Introduction to Sue’s journals.

Sue is one of our participants on our long-term mini pilot rehabilitation programme.  When I met Sue for the first time I could see she was not in a good place.  I have been in the place she was in then, in a different format, but I have been there.  It’s the place where you are reaching in the dark to find hope.  It’s like throwing darts blindfolded sometimes.  You know it is there, hope.  It’s just hiding, sometimes really, really well and it can be so b***** hard to find it in the darkness. 

I spent three hours talking and interviewing Sue just to make sure the mini pilot study was the right programme for her and also so she understood fully that if Muddy Care was going to help her, she had to be open to a new innovative way of rehabilitation.  And I could tell she was.  I think she recognised I had been where she was too and as I always say to the Muddies (the participants on the mini pilot study), be authentic.   I think Sue could see I was authentic. 

Sue is not in that same place anymore I am so pleased to say.  She has fully embraced Muddy Care, utterly and completely.  She has transformed and continues to transform to a brighter future.  It’s the length of the Muddy Care mini-pilot rehabilitation programme that has enabled her to embrace fully our rehabilitation programme.  And I know she has worked incredibly hard using the tools we have given to her.   She has grown to trust Lee and I, to open her mind to so many other thought patterns and understandings, to activities she would have never even thought of doing healthy, never mind with chronic conditions.  As Dr Wayne Dyer taught me, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  I am not saying every day is sunny for Sue because that is not life, especially if you have chronic conditions.  None of us with chronic conditions have continuous sunny days.  But what we teach through Muddy Care is not just how to have more sunny days but how to manage those cloudy and really difficult, impossible days, better.  And that is what Sue is doing completely and utterly.

Lee and I co deliver the education programme, with full participation, professionalism and exuberance but the hard work, the implementing of the tools we teach to the Muddies, that is all up to the participants.  Sue has shown immense bravery and authenticity in her willingness to serve others with chronic conditions by starting a journal for public view.  This is her first entry and is about her relationship with her fibromyalgia. 

I think this is not just a beautiful piece of writing.  It is authentic and courageous.  Thank you and well done Sue. x