My Experience

I frame my world every day with the help of Dr. Debbie Stoewen’s Eight Dimensions of Wellness.

Physical Dimension

• Caring for your body to stay healthy now and in the future

Intellectual Dimension

• Growing intellectually, maintaining curiosity about all there is to learn, valuing lifelong learning, and responding positively to intellectual challenges
• Expanding knowledge and skills while discovering the potential for sharing your gifts with others

Emotional Dimension

• Understanding and respecting your feelings, values, and attitudes
• Appreciating the feelings of others
• Managing your emotions in a constructive way
• Feeling positive and enthusiastic about your life

Social Dimension

• Maintaining healthy relationships, enjoying being with others, developing friendships and intimate relations, caring about others, and letting others care about you
• Contributing to your community

Spiritual Dimension

• Finding purpose, value, and meaning in your life with or without organized religion
• Participating in activities that are consistent with your beliefs and values

Vocational Dimension

• Preparing for and participating in work that provides personal satisfaction and life enrichment that is consistent with your values, goals, and lifestyle
• Contributing your unique gifts, skills, and talents to work that is personally meaningful and rewarding

Financial Dimension

• Managing your resources to live within your means, making informed financial decisions and investments, setting realistic goals, and preparing for short-term and long-term needs or emergencies
• Being aware that everyone’s financial values, needs, and circumstances are unique

Environmental Dimension

• Understanding how your social, natural, and built environments affect your health and well-being
• Being aware of the unstable state of the earth and the effects of your daily habits on the physical environment
• Demonstrating commitment to a healthy planet

As an individual battling multiple sclerosis, aggravated by countless secondary complications, care and attention start with the efforts I must take. A massive collection of providers, family, friends, and connections to the resources I need to come together every day of my life. Whether I guide their steps or accomplish my tasks according to their direction, we have to work together if I am going to thrive.

My next efforts will spend some time detailing my experiences in each of these eight dimensions of wellness. It is my hope that the words I offer will entertain my readers while providing a glimpse into what it may take for someone, be it themselves or someone close, to survive. Perhaps the example I demonstrate can comfort a person who has that horrifying feeling nobody else could possibly understand.

I promise to continue sharing my life for no other reason but because I want to breathe life into pages far beyond anything I have accomplished to date, telling tales conjured up by my constant noise. No longer will I look to put words down solely to ease my anxieties. My stories will be written because, as my mind floods with the images I create, sometimes I smile. I may laugh, cry, or even nod my head in approval of the tale. On other occasions, the crafted images chill me to the core. I want to elicit a bounty of reactions as I breathe life into stories, narratives, reflections, and rantings.

This is my story about how my ambiguous “everything” twice came crashing down, as if from every possible direction, and the gap of time before my eventual reconciliation with The Eight Dimensions of Wellness.

Every individual’s experience is unique, as are their needs in each dimension of existence.

Find your own peace — I hope my discovery will help.

The End

?The full draft of my story will be shared on this secure drive location: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1E4cNpkFBU4qf3zYDIqZ5Nw72DzhGe88r?usp=sharing

These are the thoughts going through my mind as I try to piece it all together…

This is not about what my life will be like when the fight is over.

I will never stop

I will never quit

This is my story

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Reference

Stoewen, D. L. (2017, August). Dimensions of wellness: Change your habits, change your life. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5508938/