First let me start by saying I am thrilled to be working again. Thrilled that my body is cooperating for the most part. Thrilled to be out in the world, making connections, networking, and feeling like a productive person again. Is it horrible that my self worth is so closely tied to my ability to make a paycheck?

All my work on FibroHaven was satisfying emotionally and spiritually, but never financially. I LIKE MONEY! I like the freedom it brings. I like contributing to my household again. I like seeing a light at the end of our Debt Highway.

That being said, I have missed FibroHaven – missed my blog and facebook community, missed tweeting with the FM community on Twitter, missed the local members of my support group and our therapeutic meetings. It has all been neglected.

I think we all clearly understand about how hard it is to find balance living daily with chronic illness. It is always a matter of “If I do this, I know I will not be able to do that.” Prioritizing, making sacrifices, coming to terms with limitations, and on and on. Living well becomes a matter of balancing options and making smart choices.

I can tell you the smart choices I have been making for the better part of a year are really paying off now. I completely contribute my ability to work to the elimination of gluten from my diet and to my practicing yoga. My body has responded and rewards me every day. Even on bad days, I recover more quickly and have new tools – breathing exercises, stretching, etc. – to help me through.

But my heart is still in FibroHaven. So now it is up to me to find the balance. I know I can. I know I will.

And breathe…

I’ve been asked this question a lot since returning to work. What did you do before this? It is an interesting question and I don’t think I have decided how to answer it yet.

Do I tell them about the accident that brought my life to a screeching hault? Do I tell them about the months spent struggling to regain my ability to speak coherently? Do I tell them about the pain, the bouts of depression, the fatigue, and general disconnect from life? Do I tell them about starting this blog? Do I tell them how I was so inspired by this blog I started FibroHaven Foundation?

No, I don’t think I should. Essentially what they are asking me is how are you qualified to be in this position? What have you done in your past to allow you to do what you are doing in your present? They want to know what I have done, not what I have been through.

I had many successful years working with Fibromyalgia before the accident. I am plenty qualified. But I am also concerned about how my illness may be perceived. It is something we have discussed at support group meetings in the past. Do you tell your employer/prospective employer that you are living with a chronic illness? If ever there was a slippery slope…

My current employer knows all about FibroHaven and seems completely unphased by it. He is actually quite impressed with what I have accomplished. But early on in my job search I am certain I was not chosen for a position because my potential employer read my blog. He basically patted me on the back and said “You are doing great things with FibroHaven. Keep it up.” This came shortly after he mentioned he has two close relatives with Fibromyalgia. Do you think his experience with them prejudiced his value of me? I do.

So how much do I share? I am not sure. The only thing I am certain of is that I do not want my diagnosis of Fibromyalgia to influence what my colleagues think I am capable of doing. I want my actions to determine my value, not my diagnosis.

After my first week I am feeling pretty good. I am back in sales. It is what I know and what I have done well for many years. I am really excited about the company I am with now. Very smart, professional internet marketing firm. Great potential for me as long as I do the work and maintain my health. And that is exactly what I plan to do.

I think what I am most concerned about is maintaining balance in my life. For example, I did not make it to yoga this week. My body is letting me know loud and clear that I need to get to a class soon. I have a lot of motivation to make that happen.

I didn’t realize how much I missed being a working professional. I love getting dressed up, getting motivated during sales meetings, going out and meeting with clients and strategizing with them on business opportunities. It is a completely different kind of satisfaction than the satisfaction I have experienced with FibroHaven – plus I get paid for it! Bonus!

I know I am in the honeymoon period with my new career. I know there will be days when I will feel awful and either have to push through it or take the time to recover. But it feels great to contribute again, and it feels even better to know that I did the work to prepare myself to go back to work. I made the changes and the choices that I knew would benefit me. I made the commitment to myself to take back a measurable amount of control of my health and my life.

When I signed on with my new company, I did so as a long-term commitment. But FibroHaven is my long-term commitment too. I plan to document my progress here, sharing what is working and what is not. Discecting what I can do better, and continuing to explore the many alternative and holistic options for better health and wellbeing. I am putting different stresses on my body now, so I may require different tools – like acupuncture. I have always believed I would benefit from acupuncture but could never afford it. Now maybe I can. It is like investing in a good business suit. Neccessary!

So yes, the tone here will be changing – but the voice will remain the same – all me. I will have some big decisions to make about my support group too. That may be a commitment I cannot continue, but there is time to figure that out. I have time. I have options. I have hope.

