And oftentimes when you have a chronic illness and someone finds out that you are sick, the responses that you get can vary from oh, you know, you should be taking better care of yourself or have you tried this treatment? Have you tried that treatment? Or Maybe you're not managing this really well. Try my doctor, or oh, I hope you care well really soon. And the thing that we forget that the nature of chronic illness means that it is almost, in most cases, lifelong
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 5:00
Please have the grace to also give us the room to answer that question and give us the grace to hear us out and say, I can only imagine what it's like for you and not throw your own experiences at us and say things like, I am sorry. Is there anything I can do? And not try to rush that conversation to a close. Thank you so
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 0:52
With long COVID now becoming a reality for more and more people, it is likely that there will be more people around us who will have chronic illness and to be sensitive will only help us as a society to be empathetic and to take care of each other. So that is my wish and hope there. And thank you for listening to share your responses. See you
Gaurang Soni
@GaurangSoni · 5:00
And then he transformed his life and not only his life, many around him and it motivated him to pass this knowledge to somebody else. I also read to many places and they all are saying the same thing, that you be vegan and it is not only flush out toxins from your body, but also it changes your mood, it gives you energy
Gaurang Soni
@GaurangSoni · 4:55
Whatever is stuck inside us, whatever grief we had or anything which we got hurt from, we need to vent that thing out. And trust me, I never knew about this and I never knew these small things actually matters a lot. There was a case study in Hippocrates Center of Wellness in USA where this old lady was diagnosed with cancer and she came there for the treatment. She was doing everything what they told her to do but yet there were no results
Swati Sharma
@Swatiselflove · 2:43
We can only sympathize with the person. And there are very few people who can empathize with you. So it's more to do with the education, it's more to do with the kind of awareness that we have on hand about the diseases. And secondly, it's a lot to do with the kind of approach with which we handle our situation. It's more to do with the support system we have around us
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 4:46
But I do feel, from what I am noticing, that there is hardly like a one step approach that can change how we are feeling, especially if there has been organ damage. So for example, for people with me, CFS or Long COVID, the severity of the original viral illnesses often destroys your organs to a large extent where they cannot then recover. There is cellular damage which you cannot reverse
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 2:14
Because even if you look at the case of your husband where you say that that person has irritable bowel syndrome, now, anybody who has not had irritable bowel syndrome will not understand how deeply it can impact your everyday. Life, your work, your routine, your attention span, everything. Because it can be very, very crippling, very painful, and just really make going out and about very difficult. Because your natural routine is just so unpredictable
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 2:41
But doing a lot of deep trauma work, healing work, energy work, whatever appeals to people, even things as simple as breath work, can go a long way into making our symptoms manageable, our day to day life more manageable. And it shouldn't have to reach a place that we get crippled for us to pay attention to that. But unfortunately, that's how life gets you sometimes, isn't it?
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 5:00
So he would spend time with his lover away from us and not bring his lover around. We didn't actually discover that until he got sick. Well, he did contract HIV, and it did progress to AIDS, and so he died from complications with that. And that's how we found out not only was he HIV positive and he ended up with AIDS, but he also was homosexual
J.L. Beasley
@Her_Sisu · 4:48
So I did an assessment for a man who had been placed in hospice care in his home. And they needed a caretaker to help him with his activities of daily living, getting dressed, brushing his teeth, meal prep, et cetera. And I'm filling up the form. Man is 98 years old. He definitely although he has a condition that is terminal, his mind is sharp. He was able to sit with me and answer every single question
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 3:03
It's also making me think about how easy in my own life it has been to have these conversations with children where they've asked questions about someone passing. What is death? What happens afterwards? What happens to our bodies? Where are they taking them when someone's passed away and they see somebody carrying off the body? And children have this very matter of fact present way of addressing these things
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 4:42
Of course, the pain of it is something that people feel every day when they're living with something like this and they accept it. It's part of life. And sometimes you rage against it, but most times you just try to live with it. And I think when you say compassion, that is what it is, taking in the entirety of your situation of someone else's situation, that this is what it's going to be like
So that is what I think we should say to someone who is not going to get well soon. At the same time, wish them well, pray for them, send them healing energies, send them healing vibes, positive vibes. And tell them that I know this is long term and I know you may be feeling tired at times, but let's get through this together. You don't have to be alone
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 4:57
I think we've lost that a cultural part of us which would really solemnize and honor sickness and death in the way that it needs to be witnessed. So thank you for sharing that. It's made me think about how we've moved culturally, socially, as a human race and you're so right where it can be so infuriating and so belittling when people make it about themselves. And so often if someone asks me and how are you doing?
