Chronic Illness Is Not the Problem: You Can Be Complete

In my ME/CFS support group on Facebook, one of the most common questions I see asked is: "How well does your spouse accept your illness?" Illness can validate or break a marriage. Reading the comments is always interesting, because there are two types of answers. The more common answer is that the spouse is really moody, rude, uninterested, and distant. The other answer is that the spouse is extremely supportive, loving, encouraging, and willing to do as much as possible to help. 

When we enter into a marriage, we vow to love each other "in sickness and in health." It's really hard to comprehend what "sickness" means in a marriage when it becomes a chronic (long-term or permanent) condition. It's easy to think you love a person so much that you'll endure their short-term disabilities, because you know they'll return to being fully functional again and they'll always meet your needs. How many people enter into a marriage with any concept of what it means to take care of their spouse if they get sick and they never get better? What if your spouse, one day, stops meeting all your needs because they can't physically do it anymore? Will you still love this person who can't meet your needs?

It's a tough situation, and it's one that is more and more common because the rates of chronic illness keep increasing. I think the problem is that when a couple gets married to have their needs met, there are so many ways in which they can fail each other. We all have needs, and it's reasonable to have expectations of your spouse that you both discuss and agree upon. Humans are designed to be dependent on each other. 

I have observed that the couples that withstand chronic illness are the ones who live with gratitude for each other, despite all circumstances. They didn't marry to meet their needs, they married because they want to take care of each other so they could share life fully together. They don't have separate burdens, they emotionally carry the burdens together. They choose to be united partners in all things, even when it's hard. They trust each other to fully love each other to the best of their ability. They each fully commit to being emotionally and spiritually open with each other, including the healthy spouse expressing to the sick spouse that it's tiring. They don't "protect" each other from their emotions. They're fully honest and they find ways to ease each other's pain through trust, compassion, care, and dedication.

I have observed, and experienced, that the couples who can't withstand chronic illness are the ones who feel the need to compartmentalize to "protect" the marriage. "Being ill is your thing, not my thing, so my thing needs to be doing all the work since you can't." Or, "Being ill is my burden, I don't want you to carry it, so I need stay away from you when I'm not feeling well enough." This way of thinking creates resentment, a lack of trust, and emotional distance. The resentment from both people will fester until it erodes any love there ever was. I believe that the illness doesn't cause the marriage to fall apart, it only reveals how weak it was. A marriage built on meeting each other's emotional needs is very weak, because relying on another person to make you feel emotionally stable is weak. 

Life isn't easy alone, so it's common to think that finding a partner will make life easier. It doesn't, because having a partner means you have to care about needs beyond your own needs, and treat them like your own needs. Both people in a relationship need to be equally committed to giving themselves fully to each other. That's not easy. If you don't love yourself without a partner, you will doubt yourself even more with a partner because a partner will expose all of your shortcomings. 

In my observations, marriages that fail due to chronic illness didn't actually fail due to the chronic illness. It failed due to the emotional immaturity of one or both partners. It failed because one or both of the people couldn't love themselves well enough to properly love the other. No one is prepared for illness, but that doesn't mean we can't learn to adapt our lives around illness. It requires a lot of maturity. 

I have had to work extremely hard on my emotions to endure all of this. I found myself trying to escape into books, series, and video games to avoid my pain. I tried to confront my pain and it led me to feeling suicidal. I practiced focusing on positivity for a while to encourage myself to "win" and beat my illness. I dedicated my time and energy to God in order to avoid working on myself alone, begging God to control my life for me. I bargained a lot, looking for anything that could save me from the reality of living my life with so many limitations. And the truth is, 50% of that was because I didn't feel secure in my marriage, and I felt the need to become obsessive about fixing my health so I could feel secure again. It didn't work. I didn't feel insecure because of my illness, the illness just revealed the problems. 

