Who is Your Illness Inviting You to Become?
“Who is your illness inviting you to become?”
This is a question I read in a research article, of all places.
The article discussed the impact of our mindset on the trajectory and ultimate outcome of illness. And not surprisingly, people who considered that their illness might have a greater meaning than just the straightforward physiological mechanism fared much better overall.
This article changed my life in many ways, because it put words to something I had been teaching, feeling, and experiencing firsthand in my own health journey but without having such a succinct and profound way of describing it.
Illness is an invitation to become.
And while this question is now the cornerstone and guiding philosophy of the work I do, I recognize that it flies in the face of convention. Illness as anything but negative, scary, and—yes—even traumatic? This assertion can feel invalidating and even offensive to some.
And I understand that.
If someone had told me my illness was for me, a gift, back when I had been diagnosed, I think I would have had some choice words to share.
How could something that was seemingly ruining my life ever be a good thing?
I was 21 years old when I got sick.
I wanted to hang out with friends, and party, and go to school, and have fun. Thanks to this “gift” of an illness, however, I was stuck in bed most days due to extreme fatigue, weakness, abdominal pain, and an inability to eat or drink much without getting very ill.
In retrospect, however, I can see that was the point.
Illness’ goal is to take us out of life.
It wants us to be unable to interact with the people, places, and things that make up our current reality.
It wants to separate us from the world for a time, to force us to stop, to slow down, to turn within.
Ok… you might be thinking… so how is that a gift?
Let’s use my experience as an example.
As I said, I was 21 when I got really sick.
All 21 years of my life up to the time of my diagnosis (and quite a while afterward, too), I was in survival mode.
What this means is that my nervous system was shifted out of a place of regulation and into a fairly chronic state of fight/flight/freeze… or in my case, fawn, the most recently understood trauma response that is more colloquially referred to as “people pleasing.”
My entire life, I had been modeled in no uncertain terms: my needs, wants, and desires were unsafe to have, to know, and certainly to express. My entire focus needed to be on the needs of others, in order to make them happy, in order to meet their needs, in order for me to be safe.
In other words, the world was only a safe and stable place when the people around me were in good spirits.
And if they weren’t?
Then all hell would break loose, and this meant that I had failed. That I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t worthy, because if I was, then the stress and chaos that was unfolding around me would not be happening, right?
This pattern followed me through friendships, and into professional and romantic relationships.
I became who I thought people wanted me to be.
I said what I thought they wanted me to say.
I dressed like them. I adopted their mannerisms. I agreed with their politics. I put up with abuses from friends and boyfriends alike that I never, ever should have tolerated—and never would have, if I had a higher (or any) sense self worth.
My needs, wants, and desires were so deeply buried that I wouldn’t have recognized them if they came up and hit me over the head.
And that… that is exactly why I had to get sick.
Nothing, and I mean nothing else, could have ever stopped me in my tracks and rerouted me in the way Crohn’s disease did.
I mean, it literally stopped me.
I was so anemic I could barely stand up without feeling dizzy.
My gut was so distended and in pain, I physically couldn’t hide it as it stuck out over the top of my jeans.
My eyes were sunken with dark circles from nutrient deficiencies and fatigue.
I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t pretend anymore. All of my years of practice of pushing down and ignoring authentic, internal expression flew out the window—I was unmatched. My illness won.
And…
Thank God, right?
What kind of quality of life did I have, anyway?
Whose life was I even living?
Did I really want to keep going on in that way, pretending to be someone I wasn’t, never asking for what I needed, swallowing resentment and tolerating the pervasive, existentially traumatizing reality of never actually being seen by anyone around me?
Prior to my illness, I didn’t even realize this was my life.
After my illness and following the subsequent years of unwinding and dissolving my old self, I can’t even believe that I existed like that for so long.
Thank God for my illness.
My illness allowed me to become myself.
It invited me to reconnect to my needs, my opinions, my beliefs, my fashion sense, my political and world views, my spirituality, my ideas, my intuition…
It allowed me to reconnect to my body… to deeply know that when it feels uncomfortable, this is a trustworthy guide attempting to redirect me.
My illness helped me understand that discomfort, alongside pleasure, is the most important ally we have in this lifetime to staying true to ourselves and claiming the life we desire and deserve.
Because of my illness, I feel free inside of my own skin.
The constant hypervigilance I had—scanning the room, reading body language, absorbing the energy of those around me and adjusting myself accordingly—is no longer present to the same degree.
I will always be sensitive to the people around me. But I’ve come to wield this sensitivity as more of a superpower rather than a dictator of my words and actions.
And most importantly…
I feel safe now.
I feel safe to be myself.
I feel safe to express myself.
I feel safe to just… exist… in a way I didn’t before. And I might have never realized I felt this way until I got sick.
So while illness is never pleasant, never desirable, never fun or exciting… it also isn’t meaningless.
It isn’t here to just torture us, to ruin our lives.
It isn’t happening to us. It’s happening for us.
And we can… we must, I think… learn how to hold space for both realities at the same time, in order to deeply understand the potent and powerful opportunity that illness presents in our lives.
Illness is uncomfortable, painful, and often traumatic
Illness is a profound invitation for us to step out of life as we know it in order to step into something more beautiful, authentic, and aligned
It simply takes a willingness to open your mind to this possibility, as the people in the research article did.
And the results? They speak for themselves.
And so now, I pose this question to you:
Who is your illness inviting you to become?
Are you ready to explore the invitation of your illness?
The Sacred Illness™ Membership is a space to deeply explore what your symptoms are attempting to take you away from—and calling you toward instead.
Inside the membership, you'll find support, tools, and a community of others walking this path with courage and curiosity. Embodied practices and mindset-shifting resources will guide you step-by-step to stop outsourcing your healing and start listening to your inner wisdom, helping you uncover the deeper invitation of your illness.
If you're ready to stop fighting your body and start listening to it instead, click the button below to get started!
