Your degrees, jobs, organizations, networks and material things do not make you who you are. All those things are great, but it’s more important who you are when noone is looking.
Being loving, kind and understanding matters. Sometimes I feel people don’t understand what’s important until the daily moments become the only thing they have. Having a chronic illness brings you to appreciate the things that everyone else takes for granted. Things like planning a trip and actually being able to take that trip with no worries of possibly falling ill. Things like going outside and being able to feel the sun and wind on your body without pain. Things like waking up and being able to get out of bed. Things like breathing without struggling for the next breath. Things like getting that hug that allows you to just be loved in someone’s arms.
It’s the things that everyone thinks are small that become massively huge in your life when chronic illness is present. It’s something about fighting for your life daily that changes your focus and pushes you to move beyond the materialistic things. Something about the fight that pushes you to live in every moment not for the status or accolades but for the beauty of life itself.