SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE

ON BIG HEALTH REALISATIONS

I have been resisting writing this story for many reasons, which can be distilled into two words: not knowing.

It is so tempting as humans to wait until we have things figured out and tied up in perfect silky bows to share the guts and heartache that led us there. We love sharing a success story once the first million has been made, or the house has been purchased, or the baby has arrived. Once we sell the first manuscript or painting or bowl. Once we land the first paying client or launch the website or get our first invoice paid.

We love to wait to share the good stuff, and for good reason.

There is something to be said for keeping our ideas and projects and experiences close to our chests. For tending to them quietly, sometimes in secret, protected from the haters and doubters and questioners. Sometimes sharing them in real time does more harm then good.

But sometimes, there is no end in sight. We don’t know when we’ll get answers, get to tie the bow, pop the champagne. Sometimes we don’t know if a celebration will ever be possible.

With all this in mind, I want to talk about my health.

I feel like anyone with a business avoids this like the plague. Like sharing our humanness, the most human you can be, is bad for business. And maybe it is, I don’t fucking know. But I also think as artists, we get to blur the lines and make our own rules.

So as a business owner and artist, I write to you saying my health — physical, mental, spiritual — has been taking me for a fucking ride.

I never expected to be “one of those people”. The ones who take time off from working even though they seemingly look fine. The ones who appear healthy and content and nourished, but behind the scenes are clawing at the walls of the well, desperate for someone to rescue them.

I’ve written a lot about my unexpected rocky season of mental health on this Substack. If you’re navigating depression, functional freeze or feeling untethered from everything, you might find some solace in my earlier posts.

Writing about this time in the void, which took me completely by surprise as I slowly descended into it in 2023, has been both a balm and a tincture. Soothing and bitter. Relieving and hard to swallow. Sharing the ugliness and not-knowing-ness and messiness and too-much-ness has been cathartic and jagged. Necessary, and exposing.

And yet I always find it easier to explore and write about and tackle what’s going on in my head. Maybe that’s the writer in me. Maybe that’s the Capricorn moon. All I know for sure is that I know the topography of my emotional landscape well. It’s known territory. I can navigate by the stars.

But my physical health, well, that’s something I’ve always been able to ignore.

It’s finally citrus season in Australia!!

Like a lot of women, I’ve spent the last decade navigating horrendous period pain. I am grateful to say that it is getting better, fractionally, with every cycle, but it’s been a very fucking slow journey. I have been disregarded by doctors, given the all clear with ultrasounds, given codeine without being warned of the side effects. I’ve been in the trenches, and received very little answers from the Western medical system.

This was one of the reasons I found Western Herbal Medicine and went down the path of becoming a clinical herbalist. I thought that I could join the good guys, help women heal holistically, be a safe space where they were heard and understood and taken seriously. And while I didn’t finish that degree (the science-tipped scales sucked the life out of me), I did learn a lot. But did it encourage me to prioritise my health as a human and practitioner? Sometimes, but rarely, barely.

The thing about period pain is that once your bleed is over the pain goes away. And then, if you’re lucky, you have 3+ blissful weeks where you literally forget it even exists. You don’t think about it because you don’t have to. You know it will probably happen again, but until then, you’re free. You can feel healthy and vital again.

This is what happens with hayfever too. Another unexplained, untraceable symptom I’ve had through my twenties (but never had prior). Hayfever drains the fucking life out of me. When it comes on, there’s no working, no studying, no speaking. My brain turns to literal mush. Anti-histamines can’t cut through. I am subjected, for 24-48 hours of hazy, delirious fatigue, fever, snot and grossness. There’s nothing I can do but ride it out and made sure my boyfriend feeds me.

But when it’s gone, it’s gone. It isn’t triggered by anything in particular (I call it energetic hayfever for this reason) so there’s no way I can prevent an attack. I can go weeks, sometimes (if I’m lucky), months without being knocked down by it. And in those glorious weeks between, I forget I have it. I don’t investigate it because it’s not at the forefront of my mind. Yet when it happens, I’m always cursing that I haven’t found the magical remedy to break the spell.

So there’s a theme. I don’t tend to myself when my body feels fine because I’m drained by the times it isn’t. A cloud of apathy blocks it out. Makes me forget.

