“Can’t” weighs on us and if we aren’t careful it can sink us like an anchor sitting on our chest.

But with this business, I CAN.

The short story is that my doctor is an assclown and refused to call the clinician from UNUM back about my disability claim because he thought I was trying to get put on PERMANENT Disability, and scam the government. 

I am normally a very loving, kind person. I may say things super bluntly (especially for southerners) and I definitely say "fuck" a whole lot, but I'm kind. My friends actually call me the Love Terrorist. It started with my friend Lisa and I owned it and now it's just a thing.

I have done a lot of hard work in therapy throughout my adult life. I've had two therapists especially who I credit with helping me to make my biggest breakthroughs so that I could function as a healthy (albeit imperfect) adult. Because of all of this hard work I am generally able to maintain my moods and emotional well-being with extremely low doses of a particular medication and a heaping mountain of self awareness and self-care practices (thanks social worker friends!) Diet and exercise also play a roll.

Throwing chronic pain into my mix, though...I didn't see that freight train coming, y'all.

For a long time I accepted my meager earnings as "part of the deal." In exchange for the opportunity to do life-changing, world-changing work I had to suck it up and make less money.  After some years, though, acceptance turned into deep resentment and I stopped dreaming, stopped looking to the future. I was just trying to survive, and just barely doing so.

I invested in my business days before Thanksgiving in 2016. I haven't looked back since.

The simple secret of loving someone or interacting with someone who has an invisible illness and/or chronic pain, is this:  "That really sucks. I'm sorry that you're dealing with that, it sounds like Hell. Is there anything I can do to help?"