It’s amaz­ing how com­fort­able I am now with my life with an Ostomy. I have come a long way. Being 23 when I became severely ill and need­ing to go to hos­pi­tal, the thought of an Ostomy scared me so much that by the time I would let myself to go to the hos­pi­tal, I was almost dead. So scared of hav­ing an Ostomy, I did not know how I could ever go through life “like that”.

Another part of my prob­lem was that I felt that going through with this kind of surgery would make me a fail­ure. Read­ing Louse Hay and all that self-help stuff, I thought that what they were teach­ing was that if you can­not heal your­self, then you are a fail­ure. This mis­un­der­stand­ing added to my ill­ness with the bur­den of judg­ment on myself and oth­ers which in no way is ben­e­fi­cial to any­one deal­ing with disease.

Now that I’m older, I’ve found that there is a fine line in these (self-healing) teach­ings, and there are a lot of peo­ple con­fused by them. For me, I found that love and accep­tance of one’s self is really the Jour­ney. When I meet peo­ple who still are at the other point of the under­stand­ing and have this kind of judg­ment for them­selves and oth­ers, I know in my heart that they have not “pulled through” in their under­stand­ing of a Jour­ney. Since this is where I started, it is easy to accept them.

To all of you at the begin­ning of this Jour­ney, remem­ber it is actu­ally quite an inter­est­ing one. One day you will be amazed how com­fort­able you are with it all, maybe even thank­ful that you were given this to become the per­son you are today. I am.

Sheri

[Editor’s note: Sheri’s writ­ings are spread out over time so they’re not strictly a follow-on from the pre­vi­ous writ­ing. I’m sure you will find them most inter­est­ing and, hope­fully, find her expe­ri­ences and pos­i­tive mes­sages help­ful. Below are links to Sheri’s per­sonal jour­ney expe­ri­ence writ­ings and thoughts. You can also access these links from the side menu, or the “About Me” menu on the top-right of the page. ]

• About Me — My “Pull Through” Jour­ney — Introductions
• Con­trol­ling Crohn’s Dis­ease? Anorexia worked! Until it didn’t.
• Accept­ing the Hos­pi­tal ~ No other choice left.
• Trans­fer­ring Closer to Home
• Yes­ter­day I Cried ~ With an agenda.
• It’s OK to Cry
• My Pre­scrip­tion Drug Addic­tion — Good or Bad?
• Leav­ing the Poor Me Stage
• [Cur­rent Page] My Jour­ney of Pulling Through — Final Thoughts