And that’s pretty much how I’ve been operating for most of my life. Learned behaviours, definitely, but also a giant cup of being the eldest daughter in a chaotic family who had to be fine and take care of everyone else.

When I do get sick, or am in pain, I long for someone to take care of me. I revert to my child-self. I mumble and groan and complain and cry and let all my feelings pool out in a mess, any shred of self-consciousness evaporated. There is likely a lot of insight into my actions and behaviours during this time, but I’m too damn out of it to take notes.

Now, I’m 30 years old and my body is poorly absorbing multiple essential vitamins and minerals. I had no idea, because the concept of routine doctor’s visits and health maintenance “for the sake of it” has never crossed my mind.

I’m sure a lot of this is steeped in my childhood. When you grow up in a low-income household you’re taught to fight fires when they pop up. To take what’s free and deal with anything else if and when Panadol and cough syrup can’t handle it.

But it didn’t occur to me until recently that I had to rewrite this story. I wore it like a badge of honour, never going to the doctors. What an upstanding citizen I was, not crowding the medical system with unnecessary woes.

Over two years ago, I wrote about some revelations in the dental chair, and how oddly proud I was that I hadn’t visited the dentist in so long. This badge of honour was really a badge of neglect, and I wore it for too damn long.

Why did I think it was okay to treat myself like this? Like someone who didn’t deserve attention or care unless I was deathly ill? Why has it always taken severe circumstances for me to take my health and wellbeing seriously?

Some of the answers are obvious and others require deeper reflection. But the bottom line is — something has to change.

The recent results about my iron and B12 levels — which I knew weren’t great but thought I could will to be positive — jolted something. Or rather, my surprisingly competent GP did.

When we got the initial results back, she asked the simple yet impactable question: why? Why is this happening?

[I’ve since heard that hardly anyone’s GP does this unprompted, so in a way I feel like she’s a gift from the Universe in the form of a no-nonsense, straight talking medical professional who’s concerned about me.]

As ridiculous as this sounds, it never occurred to me to ask why.

I ask why all the fucking time. About everything and everyone. And yet I failed to offer myself this blessing. To question and examine and seek clarification. Except, apparently, when it comes to me. I have accepted too many things as normal and inevitable, and after years of emotional fatigue, eventually gave up wondering.

But now I am being faced with the potential diagnosis of a life-changing condition. I’m hanging out in limbo till I get an endoscopy, but either way it means I have to take action.

Part of that action came in the form of getting an iron infusion. Something I have been strongly against for years. And then, last month, easily changed my mind on. Something clicked: you have to do this. At least once. Try and see if it helps.

That in itself felt like a really powerful lesson. I can change my mind. I can try things my past self hated the idea of. I can make new choices.

I got it earlier this week. It’s still too soon to tell how much it’s gonna help, but I already feel that it is. I’ll probably sign up to get some B12 shots too.

The idea of relying on non-dietary sources of nutrients kinda sucks, but when your body is as depleted as mine (and not absorbing the food sources you give it), you gotta swing big.

I had no idea iron was orange, so random.

This whole experience has also made me wake up to the fact that this is the kind of shit I’ll be passing onto my child. Not only my genetics, my nervous system and my gut health (good lord), but my habits and beliefs.

If I can’t take care of myself just because, how do I expect a child to learn that? If I continue down this path of denial and accepting the bare minimum and putting up with feeling meh, then that’s what they’re gonna learn. And that fucking sucks.

I wish it didn’t take this realisation for me to take this all seriously, but it did and that’s okay. I already had all the pieces, I just needed the final corner to be slammed in place.

And while yeah, there is a tiny bit of shame lurking there, that it took me thinking about pregnancy and parenting to be alarmed about the state of my health, mostly I’m just fucking relieved. I can’t go back from this. I just can’t.

I hope if this story tugged at something in you, or reminded you of that pesky thing that you’ve been meaning to get a check up for, that you take action. Book the consult. Schedule the skin check. Find a good naturopath.

It’s shit how expensive this can all get (that’s definitely played a part in my resistance), but at the end of the day, if our physical health goes to shit then everything else doesn’t matter. I know this first hand, witnessing family members pass, and yet it still didn’t sink in!!

Maybe it won’t for you yet either. But I’m glad this can be another piece of your puzzle. A tiny little reminder in the blip of everything you read today, reminding you to take care of yourself and prioritise your health. At least a little more than before.

Take care,

Viv