CHOOSE TO RISE

The mood in my Gastroparesis support groups is somber, to say the least. I am reading quite a few posts from people trying to find a way to move on from their "past" lives -- the ones they lived prior to diagnosis. This is a difficult step. It requires much soul-searching and self-evaluation. I often find myself longing for that former life, the one that seems now as if it existed in another world, but I cannot go back, and I think my mind sometimes paints those days just a little rosier than they perhaps were. In any case, I struggle every day to find my place in this new post-diagnosis world, as do nearly all the members of my community. This is not the life I would have chosen for myself or for any of them, but it is the hand we have been dealt, and we search to find the positives in this dark, cruel new reality where our very existence is threatened. There is still good in this life, but it takes a different form, and, in the darkness, it is a little more difficult to see sometimes. But there is light, and there is hope, and if you continue to seek it, you will find it.