MY JOURNEY

 

As a seasoned mother of 5 who suffered a life changing stroke I've learned to appreciate life and all that it has to offer. Due to my stroke I temporarily lost the ability to see clearly out of one of my eyes, my speech became slurred and impaired and my ability to walk was altered. My body was truly being challenged and I had to find the will to fight. My Doctors had me on so many different medications during my lengthy hospital stay. Medicine for high blood pressure, for blood clots, for cholesterol, for elevated glucose levels and for anxiety.

 

Let me take you on my journey…

 

Think yourself happy and living your life healthy is just that simple right? NOT!!! You truly don’t think about every aspect of your life pertaining to these things until life forces you to do so. Prior to my stroke in October 2016, I truly believed that I was living a healthy and moderately happy  life. My definition of "Happy Living" was spending time with my family, running my business, cooking well, and maintaining some balance with every area of my life that required my time and effort. Sounds about right doesn’t it?

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NOT!

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Joke was on me!

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I neglected and failed at the fundamentals of living my life happy and healthy in so many areas until it truly blew up in my face. My life was so unbalanced and I was putting tremendous amounts of stress on myself not only neglecting others but neglecting the most important person of all, me! A method to happy  healthy living incorporates all aspects of life: the physical, mental and spiritual and if you don't have these critical key tools then you've missed the whole blessing in itself. You must master at minimal a happy and healthy balance to truly experience the benefits of finding your true breakthrough.

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To truly gain the benefits of living a happy and  healthy life requires that you not indulge aspects of your personality or take on the masks of everyone else but to take a deep look at yourself, the person within and learn to fully live from the inside out. I was forced through circumstances to look at my life and truly understand how the choices that I was making had an effect on my physical, mental, spiritual and emotional well being.

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It took me to sit before another Pastor who preached “Think Yourself Happy” for me to even grasp the fact that I had not thought happy in a very long time, I was thinking under obligation not choice or joy. So once I learned the option that was gifted to me to think myself happy that was the day my life changed forever.

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Living happy and health is an option that can be one of the best experiences one could have. Many of us don’t think a thing about it until you don’t have it anymore. And God knows you have no idea the emotional and physical upheaval that happens when an illness takes over your body, consumes your daily way of life and living and you're unable to do the basic things you once were able to do.

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I am the type of person that when I am faced with a problem I attack it head on with first prayer and meditation because I need God to cover me from head to toe, then I am locating doctors and specialist who can give me their best diagnosis of what I am faced with and then from there I manifest will and ability to overcome.

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From the first day when the right side of my body went weak and then the left side of my face went numb I knew something was wrong so I began researching to see what the heck was happening to me. I knew with all that was on my plate from traveling, to preaching to taking care of the kids and my spouse to lack of sleep and running from this meeting to that meeting blah blah blah "oh I'm just tired" was my first thought. "I just need some good rest." After a day or two of rest and  my physical health kept deteriorating and I couldn’t control it, I knew I was having a major melt down and this wasn't going to be good at all.

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Still in denial I lay around for three days feeling at my worst and it took for family to say enough was enough and called and EMT who upon arrival immediately knew what was happening to me. Those words will ring in my head forever “Ma'am you're having a stroke we've got to get you to the hospital now!!!”

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Of course I acted shocked but honestly I knew, I was just in denial and that denial almost cost me my life. I was rushed off to the hospital where I stayed for over two weeks. Tests all day every day, medication I had never heard of, painful physical therapy where my body was shutting down, depression had begun to invade and plague my already weak body and mind and at that time because all of me was no longer there for all of my obligations they no longer where a high priority on my list, they couldn't be. I was made to bow so low so that God could show me the true importance of me. While there in the hospital the nurses would always say to me “we forget you're here because you're always so quiet, you don't watch tv or call for help you just lay here, can we offer you someone to talk to? They had no clue what was happening and that "He" the one who needed to talk to me was already there each and every moment I lay there speaking to me in a manner in which no doctor or therapist could do.

 

After my three week vacation in the hospital of being poked on, medicated, horrible food and that tiny hospital bed which does not come close to comparison of my King sized bed I was released to go home and from that moment my journey began. I  went to see the specialist and physical therapist I was assigned for about a week after my discharge and  I quickly learned that my life would not be taken over with medication and doctor's appointments and tests and yeah all that stuff they do. No, I had had enough!!!

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Unless you have a very predictable illness and display those symptoms in a very statistically typical manner it can be years before a doctor can figure out what is happening to you. That is why I had to find my own way. My own path to a healthy and happy way of living and it all started with the very thing I loved, cooking!

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After my release from the hospital from day one I began to research herbs and their natural health benefits to the body. I researched the mixtures of fruits and herbs  that aided in restoration of bodily functions and abstracts that are potent enough to add to water that I can create my own regiments that aided in my healing. I began to research the foods I liked to prepare and because I am a gardener I love to grow herbs and and veggies, this is something I have been doing since I was a child. My father taught me so much about herbs and vegetation, I now celebrate his teachings daily.  My research became more passionate in finding spices and the combination of herbs that I could infuse in waters which then evolved into something that now helps those who followed my illness and now recovery.

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One simple phrase gave an impact on it all… THINK YOURSELF HAPPY, LIVE YOUR LIFE HEALTHY!

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I am now 5 years post stroke and I have regained full vision of my eye, I no longer utilize a cane to assist in my walking, I work out every day and have full ability to walk with no limp. My speech has still a slight slur  from time to time but so minuscule it's not noticeable. My cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure are all in remarkable range and I have had no issues with any side effects of the stroke. I think this is the best I have been  in a very long time.

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I credit my healing and recovery to my research and consumption of these earthly gifts and all the healing powers they bring and my greatest credit goes to God who kept me in the midst of that storm. I thank my family for standing with me each and every day. My mom for being my caretaker and making sure she gave me energy and motivation to recover, my children who loved me and helped me through that difficult time and my co-parent who sacrificed his time to take care of my home and our children while I took time to heal and recover.