It’s the holiday season, the most wonderful time of the year for many people. There’s the shopping, cleaning, visiting, preparing the house for guests, putting up Christmas decorations and much more while all of this is enjoyable, and most people seem to be in a kinder, happier mood, things are very different for a person living with a chronic illness, such as fibromyalgia.
We only have so many spoons to start our day. We struggle to et through even an ordinary day. If this is your reality, I believe you have two choices: you either continue pushing past your limits and celebrate the holidays as usual, causing a flare so that you’re sick during the holiday or you’ll mindfully change how you celebrate the holidays.
You’ll try to celebrate by creating new ways to celebrate, such as having a pot luck meal, simplifying your decorations, sourcing out your baking and simplifying gift giving so that you’re only purchasing for one or two people as opposed to ten people, you may want to also set a dollar limit on your gift-giving as well so that you don’t go overboard on spending. That way, your finances will be in better shape when the new year rolls around.
In short, this can be the most wonderful time of year, even for fibromates or people living with chronic illness. We could enjoy the holidays by accepting that our celebrating will be very different this year. It doesn’t mean our celebrations have to be minimal. But it may mean that our future celebrations have to be rethought and revised to fit our new normal.
Living With Chronic Illness 