As I discussed in my last blog post, the hardest part of living with Friedreichs Ataxia for me is the mental health struggles I’ve dealt with that stem from grief of a life that isn’t at all what I imagined it’d be.

Well, allow me to respond to that.

As I wrote previously, I believe there’s always light waiting on the other side of every dark cloud. At times it looks much the opposite when I look into my future and see nothing but my disease progressing and getting worse. It gets hard to see healing in my future. As I shared in my last post, I feel a lack of shared reality, and frustration sets in that people can’t see me as the same person I was before my FA diagnosis.

But that lack of shared reality has brought me to a greater acceptance of my own unwanted circumstances.

They don’t see me for what I was because I’m not the same as I was. As much as I want my “old life” before FA back, nothing will ever return to how it was then. The moment I start acknowledging that as a good thing is when the script starts to flip from darkness to light.

The day after Thanksgiving, I sat in a coffee shop with a friend who also has FA (FAer is our inner slang for another person who has FA). He told me his advice for other FAers is just to happily accept help from strangers, even when you don’t need it or you’re skeptical of their perception of you. That way, they walk away feeling helpful and you leave having been kind and welcoming to someone – everyone feels at peace with the situation.

What wise insight this was to someone who was battling to uphold the image of his former, “healthy” self.

Sure, I might be very well capable of *struggling* to open the door on my own, and I might be used to putting my walker in the car myself. That’s not the point. It’s me letting go of my pride and my image and humbling myself enough to acknowledge my own brokenness.

When I began to loosen my grip on my feeble sense of independence and accomplishment, I began to move forward freely and allowed my heart to open up. It’s hard to open up and shake hands with your own weakness, but it’s a necessary step towards escaping the cloud that my hard heart trapped me in.

There’s a balance between grieving what you’ve lost, acknowledging what you hope for and being grateful for what you have. Sometimes being able to label what falls into each of those categories takes allowing your story to break your own heart.

Pain is strongest when you don’t look it in the face. When you try to put it off. When you act like you’ve got it all together. Accepting help is recognizing pain, and therefore, reaching toward healing.

If you’re anything like me, you need a reminder that you only play the cards you’re given. In fact, maybe that’s all we’re SUPPOSED to do is live within your limitations instead of transcending them. When you understand that you aren’t meant to be whole, you can find the strength to live within your brokenness.

Life is not what it once was, and that’s okay. Loss can free up the space necessary to grow into something better. But that only happens when you allow it to.

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There’s a balance between grieving what you’ve lost, acknowledging what you hope for and being grateful for what you have.