Personal Update: What a Difference Three Years Makes…

This post is dedicated to everyone who has visited and read this blog over the past three years. You have given me an opportunity to take what is undoubtedly the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced and turn it into something worthwhile. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. I hope that my story gives hope and perspective to those of you who are struggling right now…things change.

Three years ago, September 1, 2009, I published my very first blog post. I had no idea if anyone would ever read what I was writing, but it was a way to make some sense of what I’d been through. To say (to myself, as well as to others) that life can go on after a gastroparesis diagnosis.

Now to be honest, at that point it didn’t really feel like life was going on. I was waiting to have a gastric neurostimulator implanted two weeks later. I was at the lowest weight of my adult life and my body wasn’t functioning well. I was frustrated and exhausted after a six-month battle with my insurance company just to get the device approved. I didn’t have a job and I hadn’t yet enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (that would happen 2 weeks after the surgery). Things weren’t great, but I’d made the decision that life would go on and I was taking steps to make it happen.

Three years later that one blog post has evolved into this website — visited by nearly 100,000 people in over 150 countries — plus two published books and a bunch of classes, videos, and other resources.  More than that though, it’s evolved into an opportunity to not just say that life can go on after a gastroparesis diagnosis, but to help you figure out how to make that happen. I hope that those who visit this website today are empowered and inspired by what they find here.

I’ve had my share of critics over the past three years. People who have written (mostly anonymously) to condemn me for taking that blog post and turning it into a career. Honestly, this career chose me. This certainly wasn’t my plan. That blog post and the ones that followed filled a void for people and I couldn’t ignore that. This site and all that goes with it has become, I hope, a place to find reliable information from someone who understands the condition personally and professionally, in a space of hope and positivity. The latter just as important as the former, in my opinion, in a sea of worst-case scenarios and competitive suffering.

I also hope that my personal story and example inspires others. In the past three years, I had the gastric neurostimulator implanted (and then replaced). I graduated from the Institute from Integrative Nutrition and used what I’d learned to turn my own poor health and nutrition around. I built my own comprehensive management plan, working not just on diet and lifestyle but on my coping skills and the way I approached life with gastroparesis. And things changed. Eventually I wasn’t just living with gastroparesis anymore. I was living WELL with gastroparesis. These days, I’d even add some parentheses. I’m living WELL (with gastroparesis).

I still have gastroparesis and it hasn’t changed a bit from a medical perspective…but my life has changed dramatically. I have a career that makes a difference, I am happily married to a man who has been with me through it all, and I’m about 2 weeks away from giving birth to our little miracle baby (in 2009, it would not have been physically possible for me to even get pregnant). I’ve also had the pleasure to connect with you, so many of you from all around the world, and to be a part of your journey, as well. I’m beyond grateful because today things are great.

What a difference three years makes…