Hi, I am a small business owner, a wife, a mother, a hard worker, a planner, a recovering self-deflater, and I have Parkinson's Disease. I've known that I have had PD for over 15 years now. And have most likely had it without knowing for about 5 before that.
My mantra had always been: 'Keep on Keepin' on'. I would take the medications prescribed, exercise when I could (which meant hardly ever), and not focus too much on the PD or what it did and would mean. This worked for me for about 14 years. The problem was that as life kept growing, so did the added responsibilities, both self-added and other-added. My self-added included starting a non-profit and 3 small businesses. One of which completely kicked my butt. The stress from all of it proved too much. I shut down the neediest and most time consuming business and vowed to focus on my health and doing all that I needed to do so slow the progression of Parkinson's.
That lasted for about 2.5 months.
Then I went back to overworking and under self-care taking. Completely blowing off my exercise and nutrition plan. That was my norm, it was the point of least resistance. I didn't have to motivate myself to live there - it was natural. But natural is no longer good enough. There are too many days where I remain 'off' even after taking the meds. Too many days where I am not functioning at my physical nor mental capacity. And then I am reminded of what my daughter (with whom I co-own Ease In2) said as the initial stress was overtaking me. She asked, pleadingly, if I would start doing the things I knew to do to delay PD. She didn't want to lose me any earlier than she had to and she was going to be angry if I could impact the outcome and did nothing.
It's time again, to stop doing nothing!
In this journey, I will be sharing plans and strategies from 3 or 4 of the most impactful books that I have found. The first one, is the one that I knew was my truth as soon as I read it, and am now instituting it as my creed (a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone's actions - I looked it up:-). Some of the others actually speak to being able to recover from PD. I have no idea if this is possible, but I surely would appreciate it if it were! Add in there a bit of wisdom from Chinese Medicine and the art of Qigong and I will strive to come up with a respectable brew of sorts.
Know that I am not a coach, not a motivational writer, speaker .... simply a woman with PD who is on a journey to Find a Path Past Parkinson's. Please feel free to comment