Accepting my body and my illness without worrying about what anyone else thinks has reduced my stress considerably. If I had a partner that could accept it with me, that would be beautiful. As it is, being alone has freed up so much of my energy. The anxiety and emotional stress is greatly reduced. I'm able to work on building up my own emotional security. I'm in therapy, I'm doing workbooks, and I'm reading a lot. I've come to discover that I was handling my illness well enough, but I wasn't handling how he reacted to my illness. I found the DBT workbook to be really natural and easy for me, and it's a workbook meant to help people through trauma. I think I've developed the skills intuitively, because I respect myself enough and I'm very introspective. My illness isn't feeling like trauma anymore. I just feel like this is who I am. I have physical limitations, but so what? I'm a complete person regardless of my physical abilities. The issue is when my partner doesn't treat me as complete. 

Getting divorced has made me feel 50% less need to obsess over my health. That's good and bad. The good is that my stress about it is gone. Stress makes everything way worse. The bad is that I'm being less dedicated to taking care of myself. My illness requires me to manage it with extreme detail, but I have been relaxing a lot on the details. As a result, my symptoms have been increasing. I actually do have more energy now, but I'm more inflamed, in more pain, having increased metabolism issues, facing more brain fog again, very irregular periods, and so on. I just want a break from extreme management of my health... my illness feels like the abusive partner in my life. 

So, I've been bleeding for 17 days in a row now, and not on my period. Now my period is supposed to start any moment. It's always something. On top of that, I can't fully swallow anything without food particles getting stuck at the top of my throat. It feels like extra effort is required to swallow. Is it time for another thyroid test? Probably.

Absolutely - "Nowhere to Hide"

Think I need to get up and run

What would I become if freedom begun at the tip of my tongue?

I'm just wanting to feel something pure and real

But I'm holding back 'cause I'm not sure what to pray for

Lord, help me

I'm tearing everything in my view, pushing everything off the tables

Tearing everything right off the walls, might look unstable

But at least

After everything has come down, I might have a chance at relief

Maybe then I'll make something new, it's not you, it's just me

Muse - "Dead Inside"

(In my opinion, this is the best song Muse ever wrote, because it captures the human experience so perfectly, even beyond a broken relationship, and the final catharsis in the song is what makes it so powerful.)

Feel me now, hold me please

I need you to see who I am

Open up to me, stop hiding from me

It's hurting, babe

Only you can stop the pain

Don't leave me out in the cold

Don't leave me out to die

I gave you everything, I can't give you anymore

Now I've become just like you

My lips feel warm to the touch

But my words seem so alive

My skin is warm to caress

I'll control and hypnotize

You've taught me to lie without a trace

And to kill with no remorse

On the outside, I'm the greatest guy

Now I'm dead inside

Children, Family, and the Future

 

This video by Teal Swan matches my observations. She lists reasons why societies around the world are having fewer and fewer children, making very strong points. I am not interested in summarizing this video, so I encourage you to watch it first. 


I'd like to tell my story, as a 38 year old Millennial woman without children, now divorced (as of 2 weeks ago), following some of her points. 

My parents are Boomers, and they were successfully able to raise us 2 kids with everything we needed: financial stability, a "village" to help, and emotional validation. I never learned any of the negative traits from them that she speaks of in this video. I never felt suspicious of their habits, and I never felt traumatized by their choices of how to raise me. I grew up with neighbors who helped and I could trust. I grew up learning that I could trust people. My parents were disciplined with me, but encouraged me to be myself, express myself, and try new things. They gave me every opportunity they could to help me learn new skills. As an adult I have learned that I'm in a rare situation, because my parents are still happily married and they provided everything I needed to help me be an adult in good mental and spiritual health. They did, however, teach me the "path to success" meant for both men and women equally that has failed most Millennials, despite working very well for Boomers (college ► career ►investing and compounding interest ► financial independence ► marriage ► children.)  

In my heart and soul I never wanted to live according to that path, mainly because I knew I wanted to be like my mom, who didn't have to have a career (she worked when needed). What I wanted was to be an educated stay-at-home mother to many children. I never had a problem with working, in fact I like working and I tend to choose physical labor jobs (by choice because I enjoy it), but I never had any aspirations to pursue a career that would take me away from home. So my goal was to find a man like my father: a spiritual leader, breadwinner, and foundation of my family. 

