Five positive words that helped me through chronic illness

Throughout my 32 years of life, I have been diagnosed with heaps of mental and physical illnesses such as having SLE Lupus since I was 12, Fibromyalgia, PTSD and I had a stroke at the young age of 22. Honestly, it hasn’t been the easiest journey. I’m not gonna lie. On top of having heaps of chronic illnesses, I was a Romanian orphan adopted by a family in New Zealand that treated me like shit (to put it bluntly). Even though my journey has been hard, I like to try and challenge myself to make the situation I’m in better, rather than dwelling on the negatives of chronic illness (which is a hard thing to do!). Dwelling on the negative doesn’t help you at all, so one way to stop you from going that downward negative spiral is here are 5 positive words that have helped make my challenges easier and hopefully they could help you in some way too!

Feisty

I like to think my personality is feisty. I will never and won’t give in to my illnesses without a fight. Being feisty allows you to take no shit and to be strong so being feisty is something I recommend being when you’re going through something as debilitating as chronic illness.

Creativity

My psychologist told me that I creatively problem solve when I feel I need to figure out anything that may try to tear me down. I reckon there is always a way around the challenges I have faced and by being creative yourself you can problem solve how to get through your negative situations too — whether that be with chronic illness or other hard times.

Ambition

I have always had the ambition to succeed in life and have a career, even when I’ve been so sick, I’ve tried to look towards the future and what I would like to do as a career while inspiring others. While dealing with the pain I think there is always a way to look at the storm in a way that,

just because you have a chronic illness, does not mean you can’t achieve your goals and dreams — so don’t let that stop you lovely people!

Beautiful

Through the pain of dealing with the diagnosis of illnesses, treatment, and symptoms — there is always a positive way to look at things and something beautiful. Rather than dwelling on the pain and becoming depressed, another way to look at it is to find the beauty amongst the pain and is the reason why I called my autobiography My Beautiful Trauma.

Determination

Whatever was and is thrown at me I try to stay determined to get through the other side.

Determination is such a powerful positive word and my advice is that with any hard time you face — you stay determined and you don’t give up! It’s so important that you stay determined because things WILL get better, even though it may not feel like it at the time.