Balance: Sad and Grateful

Living with never-ending illness is all about balance.
I talk quite a bit about balance in many previous posts, but today is about finding balance with something very specific:

How we feel about being ill.

It is important to find a balance between feeling sorry for ourselves and also reminding ourselves how lucky we are in various ways.

See, we need to be able to grieve. We are grieving losses every single day - loss of feeling well, loss of energy, of opportunity, of our former selves. Living with a progressive disease means that we have a bumpy ride with a declining trend; we will continuously get worse, with some upticks now and then. If we are especially lucky, we may make a miraculous recovery. If that happens, be sure to buy your lottery tickets.
Like many of you, though, my life has also been blessed in more ways than I can count. There are so very many factors in this life that could have gone much more poorly.

So we have to allow ourselves to be sad, but not so sad that we lose sight of our own blessings.
I remind myself every single day of the joys and privileges I have been able to experience.
I also allow myself time to be sad or upset about feeling ill.
By hiding one aspect or another, we are robbing ourselves from other experiences, conversations, and emotions.

Balance is the key.

(And, as always, adequate distraction from our frustrations and pain).