I wasn’t only healed from Crohn’s disease. In time, I was completely cured from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and all the other diagnosis, like eczema, depression, anxiety, insomnia and irregular menstruation, disappeared. I was free.

Healing was intense work. Taking care of myself was a full-time job. I learned healers are the guides that point our body in the direction towards health. It is our willingness to change and commitment to the process that creates miracles. The body is so incredibly intelligent. It speaks to us, sometimes subtly at first. It’s our job to listen. Our body is our responsibility, an amazing gift for us to nurture, love and learn from. The state of our body reflects the world we’re living in. As a society, we tend to take better care of our cars than we do our bodies. When it comes to the human body, people feel ignorant, intimidated and scared so they automatically begin to feel powerless.

We may not receive an instructional manual to the body at birth, but there are many right in your local bookstore. There’s a wealth of knowledge available to those who are ready to break through those old patterns and and discover a new way of living. There are many resources now available to learn more about your body, and many tools to help you regain homeostasis, balance, which was the original mission of doctors in this world.

Since I’ve been healed, I’ve fallen in love with food. Food, which was once my source of pain and misery, is now a beautiful sensory experience – the textures, the aromas, the colors! I now love my body. I love being free of toxicity and the symptoms associated with it, so I chose my foods accordingly. The earth is a food emporium, and everything she makes tastes so amazing!

One of the greatest lessons I learned from being healed is how little I appreciated the daily benefits of feeling well. To be able to move without pain, to be able to wake up in the morning and actually feel rejuvenated with natural energy to start my day, to be able to digest food with no pain, to be able to walk as far as I want to, and go anywhere I want to at any time, is a blessing to me. I didn’t appreciate this freedom of living before I experienced what life felt like as a prisoner. I learned not only the meaning of gratitude, but I feel and experience it deep in my soul.

Some skeptics have said to me, “Maybe you never had Crohn’s disease.” I have plenty of medical documentation from many different doctors over the years that prove that I did, in fact, have a pretty severe case. I have learned not to take others doubt personally, as I too was once a skeptic. I too once forgot that anything is curable, anything is possible.

For some, illness has provided an opportunity to leave behind inspiration for friends and family to consider taking better care of themselves. For others, illness serves as a higher education you can then use to help others. The greatest gift you can receive is to see the light and the lessons that illness teaches you. It’s from here that we transcend from victim to hero, from darkness to light.

Be aware of the fiery aspect of the energy coming through at this time. The energy is here to assist you in transmuting and transforming anything and everything that is not currently aligned with your highest purpose. The energy is a gift, but it can easily be misconstrued as overwhelming, as anxiety, and especially as anger, due to the fiery nature of what is flowing at this time. It can be knitted into thought processes that send us spinning into downward spirals when we don’t understand what and why it’s all about. The energy is a force and it is a force that you have power to control. That is the fun along this path, as we lighten our grip on the wheel or our destiny and step away form trying to force what is not, and facilitate instead what is being offered to us with a knowing that it is All for our highest good. It is imperative that you become aware of your power and strength and your ability to redirect any energy into a positive force as you step into a knowing that All is energy and energy simply Is. There is no good or bad, there is only interpretation.

With this understanding you can begin to become aware of your choice and your ability to transmute and channel what you are experiencing into a higher vibration. You can choose, in any moment, to redirect the energy flowing through you into a higher version of your Self. Direct the flow into a passion, a creative endeavor, or service to others. It is time now to go beyond our sagas and our stories, at least the ones that are holding us back, and take that energy higher, writing a new improved version based on our imagination and our desires manifest. It is time to step into the role of co-creator of our destiny and know that the Universe is always assisting us in more ways than we can begin to comprehend. What is it you’ve been wanting to create? What is it you’ve been wanting to let go of. Choose now as the moment you embark on that intention. Choose now as the beginning of your adventure, as a stepping out and into your fullest potential.

We are no longer victims of circumstance. We are conscious beings. We are as powerful as any force of nature. We are Pure energy. We are an inseperable part of the Flow. Take this knowing forward and choose your moment. Do it differently, because you can, in any moment, in any circumstance, make your reality into whatever you dream it to be. Take advantage of the powerful forces flowing within and around you and Create beauty, inspire acts of kindness, impart wisdom, release limitations. You won’t be sorry. Just use your breath, your knowing, and your intention and give it a try. You are your own healer. You are your greatest inspiration and teacher. Turn now into the vastness of power that lies within and become One with your Truth and your calling. It’s time. Know that you are enveloped in love every step of the way, and that you Are love. You cannot go wrong. Embrace this opportunity and let the next step begin.