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 3:20
And I felt this myself when people have sent me things like, oh, sending you loads of healing wives and when you're angry and a lot of the times when you're very sick, you can be very angry because it's hard to accept that your life has totally changed. And it just sometimes you want to respond in ways like, I don't care about your positive healing energy, I'm not getting any better. You don't know what it's like
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:29
And I can't imagine a better format than this to really sort of connect to the language of of love in uncomfortable and discordant times when we're trying to put feelings together with fears, together with hope, but also respectful of just leaving space when some people might want to fill it. It's so interesting. It reminds me of my brother in law who lives in Israel, lived in Israel. And I had to go there to say goodbye to him
I can at least have people who will literally be there when I need them, even if it means just to be there, nothing else. And they won't be able to do anything else to help me but just be there. So that is what I feel from a perspective of healing and positive vibes. And I'll continue to send them to you. Receive but
You. And I, my dear, will continue sending all my positive energies, my healing energies to you. All my love and all the beauty that I have within me. And I believe that it can reach you through my energies. I'll keep sending them to you. Absolutely up to you to either receive them or to not receive them and to receive them in a manner that you wish to. But I'll continue sending love your way
Jeremiah Myer
@Jeremiah73 · 4:53
You. Hello. I think this is a very important topic for people to talk about and for people to think about because it is a reality in life that at some point in time we're going to have to have these conversations with people that we love very much and people are going to have to have those conversations with us
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 2:00
And that, in a very succinct way, describes what I've been trying to get at, that an agenda or a preconceived idea of this is what I'm going to say, this is what it's going to be like, completely takes away the space that the other person who's suffering really needs. They don't need you to fill that space, they need you to sit with them in that uncomfortable space. And I think you just described it so beautifully
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 4:47
Or if someone is that important to us, we can make that effort. Thank you for sharing this. It has made me sort of come full circle in that sense that while we do need to, as individuals raise the bar of how we respond to people who are sick and dying, we also need to extend that compassion to those who may not approach the problem with compassion. Thank you for that
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 3:30
And I think it's beautiful and very brave that you were able to do that. How many of us really are able or willing to give that kind of time to someone who we know is not going to be around? And I'm thinking about so many of my friends who are right now very sick and very far away and how it makes me feel so helpless that I can't do much because I'm very sick myself
Carly D
@Astroality · 3:11
But sometimes it comes out as though I'm not really listening to their pardes or concerns or worries, and I'm more focusing on myself, which is this was just a really good reminder to not be that way. That sometimes the best answer is for me to just remain silent rather than trying to specifically relate. And sometimes I just have to be more of a listener, less of a talker. So I truly appreciated this and I am absolutely wishing you well
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 4:36
And I was listening to your reply today, and it sued me so much, especially the parts of me that are still hurting from I wouldn't say indifference, but an inability or an incapacity on the part of very close friends and family to at least be curious about what may be happening to me. And not in a way where I want a whole lot of people around me. No, because in my condition, I can't even tolerate that. But what's happening to you?
Carly D
@Astroality · 3:43
And so it really did impact me and it's impacted my life. Especially in the last two weeks, there's actually been specific situations that have come up that are related to what you're talking about here. And I will tell you, because of what we've talked about, because of what's been shared in this thread, I do think twice. And for that I am extremely grateful because there's very few people who impact me on such a deep level
Reema Ahmad
@Reema.Ahmad · 2:53
I'm not going to say much because I'm very moved and I feel seen in a very profound way where especially the last three years of my life, through my practice as a counselor and coach, I have been given tremendous opportunities to teach people how to keep the doors of possibility open, possibility of return, possibility of repair, possibility of reconnection and to let go of as much as is humanly possible, not imposing any spiritually those very fantastical notions of forgiveness and uprightness
Carly D
@Astroality · 3:25
I will say that one thing that you said here that I also really appreciated was that sometimes we have this overblown notion about forgiveness, right? We try to come at it from a completely divine perspective, indeed, forgetting that we are in fact just human. And sometimes that level of divine forgiveness isn't possible in our day to day reality. I am glad to hear that you've reconnected with people who support and truly care for you on a very deep level, reconciliation can be a beautiful thing