a little bit of hope

“with the new day comes new strength and new thoughts” – Eleanor Roosevelt

I have had a lot of heart troubles the past couple of weeks and this morning I am starting to feel much better. Prayer and support is a wonderful beautiful thing when you accept and lean on it.

I have been having issues with sleeping in the past 2 weeks that has had me almost at the emergency room a couple of times. It’s been frustrating and to be honest depressing.

I have been dealing with this along side of my emotional healing of which has been going great!

This past week my therapist and I focused more on my physical health and just having support around that. I have to say the support has been amazing and my therapist really helped me to come to a place of acceptance of support, learning to lean in and to talk about my feelings and fears in-depth of which I would have never talked about before.

I don’t talk about it much but I was born with a heart disease and sometimes it gives me a lot of issues. I have been on medicine since October, maintenance medicine that has really effected my respiratory at night when going to sleep and I have lost my breath many times going to sleep with a lot of heart palpitations.

It has been both scary, and frustrating on so many levels. It has heightened my anxiety to the point of being fearful of bedtime. I have had many issues since I was little and this triggers young feelings of being sick in the past.

Normally I would shut down and not tell anyone I was having issues. I have a fear of making others fearful or worried, because if others are worried I get more scared, so I tend to keep it to myself when these heart issues arise (except for my heart dr). This time however I opened up to my therapist about it in-depth and it allowed me to accept support, and have someone to lean on, which also helped me to lean on my family and husband.

This past week I have had so much support and I realized not being alone is so much easier than trying to do it by myself. I talked about my fears with my therapist; something I would never fathom to talk about. It was hard but I noticed that when I put my fears out there to be heard and cared for, the fears get smaller and more supported.

Last night was the first night in almost 2 weeks that I slept with no breathing issues. I slept calmly and peaceful and I woke with a big smile on my face! I sent my therapist a text with about 20 smiley faces – he will know what that means because we both have been praying for a good night of sleep for me; some relief and hope that this will improve with the reduced medicine dosage that has been causing this issue.

Immediately the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt came to mind ” “with the new day comes new strength and new thoughts“. Sometimes when we are bogged down by the same fear over and over you begin to lose hope.. well the peaceful sleep I had last night with no heart issues gave me a new day of strength, and new thoughts, new hope, that it IS getting better, and I am getting stronger.

I have a heart condition called “bicuspid aortic Valve” and sometimes it comes with runs of palpitations that make me feel sick and weak and then there are times I feel great for a long period of time.. well I am hoping that we found the issue of the problem and this is the path to healing.

I have to see the DR this week but I feel better – so much better since we lowered the dose of the medicine I was on – it was too strong causing respiratory depression at night.

This has been a challenge because it plays both on the past and present. So many childhood triggers in being sick and sometimes its hard to work through those triggers. It’s hard to keep myself to the here and now when all those fears of being young and sick come screaming to the forefront – but this past week I broke that cycle of silence and allowed myself to talk about it, lean in, accept support, it was huge and I hope there will be more of this to come as I walk towards more good work working with the young me.

Today I have more hope …. and when we have little bouts of hope, it gives us another new day of strength.