I married at 19 years old, thinking I was going to have children in my early 20's. It's exactly what I wanted: a happy marriage with many kids. The man I married wanted that too, so I believed him that we would make it a reality. The trouble was that we couldn't get our careers going. We never had enough degrees to land a good job, the jobs we took weren't meant to last, and endless other problems. Before I got sick I was applying for every job I could, but this was during the 2008 bubble burst, and the economy was a mess. I was lucky to work 3 part-time jobs, all of which paid me about minimum wage. I was working 60-70 hours per week, and if I stopped working to have kids, how could we ever pay rent? Rent on our awful little house that had a black mold problem that heavily contributed to why I got so sick. Meanwhile, we were living on his student loans. He had a full-ride scholarship and an assistantship, but we took out student loans to pay for our rent and groceries. When he graduated and returned to work, he was able to piece together an income to support us. His struggles were legitimate. I got sick, very sick, to the point where I quit my job and was unable to work for a year and a half. It would have been impossible to live on just his income alone if we had to pay rent or a mortgage. Thankfully, we had the benefits of the "village" that Teal Swan talked about, so we had a free place to live. I was too sick to have children at this point, and my doctor even warned me not to try because my body was far too weak to endure it. He warned me that pregnancy could be extremely risky on my body. I'm summarizing many years, but understand that we never made ourselves stable enough to have kids. 

My dreams of being a stay-at-home mother with a breadwinner husband were dissolving into an impossible fantasy as the years went on. If the "formula" that Boomers taught us had worked, I think we could have been ok. We had everything stacked against us: my college degree did not help me find work (I had one job relevant to my field and it paid me $9 per hour), his career was built on a field that the average person no longer had money to pay for, and the job market was very dry. If that formula worked and we both could have started building careers in our 20's, I never could have afforded to stay at home raising kids anyway. And no, I never had the energy to work full time AND raise children. What a joke - what woman actually wants to live like that? I don't want to live in constant burn-out while failing to raise my kids well enough. I don't want to pay someone else to raise my kids for me. That was never part of my idea of "raising children." I didn't want that life. I preferred NOT to have children than to be unable to raise them properly. 

When I decided I needed to exit the marriage after 18 years of marriage, it was because I realized I had built absolutely nothing I wanted out of my life. I spent about 10 years simply trying to manage my illness, so I was distracted with something very important, but time kept moving on. I didn't see children as a possibility anymore, not even adoption since we didn't have the means, so what else did I want to live for? Why did I work so hard to heal enough to live my life if I had nothing I wanted to live for? I had ideas of other life paths that could give me some purpose, but they all required money, energy, health, or resources I didn't have. And all I could think about was how I just wanted a family with children. I felt so lost and alone. All I saw was constant stress and I felt useless, uninspired, bored, and spiritually hungry. I couldn't see any future for myself if I stayed on that path. I am not blaming him or criticizing him. He was honest and pursued life exactly as he said he was going to, and he fought to build the life he wanted. He succeeded in his priorities in life, exactly as he told me he would. The problem was me needing things that didn't align.  

So I saw the only alternative path: Move back in with my parents. Let go of broken dreams and start over. My Boomer parents fully support me, and they understand how insane society is. They see how impossible it is to succeed now. They understand why couples can't have children anymore. They didn't judge me at all, and honestly, I don't know how many other Millennials could say that about their parents. I'm extremely blessed. 

I'm 38, but I'm still interested in starting a family. I do NOT want to be a single mother. Bless all you saints who manage as single mothers and love your children so dearly - you are the most wonderful women to find that kind of strength for your children. I don't know if I'm really capable of having children due to my health, but I'm stronger than when my doctor told me not to years ago. Endometriosis tries very hard to rule my life. I'm tired all the time, and that could be a major problem with raising children who rely on my endurance. I don't know if society or the economy will ever make it easy to start a family, even adopt, but I also feel like family is more important than every other aspiration or desire in life. Building a family, with or without children of my own, should be at the center of all my decisions. Nothing, not even career, is more important to me, and I feel like I've lost way too much time to constant life problems. 

