Surviving and Thriving in Isolation

Here’s what I would tell the world as a patient with a chronic illness and an immune deficiency about life inside a bubble:

Before it gets better, it’s going to get worse. And when it gets better, it’s not going to be normal. It’s going to be different— but HAPPINESS still happens with “different” —but it doesn’t get a shot if it’s dead.

We will all have opportunities to thrive again. Maybe today is just about surviving. But in comparison to those you might not think to compare to, surviving IS thriving.

We will lose jobs, and we will gain new ones. We will lose freedoms. But we will gain perspective. We will have to face unparalleled amounts of time by ourselves— and maybe that will force us to start becoming the sort of people we’d want to spend our time with.

Life doesn’t stop coming at you until it stops completely. So find gratitude in each day you still get to live in your body — no matter how scared you are about the ways it might one day betray you.

The bubbles we must live in is are ours for the making. They can let in the sunlight or they can always have the shades drawn. They can be places of compassion for all others or places we fail to find compassion for even ourselves.

Life in a bubble is still life— challenge yourself to find new ways to improve a broken world from within it.

Ilana Jacqueline

Author

Surviving and Thriving with an Invisible Chronic Illness