The consequences of fitting in

 Starting from the start, how did I get here.. being a female teenager is tough. There is so much pressure to be what is socially perceived as 'perfect' a word I now know doesn't even exist. My health hit rock bottom when I gave in to society and thought I needed to be skinny to ‘fit it.’ Something I now see as a lesson I needed to learn but my health felt the full force of this one. 

 This lesson showed up in such a physical way for me, I slowly started developing intolerances to food, became highly sensitive to chemicals and medications, I was always tired, had bad brain fog and as the years went on I would get terrible pains after eating. Naturally I would become anxious whenever I had to eat which isn’t the best recipe when trying to put weight on. The amount of social events I couldn’t go to, I lost track of because I was too unwell and the ones I did go to I felt I was being judged because I couldn’t eat the ‘normal’ heavily  gluten. dairy and allergenic foods that has become so engrained in our western culture. I remember so many times just crawling in a ball crying and not wanting to get out of bed because every day was such a task. I would often sit up all hours of the night/ morning wrapped in heat packs just waiting for it to pass. The hardest part is not knowing what is causing it so I would be in a similar position in a few days time. Even after spending thousands of dollars on different health treatments/protocols nothing seemed to work and my quality of life was severely impacted.

 That is the thing about chronic disease is you often cannot see it from the outside. Many people are suffering behind their smile, trust me I was there not so long ago.  I went to many doctors and specialists, had a few colonoscopies and endoscopies and still had no answers. I still remember afterwards for my follow up the doctor sitting me down and saying that ‘ because your test results have come back clear I believe that you may be feeling pains that are not really there.’ To be holding onto some kind of hope that they will find SOMETHING, ANYTHING that would explain all of my pain and to be told that, was another blow. For most teens they were out partying thinking about what drinks they were going to have that weekend but for me I was drinking the awful colonoscopy drink that is used to completely clean out your bowels (sounds fun, doesn’t it?) and going in for day surgery. The pain is hard to explain but the closest way I could describe it was like all my internal organs were concreted together and every time I ate it would just get more and more compacted. I am so grateful that I now only in the last 12 months (after a lot of searching and trial and error) found the root cause of all my problems and now know the blue print to treat them (only a short 8-10 years later) but thankfully I figured it out! (More on this later)

 Hindsight is a beautiful thing, I can now talk about my eating disorder without getting upset (this took many years to conquer) but I now feel that I have been taught a valuable lesson instead of feeling regret, guilt and shame. Although I still feel guilty for putting my poor parents through the stress of  it all I hope that they can see that it has helped guide me on my journey and I wouldn’t be where I am today without their continual support. What I have learnt though which is important for not only the young people that may read this but just as importantly the adults as well that majority of the human population feel that they are not good enough and that was me included. A lot of this comes from the adults passing down this belief through the generations, which is why it is so important to heal and  to stop that self belief in its tracks affecting our society in more ways that we realize. I witnessed this recently when I attended a self development course in Brisbane and out of the 50 people in the room when asked a fear that they wanted to overcome, every single person’s boiled down to not feeling like they were enough. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing but I get it as I had felt the same way, we all think we are on own but we really aren’t, we are all human and having similar human experiences.

 It has taken hard work diving deep into my wounds to now fully love myself and honour my temple and my goodness it feels amazing!  The cause of this particular illness was the lack of self love that I had for myself which spiraled into a whole host of physical symptoms all because I had caught comparison-itis. I felt  like I had to be like everyone else when actually I just needed to be me. What I come to realize is that I am and you are the most unique being in the entire universe so just be yourself and let people see the real, imperfect, flawed, quirky, weird, beautiful and magical person that you are. People will judge, hey there are probably people judging me right now but often the ones who judge are covering up their own insecurities. Be kind because everyone has something going on that you know nothing about. Plus to be unafraid of the judgement of others is the greatest freedom you can have!

 Big Love, Meghan xx
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