The Best Piece of Advice I Was Given About Getting Through a Health Crisis

A little over year ago, I could barely walk around the block. There is still no one diagnosis, but I was suffering from tinnitus and related hearing loss, leg pain, pelvic pain, stomach issues, sleeplessness, and eventually other symptoms like jaw pain, dizziness and arm and chest pains.

I am incredibly fortunate to have a spouse that would listen to my litany of “complaints”; it felt like every few days, some new hellfire was sprouting from my body.

I am also grateful to have an excellent talk therapist. She gave me an unforgettable piece of advice.

My rational brain was fine — I could work, I could stand, I could write and create and connect. But my fierce sense of empathy for others, was simply not extending to myself. And my body was clearly asking me to change the way I was living day to day — to slow down, to breathe, to take time for myself, to turn back to things that once interested me. All I could feel was exhaustion — and worry.

Until one day, the therapist said to me:

“In the same way that winter turns to spring, slowly and over many days and months, you will change, too. The snow will melt and the water will pool and the leaves will form.”

That message changed me. To not only see — but to know — that I was part of this natural progression of change, of decay and collapse, of growth and deformation and self-healing. This was an epiphany. It was not line from a positive psychology textbook; rather, it was an empirical declaration of fact. Change will come. It always does. The great Buddha saw that all phenomena are conditional and that the phases of arising, presence and dissolution are simply persistent.

That message allowed me to accept that what is, is now, and what will be, will be tomorrow. I believe that this was the tipping point for my starting to come back to better health.