healing Archives - Hormones Matter

Navigate Healing With Loved Ones

Published on March 25, 2024

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How can you support the heroine in your life and navigate the healing process? Find your inner Chris Columbus.

Being ill is overwhelming. Anyone with ongoing illness is a heroine on an epic journey. This journey can be filled with plenty of bumps, roadblocks, U-turns, and forks (aka decision-making opportunities). There are some awe-inspiring moments as well.

Everyone’s experience of illness is different. Even heroines with the same diagnosis or symptom list will have different experiences of the illness or dis-ease; and the impact on their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being varies.

This unique journey your heroine is traveling is not a straight, engineered path moving from A to B to C, so this isn’t a process for a GPS-esque one-size-fits-most solution. The heroine needs a navigator. A valuable way to support the heroine in your life is to be her trusted navigator. Even Amelia Earhart had a navigator.

Because no two journeys are the same and there’s often uncharted territory, lists of things to do may or may not be relevant. No list can cover every circumstance. But anyone, in any situation can draw on inner resources and embody the characteristics of the navigator role. What navigator inspires you? Find a role model for yourself. As you support your heroine consider the traits of your role model and bring that essence into your being.

Here are a few ways to view this journey through the lens of a navigator and embrace your role in your heroine’s healing journey.

Identify the Destination

Most healing journeys have multiple destinations. Each encounter with a healthcare professional could be its own destination. There is the ultimate destination of well-being. The heroine determines the various destinations as the journey unfolds. Regardless of the destination, there are common characteristics to know you’re at a destination that supports your heroine. A destination that works:

Feels comfortable ‒ whatever comfortable means to the heroine
Strengthens and renews ‒ ultimately the destination is uplifting
Encompasses movement on some level ‒ stagnation is not OK

Discuss this with your heroine so you’ll know when you’re on course. If during an appointment the heroine is uncomfortable or not feeling understood, this is feedback that you’re off course.

Pay attention to when the destination shifts. For example, what starts as getting relief for physical pain could shift to identifying underlying emotional trauma that impacts true healing.

Scout the Landscape

Wow, where to start with so much landscape to cover in the world of health, healing and well-being? This is intertwined with knowing the destination. When the destination is relief from symptoms, the landscape could be anything from acupuncture, to dietary changes to pharmaceuticals. When the destination is eliminating the root cause, you’re likely in the territory of older traditions that have studied health for centuries: Naturopathic, Homeopathic, Chinese, or Ayurveda. Pay attention to the destination to know which direction to scout.

Regardless of the landscape, it is helpful to:

Curate information – narrow down the vast information into relevant pieces like a museum curator
Bring a sense of curiosity – explore options, ask questions like a child
Transform barriers into paths – go above, around, through, or chart a new path; a roadblock may be a sign to shift direction

Map the Cairns

Cairns are stone towers that have marked important places and travel routes for centuries. Your heroine may be struggling just to feel “normal” and have some sort of normal life, and feel how she used to feel. Even people who avidly journal or meditate may miss their own signposts. Having someone else note the journey, like a log book, can be valuable.

Cairns may mark straight routes, turning points, or places to pause and reflect; this could include:

Shifts in mindset – for example a new lens of the meaning of the illness
Noticing cause and effect – when the heroine feels different emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually
Joy – with so much focus on not feeling well, celebrate even small wins

It can be challenging for friends and family to how to support their heroine. Finding your inner navigator equips you to be supportive moment to moment, and respond to your heroine’s evolving journey.

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Editors note: this post was published previously on September 2011 under the title, Find your Inner Chris Columbus: Navigating the Healing Process. It was re-titled for publication today.

Image by Cloé Gérard from Pixabay.

Sharing My Story, Feeding the Hope

by Kerry Gretchen

Published on May 31, 2016

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When I took this job—combing through the Nelson Pill Hearings, researching and writing about the risks with hormonal birth control, working on the Real Risk study—my mother said to me, “Are you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to dig up all that stroke stuff?”

“Mom,” I said, a little exasperated. “It’s been 10 years. I’m fine with it.” Duh was close to what I was thinking but didn’t say. The weird thing is, my mom may have been right. Okay, that’s not entirely fair. My mom WAS right. (NEWSFLASH: My mom is right sometimes!) This job has been hard, and not just because reading congressional testimony is draining and because I’m so passionate about this work. It has been hard because it has forced me, nearly every day since November, to examine what happened to me.

I had a stroke because of hormonal birth control and for a long time I believed my doctors (and much of the research I found when writing my thesis) when they said that I was special. That this sort of thing didn’t happen much. Because I thought I was an anomaly, I was able to bury my head comfortably in the sand and call that “dealing with it.”

It hit me that I had not been dealing with it when I sat in a room with Karen Langhart and the parents of four other young women who had died while using hormonal birth control. As they shared their stories, tears slid down my face. I knew I was not an anomaly. It could have easily been my mom sitting in that room and not me.

I’ve written about how important it is to share patient stories. And we’ve written about the importance of the Real Risk Study. I’ve participated in the study. I’ve written my story (all three parts of it: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). But it has not been easy for me. Which means it has taken unfathomable courage and strength for the families who have lost their daughters. I had to face a sadness that was buried deep under a layer of “getting on with life.” But for these families, the sadness isn’t buried because there is no “getting on with life.” It’s right there, out in the open, raw and exposed. Their lives will never look remotely the same.

When we publish an article about a health crisis or a death related to hormonal birth control it is not because we are alarmists. It is not because we are whiny or dwelling in the past. It is because this work is important. This study is important. I was not an anomaly. The young ladies who were killed by hormonal birth control are not anomalies. They are daughters, wives, sisters. They could be you or someone you love. We share because we are not alone. We are a group of survivors and advocates.

One of the most amazing things that has happened to me from taking this job is that, despite the challenges, it has helped give meaning to what happened to me. I’ve met and connected with amazing people. While much of it has been cloaked in sadness, the thing that shines even brighter in these interactions is hope. And hope is healing. By sharing my story and participating in this research, I am feeding that hope.

It is my wish that you will help feed that hope, too. If you are a survivor of a blood clot or a family member of someone killed by a blood clot and you have been hesitant to participate, now is the time. If you aren’t, I guarantee that you know someone (a friend or relative or a friend of a friend) who has been affected by a blood clot while on hormonal birth control. Now is the time to share this link. Because there is hope in sharing. And healing in hope.

Real Risk Study: Birth Control and Blood Clots

Lucine Health Sciences and Hormones Matter are conducting research to investigate the relationship between hormonal birth control and blood clots. If you or a loved one have suffered from a blood clot while using hormonal birth control, please consider participating. We are also looking for participants who have been using hormonal birth control for at least one year and have NOT had a blood clot, as well as women who have NEVER used hormonal birth control. For more information or to participate, click here.

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