Living an Optimal Life

To my Lyme-wise nurse practitioner's credit, she was so excited to identify her most passionate diagnosis as the source of my woes, that she wanted me to have all the information she'd worked so hard to research and compile, immediately. While I was still processing the fact I'd be told I had a bug-induced disease, she was scribbling book names and websites while mentioning herbs I needed to begin immediately. Those weren't written down, so I was to find them in one of the dozen resources written on the page resting on a note, informing my employer I could no longer travel for work through the end of the year. It was too much information for five minutes, and combined with the Lyme-brain fog, I retained very little of it. Driven by fear and panic, I spent the next week attempting to learn and do it all simultaneously. Fortunately, Brian had a working brain and remembered enough from the visit to decipher her notes. His mom printed the articles for me, while Brian ran t

The other shoe did indeed drop, and it was so unexpected. I knew nothing about Lyme Disease, except that it came from a tick bite. I couldn't recall a tick, nor the bullseye bite mark associated with it. I felt a range of emotions ranging from horror, the image of a bacteria oozing into my bloodstream and infiltrating my nervous system, joints and heart, feeding on my insides... to feeling validated relief. I wasn't losing my mind! I wasn't overly sensitive or suffering psychosomatically. There was a legitimate reason I was suffering, and it was treatable. I'd spent my life seeking an answer. As I tried to determine when I was infected, I kept tracing symptoms further and further back, and all the pieces came together, like an invisible puzzle materializing into a clear landscape of my life's struggles. Lyme Disease. It was all connected. These physical and emotional quirks weren't normal. They weren't me. It was all Lyme's. The emotional pendulum swung

Then, came the smoke. Even the Bay Area was covered in a brown shroud of smoke and the chemicals of perished goods: our neighbors dreams and belongings. The air was toxic and unbreathable in Chico, but it was hazardous in the Bay Area as well. Hosting our custom mold educator from Louisiana a few days later, I led her to our next hospital appointment. We were instructing a series of CEU courses together for various groups of ATPs and therapists. My head felt like it was in a vise, and it went blank. I couldn't remember where to go, nor what department we were seeing. I felt my heart flutter, like a butterfly was trapped inside, and I thought I would faint, failing to gasp in enough air to support my muddled brain. She looked almost as confused as I felt.  "I don't remember," I said. "I think I'm having panic attack." Sweating profusely, I darted around the building until locating assistance. We were late enough for the anxiety to persist throughout the

I knew the week would be challenging, my most challenging yet. I'd crammed a variety of appointments, including group presentations and trainings throughout the Bay Area into a limited timeframe, accounting for inevitable traffic and unexpected customer requests. I now represented a handful of product lines and each hospital presentation covered different combinations of them. So my van was packed with it all... demo wheelchair, Smart Drive device, pressure mapper, custom molded simulator chair and bean bags, tools, pump, every variety of seat cushion, back support and accessory for every complexity of needs for a wheelchair user. I was overwhelmed, fighting physical fatigue and unexplained mental cloudiness. Determined to succeed and make the travel efforts count, I swallowed my usual handful of vitamins and immune boosting supplements, meditated away the fear, stretched the aching joints and hit the road, repeating positive mantras in my head. High vibrations, faith over fear.. &

So I changed the name of this blog. It used to be about a single, traveling sales-mom, fitness enthusiast and aspiring wellness coach. Now, it's about embracing reality and creating the best version of it, whatever your circumstances allow. Everything has changed in one year. The identity that once defined me, which motivated the frenzy-like productivity spawned from a survival mode I thought life's obstacle-ridden path required of me, ceased to be. Piece by piece, my identity was chipped away revealing a new entity, which first promised a better existence, then took a sharp, unexpected turn, leaving me asking, yet once again, "How did I get here?" And more importantly, "Who am I now?" First, I found my partner. He was the one who didn't love me in spite of my three boys and ridiculously consuming traveling sales job, but loved my boys and loved me through it. We understood each other in an unrivaled way and had so much in common, I was sure he was m