In the last blog I grazed this topic, but I wanted to explore it a little with you. Chronic pain has been so much a part of my life that I wanted to help you understand it a little, just in case you didn’t. By all intents and purposes, I wasn’t supposed to be able to start this company. I guess I was meant to not be able to do just about anything for the rest of my life…but what kind of life is that?!
For the last 10 years of my life, I have suffered from chronic pain. It’s been this way so long that I can barely remember what my life was like before this. From the age of 20, I was told I would never work again in my life. Can you imagine that? A teenager, like so many before her that was so busy trying to find herself. I was working at a gas station, and I simply, and seriously loved my coworkers. I went to work, opened the store, got out at around noon I think. I headed home, and I was stopped at a stoplight, and the kid behind me just…did not. The car behind me slammed into my car, and my car hit the car in front of me; shattering their bumper. My doctors have given me some insight by telling me that I was hurt so much more in this car accident because as it was happening, I was watching the driver in my rearview, and I tensed my entire body as I prepared for impact.
I remember my car filled with this smoke from my faulty airbag. My head bounced off of the hard plastic of my steering wheel, hit my seat, and hit the steering wheel again. My back seat’s trunk release opened, and a compartment in the front of my car that I never even knew existed did as well. I never even put my car in park before getting out and realizing I didn’t have my glasses anymore. The kid behind me tried talking to me, but I really just couldn’t see and I told him to shut up because I knew something was wrong. I found my glasses on the floor in the back seat, and I remember thinking how crazy it was that they ended up there after I hit my head.
Everything after that was weird. My nose began randomly bleeding and my head didn’t stop hurting so bad for about a month. My neck and my back were radiating, but I never stopped to think about it. Later my friendships at work started to disintegrate. They didn’t believe that I was really suffering. That was the first time I remember looking in the mirror, crying about a pain that not even I could see.
I went to soo many doctors after this. I had so many appointments, that it was honestly like a full-time job to just see them all. I couldn’t work anymore. I found out I was pregnant a few months later, and when I went into labor, I never even knew because my regular pain was so bad, it all just blended in together. I journaled a lot, and I still didn’t notice extra pain because it was so bad naturally.
A turning point for me was a day during my associate’s degree when I was doing an algebra exam and my palm went black and blue. My algebra professor made me stop my exam and go to see my doctor. This is the first time they noted degenerative disc disease. My back and neck were so bad that I had bulged, herniated, and torn discs from C2 through C7 and L4 through S1. It was crazy. I made so many adjustments between learning I couldn’t hold my books, or a backpack of any kind to not being able to write, to not being able to sit or stand or push or pull for any extended amount of time. The “you can’t do this,” and “you can’t do that”’s all seemed to just pile up, and push me down into a dark hole.
I soon made the decision to go back to school and to invest in my future via my brain because my body would never be able to be there for me and my son. I was now a single parent, and this was the only way I could get him ready for a life I knew he deserved. I finished my associate’s, bachelor’s, and started my masters before I realized I could still do something again! The day I thought of this company, was the best day of my life aside from the day my son was born! The very thing meant to break me, seriously turned into the thing that pushed me forward, without a doubt, to fight for the life I wanted, but was told would never be mine. It became my way of finding a purpose and continues to be the way that I connect with the world. Soon I found a new kind of mission and I named it that. The mission books became my way to spread awareness about anything and everything that I could.
This company took me out of that dreary hole that my chronic pain pushed me into. I still live every day in pain, but all of the chiropractors, acupuncture, pain management, physical therapy, and massage therapy started to help as I started to get my energy and happiness back. I went on to lose 100 pounds give or take over time and learned to love myself, as well as accept the new me that was never going away again. I hope that throughout this blog, and all of the books that we have to offer that you feel my heart, and this mission as well. My heart beats in every ounce of this company, and I am so happy about it and you.
Stay tuned in the next blog for a bit further on the heartbeat of this company, and the immense reasons it exists.
