Today I want to write out what I feel is a signpost of my full recovery from LSI. Almost over night in the fall of 2016 my life turned from essentially a very thriving and fully living place to a very debilitated spot, mentally/cognitively, emotionally, physically and spiritually. I don’t plan to name the symptoms and sensations here because quite honestly, I like the new pathways I have built of not giving them much time or space. I can, but I choose not to. I will say that I had many extreme and very uncomfortable symptoms from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, 24/7. I cried much of the time being in such an uncomfortable and confusing place. Much of what my beautiful life looked like before became a blur and a longed-for memory.
I found DNRS and began my rewiring journey on November 28, 2017. I IMMEDIATELY noticed a difference, although it took a lot of time and commitment to see the fruit settle and take root deep inside of me. There were many words that surfaced time and time again in my proclamation and in my journey. Included in those were: “strong,” “resilient,” and “steady.” Over time I began to feel those deep within me. Resilience especially was a theme again and again. Recently, I read this quote, “We can all be astonishingly resilient. You can bend with out breaking. And even when you least suspect it, you can rebound. The good news is that you already have what it takes to bounce back….by helping regain your perspective, moments of joy, love, gratitude, and inspiration remove negativity’s blinders and put the breaks on downward spirals. Positivity, I’ve discovered, is at the heart of human resilience.” Barbara Frederickson
It seems each year has had a different theme, and I want to focus my story around those themes.
2018 looked like this:
~I was super consistent and dedicated to taking my nervous system to a place of calm through rounds, laughter, changing my language and bombarding my brain with as much positivity and love as I could pour into a day’s time.
~I had a definite emotional shift in March of that year when I began to experience joy here and there again. I am a Christian, and I specifically remember when I was sure again that the Lord was present with me. That, as well as the overall ability to have elevated emotions grew and I gained more confidence in every area as time went on.
~Many of the emotional, mental, and physical symptoms got to a more manageable place. They were still present and yet I began to latch hold of my ability to shift my focus.
~My hope and belief in brain rewiring was very solid.
~I attended an on-site DNRS seminar in July of this year. The experience of the trip in and of itself, proved to put deep within me the knowing that I could do a lot more than I knew I could!
2019 looked like this:
~It was my year with a huge theme of self-love and self-care. As a Christian, I was able to come into the truth that in loving and caring for myself that I was honoring God. In seeing that I could love myself as He loves me, I experienced a huge shift. I became super passionate about the purpose and place of self-love and self-care in my life, and how important it is for all human beings. This shift was such a huge awakening for me, that it became my “soap box!”
~In May of this year, I “caught” what is calm deep within me. I found it. I was routinely spending time at a pond and had come to love the calm pictured before me. I had caught myself a few times being so captivated by being in the moment there. When I put two and two together I saw that that very calm I found there was what I was going for inside of me. I knew what I was to be seeking as a permanent place of rest within me. I managed to capture it and live it for about a week and a half, and I knew, even though it would ebb and flow, that it was becoming a solid place in me. I knew time and consistency would bring it to me.
~I experienced a ton of victories this year, and after tapping into that calm, in the summer of this year, I thought I was fully recovered. It seemed I was back to dealing with pre-perfect storm things and I knew “I’d not come this far to ‘only’ come this far,” and I got so excited, and stayed committed to the journey! I wanted to rewire those pre-perfect storm things as well!!!
~Then that fall I began to experience more limbic activity again out of the blue and it became apparent I had more rewiring to do.
2020 met me with:
~The reality that I had some core beliefs that were asking for some attention. I then began a deep journey of identifying, reframing, and rewiring those. Fine-tuning life-giving thoughts became a passion of mine. I had confidence knowing that when I rewired those old non-life-giving beliefs, that the unexpected limbic activity would stop surprising me.
~In the fall of this year I was met with what I had considered the most dreaded thing of all of my life….(stick with me!)…. one of my parents’ last days. We were told at the end of August that my dad’s days on this earth were limited. Because of all of my training, I stepped into this experience with all of my heart and soul. It became one of the highlights of my entire life. I got to pull out all of my tools, take good care of myself, step into my strengths in a way I had NEVER done, spend time daily with my parents, watching over and guiding Dad’s care, living fully into my True Self, honoring to the best of my ability Dad’s own desires for the next 3+ months until the Lord took him home in December. Through that experience, I embraced the opportunity learn to take care of me and my own emotions. I was very well aware of the emotions and processings of others, while owning my own. It was very moment by moment, in the midst of a very difficult time, and I did it. In all of that, I experienced the fruit of all of my rewiring in the most beautiful way ever. It will forever be one of the highlights of my life, and I thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to walk into it, embrace it, live it, and be completely satisfied with it all.
This year, 2021, has been a brand new year in many ways:
~I had a definite shift away from the “its” and “pops” no longer being an issue, and shifting completely into my beautiful life.
~I began the year with new structure to my life. I processed more of who I am as a person, what my life purpose is, and what kind of life I desire to create. This proved and is proving to move me into my desired future step by glorious step. (It actually rekindled and fanned the flame of the fire in me of what I already knew to be true!)
