Facing Fear

Note: This article was written and saved as a draft by Janene, August 17, 2013.
To honor her, and preserve her work, I have acquired her WordPress account and intend to expand on her love and devotion to helping others through exercise and nutrition.

Hey fellow bloggers and curious seekers.

I promise I’m still here and I haven’t left you.

I have been pulled away for the week because of that wicked four letter word “fear”.

I know I face fear like many of you out there. For some it is a daily challenge and you are just hopeful to have a moment without it.

What many of you don’t know, but of course will once you read this, is the fact that I deal with a crazy rare disorder of my hip and pelvic girdle.

This has changed my life in so many ways.  One of course was loosing one of my favorite jobs and lifestyles, the ability to be a fitness instructor.

The past two years I have had to find an unknown strength from deep inside.  It has never been easy to find and at times it takes everything I have to access.

But as you can see I am doing what I can to live the best version of me that I can.

So why do I share this?

Truthfully, I hope………………….

I don’t want to dwell on symptoms, or on what I can’t do.  That’s too easy to do as a human. It seems as if we have a negative “default” switch that is easy to turn on, but the positive switch is harder to access.

What I will tell you is that I use this blog as part of my healing.

I refuse to let the fear of pain control each day that I live. I may not be able to ever run again, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t take an extra step each day when I can.

I may never be the “society” version of perfection, but what I have realized is that perfection can also be almost as debilitating as my hip.

I may have moments where all I want to do is hide from the world, crawl away, and  pray that its all been a nightmare.  Hoping that as I wake up I will find myself back to the life I knew.

But that is not my reality. My life has changed forever.

But I can’t look at this change as negative, I need to realize that for each door that shuts in life, another door will open.

Yes, I know many of you may roll your eyes and say “that’s what everyone else says”. However, I know that its true. It has been that way my whole life.

My hip is not the first time I have faced change. Many years before I had my shoulder do the same thing to me and I had thought I had lost everything.

But here I am. With all that I can’t do, with all that I have lost. I am still here.

I have the most amazing family and friends.  I still have the ability to take a step with my own two legs. I can still move and use my arm. And I can still teach what I believe and what I love.

So do I let fear guide me and trap me, no. Maybe it’s easier because I have three young boys that need to learn that they can face their own fears.

That what ever challenges they will face, they can face them head on.

To know that the road does get dark, it can hold you with a firm solid grip, and yet somehow we can dig deep inside, we can take that deep breathe, and we can step away from our fear.

We can use our fear to push us to greater things in life.

It’s never easy. I will never say that it is.

But it is worth it.