This is what I do know about my life as it is now: it's mine, I don't have to focus on how the cards have all been stacked against me anymore. I'm burned out on complaining, disappointment, fighting for the impossible, and pursing dreams that cannot become reality in a healthy way. I'm exhausted from not living my own truth and always hiding in waiting for the right time. I'm tired of not being a priority. Something I've learned about myself in 18 years of marriage is that I'm creative and adaptable. I have the ability to find my way in any situation, even when I clearly didn't belong in the situation. But I'm burned out on adapting constantly. I'm exhausted from finding creative solutions to keep surviving. I'm so bored of needing ways to "escape." I'm done with shutting off my brain and emotions. I know I can be fully present when I'm where I belong, pouring into my own cup too. My cup has been dry for so long. 

If I didn't have a home with my parents, I honestly don't know if I would have survived myself. Without my parents' support, I wouldn't have had a life path to take that would inspire to me keep living and trying. If I continued with him, I would have been a total zombie. I wouldn't have really been living. His life choices worked really well for him, and I don't blame him, because he deserves all the happiness he can build for himself in this extremely difficult climate. He needed to make the choices he made, but he wasn't capable of fully supporting me through my circumstances and crises. He really did do the best he could, and it wasn't his fault. My needs were too great for both him and me, and I couldn't continue like that. I'm genuinely happy for his successes. It's my turn to have my own successes.

I agree with Teal Swan in her video about the roles of women and men. I am simply a very traditional type of woman: I want children with a man who can provide. It's really difficult for men though, and it doesn't make any sense to me that both people in a couple have to work full-time if they don't want to. I know married women begged for the right to work full time and have their income count towards the total household income, but did they think it through? I agree women are fully capable of working if they want to. I know women who do jobs better than men. But isn't it counter-productive to society to need every individual person to work, especially since we have to keep creating tons of meaningless jobs just so every individual person has a job? We keep creating junk no one needs just to sell just so people have jobs. Now our oceans and lands are full of trash we bought and never needed, just so some worker could make some money. We've lost sight of working to fill a need in society, and working so one parent can stay home and raise children and continue our species. I'm so fortunate to have a job that is very meaningful and gives me purpose, but how many people have to take any mind-numbing job they can get that doesn't help make the world function better? Our unsustainable society is built on earning personal income, not built on creating families and raising children so future generations can exist and thrive. We can do better, and I'm sick of being a part of this system.  

This has been, by far, the greatest challenge of my life. More challenging than being bedridden with major health issues. Oh, but then you add in all my illnesses and then life is just impossibly stupid. What's the point? Well, I believe in the value of all of life, including my own, even when we cannot fit in with how society was built. I will find a way. I keep adapting. I lean on hope, gratitude, and faith. I don't keep anything that wasn't meant for me. I can do this. I will not compromise my values and live a life that doesn't align with truth. 

As it is now, I am happier than I have been in many years. I feel a great deal of relief. I don't feel daily stress anymore. I can give my limited to energy to what I want to give it to, and I no longer need to give it to things that don't serve me. I returned to a job that has been phenomenal for me. I have a great living arrangement. I have access to some of the best beef in the country (my diet is mostly red meat.) I have some seriously great friends in my life. I have the option to focus on gratitude without worrying about anything. I don't have to defend myself to anyone. I don't have to justify my needs. I don't have to fight to be understood. I have peace. It's wonderful. I'm where I need to be right now, and I feel aligned and centered. I need to heal more before I built my future, and I can heal in peace.

But how many women have this luxury? From what I have seen, very few. 

