I was all set to be a yacht racing meteorologist, a career I had worked hard for in a world I adored. The realisation that Fibromyalgia was preventing me from racing yachts was possibly the worst part of getting sick. But even that led to positive new beginnings and now, although I still have hankerings to be racing around the world and frequently wish I was at sea, I’m not sure that if I was given the option to stop everything I do now and go back to that life, whether I would choose to do so.

Stopping work as a meteorologist first led to me discovering that garden design is something I love - I have always been a bit arty, a bit creative, but it got subsumed by the need to study sciences as that was the area in which I excelled. Fibromyalgia gave me the opportunity to sit back and realise that doing something you love can be better than doing something you excel at but have no love for.

On the same lines, if it hadn’t been for Fibromyalgia, I never would have started crafting. Jewellery beadwork and card making are now things that I do as a matter of course and that I enjoy. Before Fibromyalgia, I never would have had the time to learn to enjoy them - I now have more hobbies than I have time for.

Back on the career front, if it wasn’t for Fibromyalgia, I certainly never would have got into charity work. It just wasn’t something that appeared on my radar. But discovering that I could help people, that I could make a difference to a cause, was one of the most positive things that came from my “sick years” where I ended up being able to do little more than participate in online forums, such as the one at butyoudontlooksick.com. Now that I have more spoons at my disposal, I am able to do more in this sphere, which has been another new beginning for me, and I hope to someday make a real difference to Fibromyalgia Awareness in the UK. Although often frustrating and sometimes depressing, this kind of work is also hugely rewarding and although I often wonder why I am putting myself through the wringer for it, I don’t think I could give it up.

On a personal and health side, although the new beginnings brought by Fibromyalgia were often of a negative nature - beginning to accept being ill, beginning to accept being dependent, beginning to accept being disabled - they are often now of a positive nature. After I started seeing Prof Davies last year, I had a real new beginning as I started to discover that I could actually do things again. The beginning of my road to some form of recovery, of regaining a productive life, has been enormously promising. Although the new beginning of last summer hasn’t managed to retain it’s impetus and I have had downs as well as ups, I see last year as a real turning point for me.

Roll on further new beginnings!