Loving you along the way and sharing whatever I may find of value to support you on your path…

Namaste,
Rhonda
Awakeningthedivine.net

I did receive a second opinion from a doctor. Not an ordinary doctor, a holistic doctor. Previously, I had dismissed anything holistic. I was raised to believe that there was simply no proof. It was all a waste of time. Wishful thinking. The same doctor that treated me in the hospital told me that medicinal herbs were dangerous and could hurt me, so I should stay away from them. My gastroenterologist who had been given me strong doses of antibiotics for Crohn’s told me to ignore the advice of my enlightened pharmacist to take probiotics. Again I was told there was no proof.

The truth was the belief that Western medicine could heal me was wishful thinking. Believing that a synthetic pill was not harmful to my body and and was the only answer to disease, when it was no answer at all, was a sham. So, every week I made the two-hour long trip upstate New York to visit the man who my mother jokingly referred to as the “witch doctor.” This doctor, this healer, helped saved my life.

Within two months of detoxifying and drastically changing my lifestyle, I was cured from an eight-year battle with Crohn’s disease. I was instantly humbled, and enlightened. This holistic doctor informed me that if I had not trusted my intuition to try something different and instead went through with the chemotherapy treatment, I would not be here, writing this today.

The cure was just the beginning. Damage had been done, especially to my liver from years of taking powerful medications. It was now time to repair and rebuild.

A new chapter of pharmaceuticals had begun. But this time it was different. This time I was told if I didn’t take the fifteen pills a day for the rest of my life I would die. There were side effects. Fifteen pills soon turned into forty. A day. I moved to Seattle, where I felt less stress, gained weight and physically felt better. My apparent improved state of health really supported my denial. I decided to ditch the pills and go about life as if I had never been diagnosed with Crohn’s. Within months, I was 100 pounds and shipped back to New York in a wheelchair. I was given my own aisle on the plane. People asked me if I had AIDS. I had quarter-sized, bulbous red blisters all over my legs. My legs were sticks of bone, but my right ankle was grossly engorged, which made me look even more freakish. I was a skeleton, my skin stretched tightly on my bone, and my appearance scared people. No one would come near me. I was stared at. I was dying and everyone who looked at me knew it.

My doctor, a big wig with the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation, looked me straight in the eyes and told me if I didn’t admit myself to the hospital that moment, he didn’t think I would survive the week. He also added that there was no guarantee that it was not too late to save me, even if I was hospitalized. I took a moment to consider my options. My mother looked at me, aghast, as if I had only one option. My many hospitalizations at this point had left me traumatized and I thought for a moment that I would rather die than lie in another hospital bed. Before I reluctantly agreed to be admitted, the doctor asked permission to take pictures of my blistered legs for his next book about Crohn’s.

After years of suffering, I felt ready to die. My organs were failing, my body was so starved it was eating it’s own muscle.There was a point in the hospital when the excruciating pain ceased and a beautiful tranquility came over me. A priest gave me the communion. I smiled. I was on my way out. I was on my way back home.

But it wasn’t my time. I hadn’t even started my mission on earth. So all the love in Heaven made sure my spirit stayed put.

The doctors took heroic measures to bring me back. One of the top Crohn’s doctors in New York was brought in to check out my case. He brought with him a small crew of medical students who studied me like a specimen. Miracles did happen. Everyone acknowledged them. Like the morning I was due for a blood transfusion, suddenly my tests came back saying it wasn’t needed. The doctors couldn’t explain the overnight change in my chemistry. It was just another mystery. I can still remember the sweat on the doctor’s brow, the look of relief on his face when I showed signs of coming back to life.

It was a long road back to my previous condition. I had sunk to ridiculously poor health. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. I looked like a puffer fish and was balding from steroids. One day at a time, I worked my way back up from disabled to chronically ill.

Somehow, through sheer determination, I managed to achieve my childhood goal of becoming a writer. I was a reporter for a local paper, and got a side gig writing for an entertainment magazine. I eventually became an assistant editor.

I was also diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/The Epstein Barr Virus and Fibromyalgia and was given more pills. One Crohn’s specialist believed I had IBS, Crohn’s and Colitis! For years, hospitals were an integral part of my life. I received weekly IV’s for dehydration. I vomited daily, including at work. No one knew. I’d get right back to my desk and start typing away. I had headaches, felt heavily exhausted, irritable, sometimes fuming mad. I was in intense pain every minute of the day. Every time I moved, I felt a fiery sensation rip through my muscles. Behind closed doors, I cried a lot.