I saw this great quote on facebook the other day and I put it in my status:

I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can’t make it through one door, I’ll go through another door – or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

There is always a door. One way or another, there is always a door.

This time of transition in my life has been trying to say the least. An emotional roller coaster would be a better way to describe it. One second I am excited by possibilities and the next second I am crushed with defeat. Sounds a lot like life doesn’t it?

It just so happens that a research study I was slated to participate in months ago started up last week. It is a local study on yoga and cognitive coping skills for the treatment of Fibromyalgia. I was hoping to end up in the cognitive group since I already have a good handle on the yoga, and  since the trials of this past month have left me in serious need of some coping skills. Fortunately that is exactly where I ended up.

Last week was our first session and we spent most of the two hours getting to know everyone in the group. Then we proceeded on to the first of the eight Pain Coping Skills we will be learning over the course of the study. Progressive Relaxation is a guided technique. While laying or seated in a comfortable position, we followed the directive of the study leader and proceeded with a focused tightening and relaxing of targeted muscles.

Starting from our heads and working our way down, we slowly and purposefully tightened and relaxed major muscle groups. It was a controlled and relaxing exercise. Before we began we rated several of our symptoms on a sliding scale – pain, fatigue, brain fog. At the end of the exercise we were asked to rate our symptoms again.

I think everyone agreed it was  relaxing and we all felt somewhat restored. But for me it did not elevate my pain. Some of my muscles that had been burning – like my upper back between my shoulder blades – did experience relief, but then other muscles where my pain was more sharp and focused seemed more painful after. It is hard to tell whether the pain actually increased from the movements or if I simply became more aware of it when the overriding burning pain subsided.

Our homework was to repeat the exercise twice a day listening to a DVD recorded by the lead researcher. My homework left me with the same experience. So I suppose I would say for me it is a good technique for burning pain, but not so good for sharp, stabbing pain.

This week we are learning a new technique, and so on throughout the eight weeks of the study. Their hope is that one, two or maybe even all eight of the skills they teach us will help us and be implemented into our daily routines. That is my hope too!

My second hope is that I will be able to continue on with the study after I have started working again. It is a possibility that it will conflict and I won’t be able to complete the eight weeks. That would be a disappointment, but I will worry about it when the time comes.

For now, I will continue on and report here what we are doing and whether or not it is helping me.

Do you have any experience with Cognitive Coping Skills/Behaviors? I would love for you to share your experience with it. Was it helpful to you? Do you continue to practice the skills you learned? Do you practice daily or do you target your practice depending on your symptoms?

Are you able to work?

Did you have to change careers?

Do you work full-time or part-time?

Are you self-employed?

Do you work from home?

Are you on disability?

Can you work while on disability?

Topics for a very interesting conversation, right? (In fact the latest edition of Fibromyalgia Aware Magazine is focused on this topic. If you are not already subscribed, I highly recommend you do and start receiving this valuable resource.) But then you know what happens when you bring together thirteen passionate, enthusiastic and well-spoken women… I lost control of the meeting very early on, and had a great time letting the conversation go where it will. And I think the topic of work might have actually come up once or twice.

As usual, I was touched by many of the things shared, and impressed with the generosity and compassion of the group. There were sad moments and funny moments. Moments of anger and frustration, and moments of joy and hope. I took notes as I always do, and I thought I would share with you a few quotes from the day – starting with my favorite:

“You can’t be sad on rollerskates.”

“I’m rewriting my own life commandments.”

“My ego would love to do it, but I have to say no.”

“I do not fight my pain anymore. I breathe into it.”

“I am an athlete and competitor in my mind.”

I’m not sure if there is anything in my life I am more proud to contribute to than this group. I am usually left depleted after each meeting, but I happily give each ounce of my energy it takes. It fulfills a need in me for community and giving, and it hopefully fulfills a need for each member that makes the commitment to attend and participate – even on the days when their facilitator loses control!

It is remarkable to me the quality of people who develop Fibromyalgia and chronic illness. In fact I wrote a post on my Everyday Health blog with each person I know with FM in mind. I would love for you to read it. I think you may see yourself described there. Take a look and tell me what you think: Remember Who You Are

For myself, Fibromyalgia has forced me into two career changes. I was in management at a high-pressure, fast-paced company when I first was diagnosed in 1997. For months I tried to hang onto the position I had spent ten years building within my company, but ultimately I had to let it go. It was not an easy choice to make, but it definitely led to an improvement in my life and allowed me to manage my symptoms without the stress and pressure I faced daily as a manager. I became a freelance sales rep, able to set my own schedule, and as long as I met or exceeded my goals, I could work as much or as little as I needed to. Some weeks I worked full-time, others I put in less than 20 hours. My position required me to travel a lot, but all of my accounts were within driving distance so I became a master at routing myself to take advantage of my “good” days and allowing myself the time and flexibility for those ever demanding “bad” days.