~I had a sense that it was time to “narrow in.” This became a mantra that guided me in many decisions as the year progressed. The structure, and getting deeply in touch with the core of who I am as a person, put within me a compelling desire to choose wisely the things I would commit myself to so that I could live into each of those things fully. It became easier and easier with the passing weeks to say “no” to even things I enjoy so that I could fully say “yes” to things that my heart loves and thrives in. In doing so, I am honoring who I am, my values, and my life purpose as a whole.
~The structure gave me grounding and centering, also, as I began walking through grief in a way I never had before. I had also lost one of my dogs a few months before Dad, so I knew I had new and raw emotion to welcome and walk through. I have welcomed grief and the emotions that go along with it using bravery, compassion, and authenticity.
~It has been a roller coaster of year with emotions as I’ve learned to manage a wide range of uncomfortable and yet normal emotions, as a result of several events I hadn’t seen coming. They seemed to derail me, and it confused me a lot. I got to practice being comfortable with the uncomfortable.
~Kristin Neff’s self-compassion practice served to show me how to integrate back into normal human emotion, comfortable and uncomfortable.
~Over time I’ve seen that practicing and keeping the element of self-love and self-care in place has been instrumental in guiding me in loving others from a pure, genuine, and authentic heart. I can’t even describe the difference now in how I love others.
~I began to see resilience and living into hopefulness as being important themes to look at. I began to think that when I could see those two character qualities built within me, that I would then know I was fully recovered. Recently in a conversation with my coach, she said to me, “Jill, you are resilient. Your nervous system IS resilient. You bounce back.” She said, “Jill, as a result of your experience, you will forever have a close relationship with your nervous system. You will be well aware when things are off. There will be things to knock you off-center. This isn’t a sign you haven’t recovered. The sign of recovery is… you bounce back. A person with a healthy balanced nervous system gets knocked off center sometimes. Sometimes it even takes a bit to recenter. This is very normal!”
~So, I see. I look back now and I see resilience. I hung up the phone that day knowing that’s where I am and it is where I’ve been for quite some time. Hopefulness is simply that in the midst of life’s difficulties we are able to see WHO we are and we are able to KNOW we will walk through the difficulty, and come out on the other side having deepened who we are. We will see ourselves thriving and having grown in it AND on the other side of it. In that, I can be with whatever is going on today. I AM embracing ALL of life. I can live THIS moment and ride the wave of whatever with resilience and hopefulness. I truly am thriving.
What does full recovery look like??? I know that it can have a different definition for each of us. For me, this is how I personally see full recovery….
~I solidly know who I am - strengths, values, dreams, things that are life-giving to me
~Huge emphasis on self-love, self-care, self-compassion
~A daily routine that has space for self-love, self-care, self-compassion that fits beautifully into the flow of my day. If I need an extra dose of any of those I readily recognize it, and find space for it.
~I see life from a brand new life-giving vantage point that equips me to navigate every day life, circumstances that might interrupt things, and how to look at the future that gives me what I need to thrive inside whatever. Essentially, I have the tools within me now.
~Emotional regulation - I am able to embrace ALL emotion no matter what it looks like, and come back to center almost as a reflexive action. I’m able to look at emotion and see whether it needs love and space, is an old pattern of protection to be shifted out of, or a need that deserves attention/action.
~Resilience - My nervous system is very steady, even when there are circumstances are not. Being resilient is ebbing and flowing through the normal things that happen in life, even the tough ones.
~I’ve learned that “quiet” is my favorite place in the whole world. There is a silence that is rich and full, and I now crave it daily.
As I celebrate the 4th anniversary of when I began my DNRS journey, I am continuing a transformational journey that will continue until the moment I leave this earth. Fully recovered from LSI is now “in the books.” My nervous system is now rebalanced.
My future is bright and glorious. I am back to living my love of family celebrations and dinners. I am back to doing house projects. I am back to enjoying deep connections with many people. I am back to holding my place within True Stories Ministries, a ministry to helping women see how God has been interwoven in all of their lives. I am back to pursuing a coaching practice with my passion for life purpose as a Life Purpose Coach, combined with a recent certification as a Wholebeing Positive Psychology Coach. I am passionate that others tap into WHO God Himself created them to be, and to impassion them to embrace their beautiful selves and live fully and freely within that person.
I give thanks to Annie Hopper for creating DNRS, and for other tools that helped guide me to the next steps after I began to step away from certain DNRS practices after 3 years.
I give all the praise and glory to my God in heaven who created the physical body with the capacity to heal and thrive. He was ever present through all of it, even when I was unable to detect Him. DNRS paved the way for that, and then eventually to know and experience His presence in a much deeper way than ever before. He made humankind with strength and He showed me how to step into that strength. He has been interwoven in all of my life, and my journey with Him since my perfect storm was the most unique and special part of my life with Him. The glory and honor is all His. He gave me the opportunity to learn about myself. What an honor it has been! He wanted me to know who He created, to learn to love myself, to understand myself, and to stick up for myself because He loves me first and foremost. He guided me every single solitary step of the way. I am now able to live into all He created me to be. He has taught me how to calm in Him, and how to turn my eyes to the deep peace deep within me. He has created the hunger in me to go there often for continued steadiness and resilience. I praise Him. I praise Him from the depth of my being. “…in quietness and trust is your strength…” Isaiah 30:15
Jill E. White
IG: @jillelainewhite or @pathway2theheart
FB: Jill McMillin White
A truly incredible story, thank you so much for sharing