I never shared with a single soul what I really experienced in my daily hell with disease. My condition made others feel uncomfortable, and it was uncomfortable for me to talk about it. There was so much fear around disease. It felt like no one wanted to know or talk about it because it was scary, like a curse that could be caught. My friends didn’t understand why I never wanted to hang out. I couldn’t leave the house. I was a prisoner in my body. All my effort went into getting to work, which was a huge feat in itself. I had nothing left to give to anyone, including myself.

I remained in this pattern until another major crisis – my third – presented itself to me. Another opportunity for change! Just three years after my last near fatal bout with the disease, my condition was still so progressively deteriorating that my G.I. doctor told me chemotherapy was my last resort. When I hesitated on his advice, he assured me to get a second opinion. He was confident, remarking that any other doctor I went to would agree with his prescription.

What he assumed is that the next doctor I spoke to would think like him.

Lesson #1: Always trust yourself.

The Dark Ages

My journey to disease began the day I was born. I had an ear infection and the doctors promptly put me on antibiotics. The infection never cleared, and the prescriptions kept coming. I was so congested as a child, I sounded like I had a perpetual cold. It was really allergies, but the doctor thought it was a stubborn infection, so every day, for years, I took antibiotics the same way one would take a daily vitamin.

And I never got better.

When I was eight, my eardrum burst. I can still remember the momentary deafness and warm sensation of blood as it trickled down my cheek. My hearing was left with some damage, and my health continued to deteriorate. As a kid, I prayed I wouldn’t be called on to read aloud or even worse – read standing in front of the class – because I was so painfully congested, I was embarrassed to be heard. When I developed asthma in grade school, I could no longer run track the way I used to. The green field that had once felt so freeing to sprint suddenly felt like a pillow over my face.

The world back then didn’t feel like a wonderful place. I was always sick and ultra sensitive to things that didn’t bother others, like smells and fabrics. I was super sensitive to my environment, including the people in it. Everything seemed to affect me in a negative way.

And the pills kept on coming.

I was prescribed birth control pills at fifteen for menstrual irregularities. At the same time, the children’s therapist I was seeing to help me cope with my dysfunctional family prescribed me my first anti-depressant. It didn’t work. I spent the next ten years experimenting with different prescriptions. None of them worked for me, and some had awful side effects that took me through an emotional roller-coaster. Those were the dark ages in my human life. Boy, did I learn about suffering. And the worst was yet to come.

Whenever I asked a doctor in those days why I was having symptoms, I either got a shrug or some diluted medical explanation that sounded good but didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I remember thinking, “Do they really know what they’re doing?” I felt like an experiment most of the time when I was in doctor’s office. It was like, “let’s try this pill and see if it works.”

I didn’t receive a lot of compassion back then. No one ever said to me, “You have the power to change this.”

The message was clearly, “This is who you are as a result of your emotional experiences or a physiological glitch or DNA or just rotten luck, and there’s little you can do about it except take drugs and manage life as best as you can.”

I felt like I was drowning and the only thing doctors could do to help me was throw me a bottle of medicine. When doctors looked at me, they didn’t see the spark of bright light that had been buried by the pain. They didn’t consider that my body had it’s own wisdom and messages for me. They didn’t express any faith or hope that my conditions would change. Everything felt so cold and permanent back then. A diagnosis, and I had many, felt like sentences. The doctors were like judges, determining my fate.

“I now sentence you to eczema! You shall live the next 30 years of your life with itchy and red skin and there’s nothing you can do about it except hope this cream will help!”

I was judged a lot in those days. Being sick was not only a nightmare not only for me, but the doctors who treated me. I questioned everything and grew angry when they couldn’t give me answers, or even worse, acted condescending with me. My sensitivities weren’t understood, let alone celebrated as they are now, and I was often referred to as “neurotic” and given the “there’s something off with this one” look. I didn’t feel my thoughts or feelings were taken seriously, or were of any interest when it came to my medical doctors. My own intuition and observations had no relevance, and if I kept persisting to tell them how I felt, I was promptly referred to a psychiatrist.

The doctors I chose were greater teachers to me than I realized at the time.

