The first story I wanted to share is about something we can handle when it’s visible. For example when you break a leg, it visible. Or when you have a cold, you sound awful, so again visible.

But what if you feel depressed, burned out or being really sick, but it’s not very common and not visible.

You probably know someone with a depression or maybe you had one yourself. It’s not the most common thing to talk about on a birthday party.

I have many stories about unvisible sickness, but the one I want to share is about my health in 2018. I was a young mom, 36 years old and had my own business. My husband had his own business, so you can imagine we didn’t see each other much. My business was ’the in between-one’. His was the ‘take care of the family-one’.

After a call with one of my clients I felt sick. I thought I get a stomach flu, because both my kids had it too. But every hour I felt more sick, a whole different feeling than a stomach flu.
I’ll spare you the details, but after 2 days I finally did go to the hospital and they kept me, because every bloodtest said I should probably be dead, so bad. Every day was full of examinations, but nobody could figure out what was making me that sick.

After a lot of medication, more examinations and moving around the different departments of the hospital they still didn’t know what was wrong. I couldn’t stand op straight, because my belly was looking like if I was 8 month pregnant. I couldn’t eat, because everything came straight out. And everything hurts like hell, if my lower body was on fire.

After 5 more days of this, I think you could say I ran out of the hospital. The only feeling I had left was ‘dying while they’re trying which medications would start doing something’ or ‘go home, not knowing what to do, but with a lot of trust that it would become better’ if I started to listen to my body.

The running away was the easiest part despite all the forms I had to fill in, so the hospital wouldn’t held responsible if I would die.

At home I was my own confrontation. My own mirror. My kids were there, but I couldn’t take care off them.

And the people around me, they worried of course. Every time they asked ‘how are you feeling?’ ‘Aren’t you scared?’ ‘Your body disappointed you, how do you cope with that?’, I felt tension in my whole body. My body didn’t disappointed me, she showed me and I didn’t listen. I wasn’t scared, I trusted the way I chose. Not the easiest way, but MY WAY. MY HEALING.

At some point people noticed they could not see anything from the outside. I could stand up straight again, could bring my kids to school, cooked dinner and did groceries. But underneath there was pain, I had to learn to eat again, I couldn’t walk the dog in the forest. Every bump in the road gave me tears, that much hurt my belly, my womb, and each organ screamed for softness.

‘You should go back to the hospital. They know what they do, this isn’t helping.’

But it was helping. Slowly, but steady and without medication.

And here we are. The point were people started to look like I was a crazy. Or it ‘wasn’t that bad as I pretended’ or ‘otherwise you would go to a real doctor’.

I learned to accept my journey to healing. It wasn’t the straight line everyone expected. It wasn’t with a diagnose, so I could tell what was wrong.

It was with the inner feeling I did the right thing, although I couldn’t explain.

Accept that my disease had no name.

Accept that it took almost a year, before I felt more or less myself again.

Accept that I still don’t know what it was, and trust that it’s not meant to happen again.

This story contains much taboos. About inner knowledge, about trust, about feeling sick when you can’t see it.

I hope there is medicine in it for you. Maybe you deal with an invisible disease yourself, now you know you’re not alone.

I see you.

Xo Willan