For instance: I've been talking to more and more people through my job who have been diagnosed with Endometriosis. The good news is that there are more surgeons who can diagnose it now, so women have more access to the surgery that can diagnose it. As I talk to these women, something very striking stands out to me: women with endometriosis are veterans who know war. We're told not to talk about it because it's uncomfortable for everyone else and we have to learn to integrate into society despite our mental and physical pain that dominates our lives. The fact that it is uncomfortable for everyone else is proof that our medical system is failing us. It's proof that our society is failing us. It's proof that we should not be treating every individual person as equally capable of thriving in how our society is structured today. It's proof that our government services are seriously lacking and allowing people to fall through the cracks or suffer. It's proof that our lack of family structure and reliance on individual success isn't working. When a woman is unable to work like a healthy man at a full-time job due to pain, fatigue, extreme bleeding, major brain-fog, PTSD, medical trauma, and emotional trauma... what then? Parents, never stop being a support for your children. Villages, come back together and help take care of your people. Government, stop spending money you don't have on things we don't need, and instead use our tax dollars to allow villages and families to support each other again. 

We're hardly a society anymore. We're a collective group of individuals. We're failing both men and women. We're failing children. We're failing the future of humanity. 

And on top of all this immense stress of simply just being a cog (person) in society's poorly-build wheel, we have to advocate for our health and avoid all the toxicity in the world. We have to work hard to stay physically healthy and not lose our health to the terrible food available to us and all the toxic synthetic chemicals in everything. We have to make choices as if we're surviving an apocalypse:  we have to choose the safest, cleanest, foods. We have to avoid plastics, preservatives, excess sugar, food dyes, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and so on and so forth... my whole blog is about this topic. 

So, women, I beg you all to breathe. It's ok to acknowledge that we're all struggling this much. You're not failing. We're literally trying to survive an apocalypse. Families are dying, our physical and mental health is dying, children aren't being born, our ability to have healthy relationships is dying, and most of our consumer goods are toxic and poisoning us. Affordable food is very bad for us. If you're surviving, you're doing exactly what you need to be doing. 

I'm writing all of this while my pain from endometriosis keeps increasing. Soon I will NEED to lay in bed with a heating pad to manage.

...And after many hours of being in bed with my heating pad, I'm back to finish this post. Except it's 11:30 at night and I should sleep. I wrote many desperate sounding statements it this post because I felt my pain increasing the whole time, but I don't disagree with anything I wrote. I will say that my hormones feel a lot better now and I no longer feel the need to express much of what I wrote. Funny how that works. The 24 hours before my period starts is always a time of deep inner reflection and creativity for me, often making me feel every ache in my soul too deeply. Oh my goodness, womanhood... it's a lot. The world has more to offer than I can experience because I'm too busy being a woman. That's ok. I was never meant to have the world. I was only meant to have my life in this world. Peace. Don't yearn for what isn't meant for us. 

I bought this heating pad and I've really liked it for managing my pain

Click the link to see it on Amazon - don't worry, I'm not an affiliate trying to sell you anything. My old one was too small, heated inconsistently, and wasn't getting the job done anymore. So I decided to try something larger. It's much better, and I like the heat the stones provide. The trouble is that the stones are icy cold until it's heated up for several minutes first. 

Stop Watering the Fake Plastic Trees

I moved back home to North Dakota. I'm 38, living with my parents in their basement, and went back to my former job that I loved. I came home without my husband. I'm happier than ever. Purging the stress of my life has been incredibly healing for me. It's not curing me of my diseases, but my ability to live with disease is improving immensely. 

The phoenix of the Northern Lights directly over my house! I have never seen it with my own eyes until now, and I'm treating it as a sign that I can finally see my life clearly.

My priority in life is building peace, meaning reducing stress.

What motivates you to carry on in life? In my experience, people tend to answer status, wealth, skills, education, building an empire, or anything that gives people pride and a sense of accomplishment. These things are not my primary motivators in life. I'm not saying they're not important and that they don't motivate me at all, but I have learned that I don't wake up daily with motivation to keep advancing in these areas until I have my other basic need met. My basic need is peace in my personal life. What motivates me above all else is building a life of peace.