So I was cast as an unhappy and unstable girl, and I played this role because I didn’t know any other. I had no healthy role models. I had no model at all for what happy and healthy looked like or felt like. For a very long time, I felt I had fallen into a black hole. I felt buried by the pain I had experienced, including verbal and physical abuse, a volatile and violent home life and statutory rape. I felt misunderstood, different and very alone. During those dark ages in my teen years, I believed maybe I had been damaged beyond repair.

Free at Last

When I was in my twenties, I was still struggling with health issues. I was still racking in the prescriptions. In my short life thus far, I had already been diagnosed with chronic conditions of allergies, Dysmenorrhea, ovarian cysts, PMDD, asthma, eczema, depression, insomnia and an anxiety disorder. The shelves in my medicine cabinet were stocked with lots of plastic orange bottles. I was a Big Pharma baby. I was the new generation born into the pharmaceutical boom. And I was one of its best customers. Which is what almost killed me.

But there were other things, too, like my lifestyle. My world moved fast, and I was exhausted. My job was demanding. My social life was demanding. I lived in New York City and I had to keep up. I drank pots of coffee and loved sugar, particularly Diet Coke. I even took up smoking, after choking on the things, because how else did you cope with stress? I had no clue, nor time to figure it out. There were bills to pay and things to do, and my body just had to fit into my way of living.

I didn’t think I was doing anything insanely unhealthy. In fact, I believed, for once in my life, that I was completely normal! Everyone else around me was exhausted and struggling to wake up in the morning. They were drinking coffee and sodas, eating candy bars and smoking cigarettes to help get them through the long day. Everyone I knew was on a prescription for something. I was no different than anyone else.

If I did meet someone who suggested a more “natural” alternative, I gave them the “something is off with this one” look that I had once received myself.

My body would soon show me that I had a lot to learn, and it was determined that I get the lesson. After all, I had work to do on this planet. And there wasn’t time to waste. God knew I needed a wake-up a call. The Universe being generous, I ended up getting three.

The Big “D”

I finally had my big break. After years of working at a bookstore through college, I was hired for my first “real” job. I was an assistant to a literary agent in Manhattan. The office had a view of Broadway. I bought my morning bagels at the same deli where David Letterman bought his. I took messages from celebrities. I read manuscripts from aspiring and well-known authors. An aspiring writer myself, I was living in the hub of my dream world. My future was filled with promise, my aspirations were on the brink of being realized.

And then it happened.

The BIG message from my body started to rumble. This fresh new start would quickly come to an end. My life would never be the same.

I was house sitting for one of the agents who lived with a famous author’s son in a beautiful downtown apartment. It was New Years weekend and I was lying sick in bed watching reruns of The Twilight Zone. I thought I had food poisoning. I felt feverish, had terrible pain and couldn’t keep anything down. I figured I had the holiday break to recover. But when it was time to go back to work, I was still sick. I found it harder and harder to make it to work every day. Eventually, I called in sick one too many times. And I got the boot.

I was heartbroken. I had never been fired before, nor had I had a job that was so promising and supportive of my creative abilities and dreams. My body was failing me, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I didn’t have health insurance or extra money in my pocket, so seeing a doctor wasn’t an option. I went into denial mode, big time.

I applied at a less demanding job at The Strand, a quirky used bookstore downtown. I thankfully started my shift feeling at least I was still connected to the literature and culture of the city, ignoring the fact that I was starting this new job in a body that was about to give out.

I refused to see the chalky white skin in the mirror. I refused to notice the clothes that began to hang off my rail thin body. I dealt with the worsening symptoms as if they were just an inconvenience to take care of as quickly and nonchalantly as possible. This case of food poisoning, I thought, was severe. I was growing weaker. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t stop throwing up or going to the bathroom. My whole body ached. Abdominal pain came in horrific waves and I held on, gripping my hands tight to the books as I shakily put them on the shelf. Praying for it to go away. Just go away so I can go on with my life.

One evening, witnesses say I turned a shade of green and my emaciated body could no longer stand. I was rushed to the emergency room, poked, prodded, IV’d and sent home without a diagnosis. After my release, the landlord discovered me lying unconscious in my bed where I had been for at least a week. I had a fever of 104. It was then that I was finally diagnosed. The diagnosis was Crohn’s disease. I was 95 pounds, emaciated, but didn’t see it. I didn’t want to. I could barely walk, but fought the wheelchair idea in the hospital. I still couldn’t grasp that I was really ill, that I had a disease, even though I was hooked up to several IV’s, in my arms, wrists and between my fingers. My mantra for my body in those days was, “never mind this, you will listen to me!” I watched a Groundhog Day marathon (talk about a sign) on the hospital TV, counting the minutes until my release when I planned to meet a girlfriend at our favorite bar in the East Village.

