Living with a chronic illness is not easy. Especially when your symptoms include severe depression and hopelessness. It can take work to turn the picture upside down and see the glass as half full. But I can tell you that the effort is well worth it.

On my bad days, all I can see is that I am in my sixth year living in near isolation, that I have two tolerable outfits to my name that haven’t been washed in months, I have no towels I can use, no bedding or bed, I sleep on a cold tile floor shivering in the dark, and my health seems to be getting more fragile with each passing day. I have friends and a boyfriend, but due to our severe sensitivities to chemicals and other environmental influences, during the long winter we mostly have a phone relationship. I haven’t seen my family in over a year. With these grey-colored lenses on, it’s hard to see much reason for going on.

On my good days, I am ever-so-thankful. My house-prison is transformed into a safe home on 20 acres to buffer me from neighbors’ toxic practices. This desolate area becomes a beautiful landscape that my dreams can find a home in. My connections to friends and my boyfriend are incredibly cherished and deep—the kind of relationships I always craved but could never find growing up. The restrictions of my illness force me to live in alignment with a value system I always had but was too lazy/cowardly/apathetic to enforce. The boredom of hours freed up from lack of career/social life/activity opens up a space where I get to share my voice and vision.

How can you transform those things that bind you and drag you down? I challenge anyone reading this to take a list of what they view as the terrible parts of their life and create something beautiful about each and every one.

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And perspective/attitude is everything.

photo credit: © Microdon | Dreamstime.com