What peace means to me is having a consistent, stable, secure relationship with my loved ones. Peace means putting energy into building meaningful connections with people I love and care for and having it reciprocated. It also means not living with daily stress over things I have to accomplish, but instead flip it around so that the daily things I have to accomplish come from love and joy. I want my peace to come from a healthy marriage, because I'm built for marriage. I'm highly motivated to do work, chores, or tasks, or whatever for those I love. When it's for love, it's not stressful, it's purposeful. I'm quick to give my time, energy, and money for those I love. Because this is my nature, I need to be very careful about only choosing to love those who love me back without draining me. My perception of my marriage was that it was based on managing stress and avoiding conflict, not about building peace together. I did my part of the daily work to keep the peace, not out of love and joy. I need to build peace through deep connection without resistance, meeting each other's needs, and creating joy with each other. That's why living with my parents is working out brilliantly for me now. I love my parents, they love me, they are always consistent, and I feel very at peace here with them. Peace gives me security, and peace and security together are the foundation of what I need to be happy. Being happy because I have peace and security means I feel open and available to pursue my other goals in life without stress. I'm not unusual, especially for women, but I'm spelling it out like this because I think it needs to be said so plainly. So many people like me are trapped by looking for satisfaction through their work and status, not by looking for peace and security by loving relationships. My satisfaction in my work means nothing to me if I don't have peace at home with those I love.

My relationships have been in poor health for years due to my high stress level and lack of peace. My stress level was so high because my basic needs were not being met, and all the stress caused me to freeze up while waiting for my needs to be met. Years went by in which I felt frozen, in waiting, starving for love and connection, but feeling trapped and unable to build love and connection. My relationships with my friends and family all suffered because I felt too frozen up and unable to act. I also acted very defensive, dismissive, uncaring, rude, and distant because of it. My stress was so high that I couldn't give any of myself to anyone. I didn't like who I was or how I was acting, and I knew the stress was ruining me. I needed to end the stress and find peace again so that I could start to love again. I had to move home and live with my parents to end the stress. And over the past few months I've felt myself enjoying the company of people again. I've been able to be patient with people again, instead of defensive and dismissive. I really need peace in the foundation of my life, and I really needed to free myself from people and situations that drain my peace and caused me stress. 

It's not just unresolved relationship stress that destroys my peace. I've been learning how everything artificial degrades my peace. I've known for years to avoid artificial fabrics in my clothes and artificial ingredients in my food, because they make me feel sick. I'm finding it's also the same with artificial relationships, artificial information, artificial intelligence, artificial art, and so on. All the fake information, half-truths, synthetic images and videos, and misguided propaganda on social media and news media is enough to make me sick. The trouble is, it's making everyone around me sick too, and it's poisoning my relationships with real people. It's difficult to hold conversations with people when they think they are educated because of everything they absorb from social media, but aren't interested in hearing other information or points of view. I really value the scientific process and critical thinking skills so we can find the truth on any matter. I want to live in truth. I really enjoy speculation, theory, and creative fictions when they're properly labeled as such. What I can't stand, however, are lies that are told as if they are the truth. Living in these times that are dominated by lies makes it difficult to safeguard my peace, but I can do it as long as I live an honest life at home with my loved ones. (I'm not leaving social media, because there's still so much good it does, but I learned to stop engaging with lies. I unfollow, and move on. I love to learn about the local community through facebook. I enjoy following my friends. I like to learn from trusted people. I like the private support groups. There is a lot of good on social media, but it's getting overrun with a lot of artificial and misinformation.)

So instead of wasting time scrolling through all the deception and energy-draining propaganda on TV and social media, I'm choosing to use my personal time on playing single-player video games, reading books, drawing, listening to music, stretching, going for walks, doing chores that keep my space organized and clean, cooking new things, reading scientific articles (I love National Geographic), and so on. I'm trying to choose peace over anything that amplifies my stress. I'm choosing activities that require focus, not contribute to my brain rot. I'm choosing to spend time with people who can hold a conversation without distraction or looking at their phones, talk honestly and from their hearts, and also want connection instead of just to use me. 