Was I crazy?

No. I was twenty-one.

Sometimes, when we dream a better dream of what can be, we can loose ourselves in the ‘in between’.  When we allow our creative minds to  expand into a new story and an updated version of who we are, we begin to feel the expansion.  And as we expand, even before the fact, even before the new shows up in our lives, we may find that we no longer fit into the container of what we’ve been.  In the Meanwhile, between what we’ve been and who we’re becoming, we may find that we can’t go back into the box, which can leave us feeling frustrated, vulnerable, and alone.

There appears to be this purgatory, or holding place, this in-between where we begin to receive strong visions and clues of what’s to come, but part of us feels like it’s almost too good to be true. It begins to feel that the fairytale we’re dreaming is more, maybe, than we can allow ourselves to believe in and that part of us that’s once bitten, twice shy begins to back away. We are being pushed out of our comfort zones into the unknown and this makes us want to squirm, but it’s important to use this wiggle power as leverage and push harder. Sometimes we have to push through that resistance in order to see the fruition of what’s to come. This is co-creating in action.  This is us doing our part in the ‘co’ of the creation.  This is us moving past fear and expanding. Here we can use the fire to push past what’s familiar and become what we know to be true.  Decide that you’re someone who’s going to persevere.  When you get good and angry at the circumstances that be, let this be an opportunity to boundary-set with yourself and define what you’ll no longer take, settle for, or be subjected to.  And then decide what it would take for you to feel like you’ve finally arrived. And once you’ve found instruction in the fire of your Light, and have embraced your power to move, move, move ahead, at your own level of intention, and beyond, and at your capacity, and then some, then, at last surrender, and let the Big Guy do the rest.

In these moments, we may find ourselves grasping, as we may not be aware that there is something in the way of our ability to fully come into alignment with our truest desires. We may not be aware that we are still holding on to a something, a someone, or a somehow that doesn’t fit into the greater picture we’ve been painting.  What we may not even see is that as we’re envisioning a new way of life, we are still holding on to the old story, which keeps us stuck and locked in to a way of being, thinking, perceiving, that doesn’t match up with the vibration of what we’ve dreamed could be true.

So an inner war of sorts sets into play, and we become confused about what’s coming up for us and how we’re feeling. We sense the imbalance and know we’re unaligned but don’t quite know what to do. We don’t want to feed into anger or frustration of take the lead of the fire within when it flares because we fear this will lead us even further off track.  And when we choose to continue to tell the story, which can be ever more supported by your frustration at the inability to move forward, the fire squelched becomes depression, anxiety, and despondency because at this point, we have gone too far and must at last turn back to the one within who knows.

And when we’ve been lost for too long, in our story, or in our resistance to throttle through, when we’ve been lost so long that we can’t even remember our way back, then the red light of our soul’s dash starts flashing and we will begin to feel the discomfort of self-betrayal.  We will hear the alarm sounding in our dreams, in our restlessness, in our discontent.  We will find anger welling as the fire or our being points us in the direction of what we have become lost in.  The internal fame burns strong in these times in order to redirect our discomfort and become empowered to make change.  This flame can be used to burn through any confusion, doubt, indecision, and overall ‘stuckness’ as we hold on with fingers still gripped tight to what’s been burying us for some time.

And it can be something of a refresh button as we begin to delete and clear what no longer defines; as we begin again to recalibrate our path and take new steps toward who we are again, really, at a deep-down level, at a level of strength, perseverance, and faith.

And soon, we’ll notice things we’ve been doing to support this outgrown story falling away as well.  Shifting to this new level can be a magical cure for self-betrayal and many numbing and distracting methods that divert us from that part of us that knows that we’re living fiction and that what’s at great stake by doing so is our joy.

So maybe in the meanwhile as you find that that GPS of yours is beeping, you can take it as a signal to take head, turn in, and honor you in the highest way, anger, frustration, and all.  And if you feel that fire burning, allow it to become your impetus to push through the barrier of what you’ve bought into and clear the fog of delusion so that new levels can be attained and the flow can stream freely in the direction of the new.  And if you feel like you’re coming undone, then let yourself unravel and find your way back to what’s true.  There you’ll find your bliss waiting, and there you can start anew.

Be well and BElieve!

Loving you,

Rhonda

Awakeningthedivine.net