No One Is Going To Fix You

When I was in my late twenties, I found myself in a really bad place. My body was so unhealthy I truly felt like I was dying, and my mental health was stopping me from living my life. I thought about suicide many times, but fortunately, I’m such a control freak that I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else bringing up my children.

And so I chose to live.

I was a heavy smoker and morbidly obese. I was incredibly homesick and living in a new country on five acres of dust and gum trees, in a caravan without power or running water, surviving on welfare with two young kids, and an unreliable husband whose main interests at the time were smoking weed and socialising.

I found myself going to bed early every night because my chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe. It would be so bad I couldn’t smoke another cigarette, and if I couldn’t smoke I couldn’t be awake, so sleep was the only option. I hadn’t driven a car for five years because the anxiety, fear and panic attacks that were controlling my life wouldn’t let me. I was agoraphobic, and I was a total mess behind the mask I showed the world.

I had gut issues and I felt like I was losing control of my bowel. I had terrible cycle and hormonal issues, and my general health was going downhill fast.

I never told anyone what was going on with me, not even my husband. But I realised even back then that the decisions I was making each day were either going to kill me or save me.

When I was twenty-nine years old and living in this mess, I bought myself a second-hand push bike. My daughter and I went for a ride along our dirt road, but I didn’t last long.

I could pedal only a few times before my legs ran out of energy, and I’d have to coast. We only went a short way down the road before turning around and walking my bike back home.

“Do you think you’ll ever be able to ride into town?” my daughter asked.

“I don’t know…” I replied.

I was sick of myself. I was sick of feeling pathetic. I was sick of worrying about dying, sick of feeling like crap, sick of going to bed because I couldn’t breathe. I was sick of me.

One night, a few months after my thirtieth birthday, I handed the packet of tobacco and the lighter to my husband and told him, “You can have the rest of the smokes. I’m quitting”.

“Whatever…” He laughed at me in disbelief. We’d both attempted to quit smoking many times before.

But what he couldn’t know was that I’d made a decision that would create massive change for me, and that I had in that very moment quit smoking.

But it was more than that. One decision led to the next, and I started exercising every day. I gradually changed my diet, and over the following four years I lost 45 kilos (100 pounds).

I went from a size 22 to a size 8 and created such a transformation that people I’d not seen for a while didn’t recognise me even when I stopped them in the street to say hello. I gradually started driving again. I went to college and studied IT. I began socialising more and actually living my life.

This one decision began a journey of learning and discovery that ultimately led to my decision in my mid-thirties to take full responsibility for my own health. Always — and in all ways.

The photo above is me, in my late 20’s. I don’t have many photos from that time, but this picture, although you can’t see my face, clearly shows my state of health. Puffy, overweight, hypothyroid.

Of course, the story doesn’t end there. Life and health are an ongoing series of ups and downs that can lead us on various excursions away from good health and provide plenty of learning if we choose to learn from our experiences.

So although I’ve never returned to that extreme mess I found myself in all those years ago, I have, due to crappy decisions and life circumstances, found myself in some fairly shitty places both physically and mentally at times (not the least of which was my experience with mould illness over the last ten years).

What I’ve learned over the past few decades is that each of us lives in a body that in its own right is an absolute miracle. The truth is that our amazing body is a self-healing organism, and when we give our body something to work with and get out of the way, it WILL get to work putting things right, often creating unexpected miracles.

For myself, my most profound experience with this (apart from my 45 kilo weight loss and life-changing experience in my early thirties, and my more recent adventure healing my body with a carnivore diet), was when I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in 2011.

Having an overactive thyroid is a potentially life-threatening condition with very unpleasant symptoms, and there are limited options for medical treatment — none of which are good — and none of which I considered to be options for my body.

So rather than heading down the mainstream route of poisoning my body with toxic drugs, surgical removal of my thyroid, or killing it off with radiation, I chose instead to work with my body and allow it to heal.

I did this with a whole lot of reading, determination, faith and dedication to managing my own health and my body.

First I decided to remove gluten and corn from my diet completely. Then I discovered ‘Juice Feasting’ which entails living on only 3-4 litres of fresh juices per day (no solid food) and I embarked on a juice feast that lasted 78 days. The juice feast settled my symptoms down very quickly, cleaned up my body, removed some excess weight and left me feeling ten years younger!

However, once back on solid foods, I realised I wasn’t quite out of the woods. I wasn’t digesting my food at all well, and I still had diarrhea almost every day. In my search for answers to my health problems, I came across information about ‘leaky gut’ and the implications of this for autoimmune diseases and thyroid problems.

After much research and learning about leaky gut and its implications, I read the GAPs diet book and spent the next two years making bone broth and following the GAPs protocol in a somewhat half-hearted fashion. I didn’t stick with it 100%, but I did still manage to improve my gut health (although that journey has continued in recent years).

Although I didn’t stick with the GAPs program perfectly, I did continue to eat a gluten-free and corn-free diet, and a lot of commitment on my part was still required to achieve this goal. Especially the making of huge quantities of bone broth while we travelled around Australia in a campervan and consuming it every single day…

But was it do-able? Yes.

Was it worth it? Hell yes!

All these many years later, I’ve never had a return of any hyperthyroid symptoms and my digestive system was much better than it had been (although I did still have a tendency to diarrhea) - until I returned to New Zealand and ended up with the mould illness that I’ve been battling for the past few years.

So of course life happens, and I find myself back in familiar places. Too much excess weight… More health challenges…

And then I get serious. I learn more, implement more and sort myself out - again!

This is the purpose of what I’m sharing here. To tell you, even though some might not like to hear it, that the truth is that no one else can fix you. Not really…

Of course, body workers like myself can appear to fix your sore back, or a sore shoulder or knee, but even then it’s really your body that does the work.

We only facilitate a change that allows your body to sort itself out.

If you have a disease process in your body, only your body can cure itself, and it’s YOU that needs to allow that to happen. Whether through diet, lifestyle changes, emotional work, spiritual belief or some combination of these.

The absolute truth is that your doctor can not fix you and pharmaceutical drugs won’t ever fix you. But don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you do need outside help. So go get the tests done when you need them. Get advice from professionals if you need it. Then take what makes sense and leave the rest.

It’s your body.

When the doctor told me I was hyperthyroid and probably had Graves disease, I told her that I didn’t want a referral to the Endocrinologist she was recommending. I knew a bit about thyroid problems and how they were treated by maintream medicine. I had decided in that moment that I wasn’t going to take part in their options for my disease, and she looked at me like I was mental.

I have to confess, at the time I was a little worried that I was mental! This was a serious condition. Anyone who’s experienced it will agree. But I knew I’d find a way and I did. I worked WITH my body, not perfectly, but in a way that allowed my body to make changes and my body responded.

Each of us has the option to work with our body to make it as healthy and resilient as we can.

And prevention, of course, is always the best medicine.

But when you have a disease process happening, or something going on in your body that needs to change, only you can make the decision to take on that responsibility. The ability to transform your body, your health and your sanity is yours, and yours alone.

If you make a decision that leaves your health in the hands of another, especially when their focus is on making money, that choice will probably not serve you.

It’s not always easy to take the action needed to transform your health, but I know from experience that it’s easier than living in a body with ongoing pain or disease.

And while none of us is perfect (no matter how much we like to pretend we are), if we pull ourselves back on course when we realise we’ve strayed, our bodies, much like a faithful dog, will serve us well.

Your body WILL heal if you allow it to. Miracles DO happen, and the power is in your daily decisions. Always.