I need PEACE. I don't need to live a life constantly on-guard against lies, manipulation, expectations that don't align with me, and indulging in junk entertainment and junk food. 

So all that said... 

Did I make the right choice to leave my stressful life behind so that I could work on my peace? Is it helping me manage my health issues? Is my health improving at all?

I wrote in my last post that yes, I'm seeing improvement in some areas with my health. I'm not profoundly better, but I'm not crashing as hard when I spend energy. I'm working harder at work than I have in years, and I do come home and have a crash, but they're not as serious as they used to be. I'm able to find the strength to get up and prepare a meal for myself and eat. My heart rate is still jumping up really high when I get up too fast, I'm still experiencing vertigo very easily, I'm still sweating like crazy at random times, my finger tips still go numb randomly, I'm still having adrenaline attacks at night that wake me up violently, and so on. I did really well for a couple of months when I first moved back here, but I think that was my body letting down and relaxing. Now that I'm working again and trying to keep up more of a routine, I'm having more symptoms. But I can see that I'm a lot more resilient because I'm not spending energy I don't have on stress or people. 

Another factor is that my anxiety is gone. I'm calm. I'm not worried about anything. I'm rational, focused on each moment, and not drowning in thoughts. I'm feeling a lot more creative, curious, patient, and interested. I'm not on the defense anymore. I'm not trying to always prove myself. I'm just me, in this moment, calm and collected. 

Something that concerns me very much, however, is the intense gut pain I keep having in the same area. Sometimes it's the pain of lasers cutting through me, sometimes it's sharp razor blades, and sometimes it's a giant sword through my entire gut. I don't know if it's endometriosis, actual gut problems, scar tissue, or something else. It's been intense enough and frequent enough to make me consider seeing a specialist. We'll see. My new Medicare plan begins in January. 


On another note, I found a tea mug that I really love! As you might know, I drink tea all day long.
Amazon.com: DOPUDO Glass Tea Cup with Infuser and Lid, 17.6oz/520ml Large Borosilicate Teacup,Tea Glass, Clear Mug for Loose Leaf Tea, Blooming Tea, Microwave & Dishwasher Safe - Tea Maker Gift for Birthday : Home & Kitchen

I've been trying to avoid using metal in my loose leaf tea, because metal can deactivate some herbal properties. My acupuncturist taught me that, thankfully. I got a little frustrated with the Rishi paper bags for tea, so this pure glass solution is solving all of my tea problems. 

(All ingredients listed below are organic and from Frontier Co-op unless otherwise stated. I buy them from my work place, where we have a huge wall of bulk herbs that I can buy by the weight. So I usually buy $2 or less of each at a time. I don't use exact measurements either, usually just a large pinch of each.)

My favorite winter-time tea has been: 

Cut and sifted ginger

Cloves

Ceylon Cinnamon

Mt. Capra Mineral Whey Powder (I add this to the mug, not the strainer)

  

And my favorite evening-time tea has been:

Blue lotus flower (Anima Mundi brand)

Butterfly Pea Flower

Lemon balm

Damiana 
Mt. Capra Mineral Whey Powder (I add this to the mug, not the strainer)

But right now I need some caffeine and I'm cold, so I made:

Indian green tea

Cut and sifted ginger

Cloves

Coconut flakes

Redmond Real Salt 

Rhodes - Be The Bird

'Cause you can fly

Be the bird

 Fly away

 See the world

 You'll be the news everybody heard

You'll never lose anything you've learnt

 Just promise me you'll keep going

 Just keep going and I'll keep telling you you're flying

(Radiohead Cover) Gin Blossoms - Fake Plastic Trees

Her green plastic watering can

For her fake Chinese rubber plant

In the fake plastic earth

That she bought from a rubber man

In a town full of rubber plans

To get rid of itself

It wears her out