Key #1
The moment of receiving a diagnosis can leave you feeling like the world has tilted sideways — it’s a strange, exhausted mix of relief and grief.
Relieve, because finally someone has named what you’ve been battling in silence — pain, fatigue, brain fog, the invisible ache others doubted and dismissed. No, this moment is where you can finally prove it wasn’t “all in your head.” Your experience is real; it has been seen. YOU are seen.
And yet — grief.
Because the diagnosis doesn’t erase the suffering, only the sense of medical gaslighting.
The diagnosis doesn’t ease the pain, or restore the lost spoons, the lost days — the lost certainties.
It gives answers, but they’re often as difficult as the path to diagnosis.
It leaves you feeling marked in a new way — quietly, but also a forever kind of mark…and with a new identity you’d never asked for.
And somehow, impossibly, life still goes on — a life demanding choices, actions, and responsibilities you still barely have energy to meet.
Now? You carry what feels like an impossible paradox.
You are expected to manage endless invisible labor:
- Tracking symptoms
- Embracing a new, often evolving medication menu
- Navigating an often endlessly adjusting dietary protocol
- Tests, scans, appointments, dismissals
- Hope, disappointment
But you are not just a patient.
You are a detective.
And your diagnosis — however heavy it may feel — is not a prison.
It is a key.
Not a key that will unlock “your old life” or the future you once dreamed.
No.
But something else entirely: a key that opens a hidden gate onto a different path altogether:
The path of the Spoon Detective.
The path of the Seeker.
The path of the Sovereign Curator.
See, you stand now at the threshold of a new and different life.
You’ve been invited, like it or not, to discern a different path through life, courtesy of your diagnosis.
You have been selected to live the life uncommon.
It will not be easy.
It feels unfair, so much of the time.
There will be days of grief, of anger, of bone-deep weariness.
But there will also be small golden clues hidden along the way:
Movements of joy fiercely chosen, acts of rest courageously defended, truths about yourself no illness can take — but perhaps, will force you to discover.
And eventually, for those who continue, those who refuse to just accept that life must be smaller, there will be a treasure:
There will be, instead, a life no longer shaped by what you have lost — but instead, by what you have chosen to keep, to protect, and to cultivate.
A curated life.
A sovereign life.
A life crafted not by accident, but by deep, sacred discernment, born of having to choose among limited options each day.
It sounds crazy, I know. But too often in life, we accept that which we are handed. Too often, we can barely hear the sound of our own inner song, because life swallows us up, thing after thing after thing, laid upon our shoulders.
When life — when your diagnosis — forces you to choose carefully; when you are limited to only a certain amount of “yeses” each day…
You learn the true value of your choices — and the value of where you turn your time and attention.
There will be grief, yes — we all want to do ALL THE THINGS, and it feels unfair to be limited.
But the truth: no one can do all the things; we’ve just learned that in a seemingly unfair and inconvenient way.
And there’s no denying the pain, fear, and grief that accompanies this journey, this diagnosis —
But there IS something else there, too.
You are seen here.
In your exhaustion.
In your grief.
In your invisible — and visible — battles.
In your aching hope that there is more than just surviving.
In your hope for a cure.
For a return to your old life. Your old dreams.
You are seen, not just for the illness you carry, but for the quiet. fierce, sacred story you are still writing with the moments of your life.
You fight daily battles no one sees:
- Cooking that healthy dinner, or finish that work project?
- Use that last spoon for the walk with your child, only to be judged when you say no to something else
- Playing with your dog in the sunbeam, knowing someone else will wonder how you can smile now, but not "show up" later
Goodness help you if you dare to style your hair, or make an effort to look nice, or enjoy one afternoon, because if you did that, clearly you are fine, and only using your illness as an excuse to not do _____.
You curate your energy with exquisite care — because you must.
You make brutal choices others never have to see.
And still, the world demands performances you cannot give. It doubts your suffering if you show joy. It questions your integrity if you claim space for rest.
Too healthy to deserve compassion.
Too sick to be fully trusted.
Seen and unseen at once.
This is the Paradox.
And it is exhausting beyond words.
But here is the deeper truth:
You were never just surviving.
Even now, in the midst of grief and fatigue, you are gathering clues.
You are learning the first hard lessons of sacred creation: what must be protected, what must be let go, what is truly worth your precious spoons — and precious they are!
The world taught you to believe you were breaking.
But perhaps — quietly, invisibly — you are becoming.
Not lesser.
Not broken.
But refined.
You are not a burden.
You are not fragile.
You are not broken.
Even if there’s days where you can’t pick yourself up off the bed.
You are a Sovereign Detective, standing at the beginning of the mythic path, eyes wide as you watch for clues.
The spoons are not just burdens to manage.
They are clues.
They are keys.
They will lead you, if you choose to follow, to a life richer, deeper, and more luminous than you were ever taught to expect.
A Final Whisper:
Tonight, if you have even a single spoon left, perhaps hold it lightly in your heart and whisper:
“This is not the end.
This is the beginning.
I am becoming something rare and sovereign.”
And know:
You are not alone.
You are not lost.
You are seen.
You are sovereign.
You are on your way.