For tens years I prospered and even thrived in my sales career. At the time it was a very compatible career for me. Then in 2006, as I was driving to one of my accounts, I was rear-ended by a distracted driver. He hit me going nearly 70 mphs, and the comfortable life I had spent the last ten years building was shattered in an instant. Even though I had been living with Fibromyalgia for ten years, I had no idea how relatively manageable my symptoms had been. Sure I had many bad days and debilitating flares, but nothing like I began experiencing after the accident.

So once again I was faced with a decision. I knew I could no longer manage my sales territory and my health. I could have pursued the opportunity to go on disability, but I was afraid if I allowed myself to be labeled “disabled” I would start to believe that I no longer had anything to contribute. I honor and respect those of you who have and need the security of disability, it was simply my personal decision to eliminate that as one of my choices. So what to do then?

For the first time in my life, I decided to follow my passion for writing. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide though. It came about out of the natural progression of me trying to manage and improve my health. Things were pretty dark immediately after my accident. As the weeks and months past, I continued to feel worse, not better. My despair led me to start my first blog, Fibromyalgia Haven. I started writing about my health and wellbeing, and then a weird thing happened – my life began to come back into focus again. I felt like I had a voice and a purpose again. And then slowly, people started to visit and leave comments and share their experiences. And then people started asking me to write articles for them, or to contribute to their blog. And now, here I am, in my new career as a freelance writer.

It is by far my least lucrative career, but that doesn’t even matter to me. I am healing through my writing, I am reaching out to all of you through my writing, and I am doing something I am passionate about. So do I thank Fibromyalgia for bringing me to this place. I don’t think I will, even though I believe everything happens for a reason, and that I am exactly where I am meant to be, I also think my path was a little too painful and treacherous for me to be grateful. Maybe I will just be grateful that I made it through.

So that is my story, but I am really curious to learn about all of you. Are you able to work while managing your Fibromyalgia symptoms? Do you simply push through it, or have you made adjustments to allow for the unpredictable nature of Fibromyalgia? Have you had a career change? Are you on disability? And if you are on disability are you still able to earn a supplemental income? Any thoughts you have on working with Fibromyalgia, I would really appreciate if you shared them in the comments. As you might have guessed I am planning to write follow-up articles with ideas and recommendations to encourage us all in our quest for better health and wellbeing.

Yes, I can! I am honored to say, I have been asked by Everyday Health.com to become their new featured Fibromyalgia blogger. It has been in the works for sometime, and I have been quietly posting for a few weeks now, but I have held off announcing it until their new blog software and redesign goes live. Unfortunately there have been delays, and since the link to my blog will remain the same, I have decided to go ahead and share my happy news with all of you.

Fibromyalgia Health Haven is the name of my Everyday Health blog. I will be contributing an article once a week, most likely every Tuesday. The articles there will still have my personality, but will be slightly less conversational. Where this is my happy place, Everyday Health will be more like a place of business. A few of the posts there now are shared here, but starting this week forward, each post will be unique on Everyday Health. I will probably do as I am now and give you a little heads up and nudge to my posts there, or if you are a tech savvy reader you can add my new blog to your reader and be notified of my new posts that way.

I will also update you when the redesign is complete. They are working hard on building and developing a clearer Fibromyalgia community, with more information and resources. It is a great and growing site. And if you register with them you can start your own member blog if you are interested. I have said it many times before, writing is therapeutic, and I recommend it to everyone living with chronic illness. But if you are considering starting a blog through Everyday Health, I advise you wait until the new blog software is up and the redesign complete. Their current software is not very user friendly.

I am very happy and excited to have been asked by Everyday Health to be a featured blogger. They found me here on Fibromyalgia Haven, and felt I have a strong enough voice and write interestingly enough to be a featured part of their health community. Is there a greater compliment? I am honored, and look forward to contributing my patient perspective to the Fibromyalgia resources on Everyday Health. I hope you will visit me there like you do here. Thank you all for supporting my voice here, and contributing to this opportunity for growth. You inspire me!

P.S. Today’s EH post is on working with Fibromyalgia. I would love it if you would leave a comment over there with your thoughts on the subject. Thanks!