(I didn’t want to scare all you lovely Wellness Questers off with a lengthy About Page, so this is the extended version if you wish to read more!)
My name is Louise Bibby and I have been on a wellness quest for most of my life.
My wellness quest has taken the form of seeking to move beyond illness to optimal health. I am still on this quest.
When I started my online blogging journey – see GetUpAndGoGuru.com – I was seeking to help people with chronic illness, especially CFS/ME, to feel more empowered and to see that there are many powerful mental and physical tools at our disposal that can improve our quality of life and give us a sense of purpose again.
My aim is still the same today, but with some additions and changes in language semantics.
I realize that I’ve been drawn down into focusing on the concept of illness management – a concept I feel I’ve become an expert in from my own personal experience (and also from academic endeavours).
This idea of illness management, for me, is about how to powerfully manage our symptoms in everyday life in order to improve our quality of life and live a more fulfilling life.
Despite having an illness I still believe in doing this, but I now see that the term “illness management” by its very nature requires one to have an illness to manage.
And there’s the rub.
When the focus is on illness management, there is almost an unspoken vested interest in keeping the illness in place.
Just like you need a business to manage when you are involved in business management, you need an illness to manage when involved in illness management.
So I pondered, “what if I take the attention away from illness and move it more toward wellness and improving quality of life?”
It occurred to me to ask, “what if I am subliminally encouraging people to stay ill when I focus on illness management?”
And, alternatively, “what if I change the focus to seeking wellness or wellness enhancement, creating an environment for wellness to show up, creating an environment for an individual to thrive, whatever their circumstances?”
There’s a sort of freedom in that.
A freedom to get well and be well whatever your life situation – or as well as possible on any given day.
I’ve always believed there were answers to my health problems and if I just kept looking I’d find them.
I’ve had periods where that belief wavered, but if it had completely wavered I would no longer be here.
Seriously.
So even in my darkest moments I had a sense that there was the chance of something better, and each step on that journey I have kept coming back to a strong belief that I will be well someday.
I don’t know exactly how but I know it.
Wellness is my destiny, my birthright.
I may not always be experiencing high levels of it, but these high levels are my destiny. Illness and wellness are really just a continuum anyway.
Some of the happiest times in life have occurred when I’ve been physically very unwell. This shows me wellness is often way more than the physical health of our bodies. It’s mental, physical, and spiritual.
I realize that the journey I’ve been on for more than 2 decades of my life has been a wellness quest.
I have been on a search – sometimes an obsessive mission – for wellness.
The difference between the obsessive mission phases and the overall wellness quest is that the first is fueled by fear and the second is fueled by love, and this is where I see the paths of “spoonie warriors” and health warriors crossing.
No matter if you have an illness that is supposedly incurable or if you are physically very healthy, if you are seeking ways to improve your chance of being/staying well out of fear for the alternative, rather than love of yourself and your wellbeing, that is not a wellness quest.
However, if you are able to find peace in whatever health circumstances you are in, and from there, look around to see what steps you can take to enhance your wellness, it has a different energy to it. It is coming from peace and love, not fear.
In my wellness quest, I seek to continually be improving my mind, body, spirit, physical environment, relationships, work space/place and finances, such that there is no alternative other than to thrive.
Like a rainforest with its mix of moisture, sunlight, shade and warmth provides an optimal environment for the ferns to thrive in the soil below, I am seeking to create my own rainforest where I can thrive.
And that’s what I want for you too.
My aim is to always be elevating my level of wellness.
If it’s yours too, welcome to The Wellness Quest.