When I first set out to create this health blog, several years ago, in a world already full to the brim with health blogs and social media accounts sharing lifestyle tips, I had just an inkling of the unique angle that I had to offer, born of my particular way of looking at things very broadly (you could say, outside of their “box”). This  instinct pushed me forward to get started on the project, even when I had so many doubts and only the vaguest idea of what I had to say.

I let go of “what do I know?” and allowed that, in my own way, I had expertise to offer; which would arise as and when it was most needed.

By then, I had been in recovery from a complicated tangle of chronic health issues for several years, after my health “crashed” in 2005. The years in-between had taken me on quite a journey or, rather as I now see it, I had taken myself on this amazing journey of self-discovery, using my health circumstances as the hand rings and foot markers to guide me along the route.

I already knew I didn’t want to set out to repeat all the, many, other blogs about learning to “live with” these so-called chronic health issues or eating/exercising/treating your way back to better health (though these aspects inevitably form part of my bigger picture). Nor did I want to peddle insincere-sounding reassurance or admiration for the long-suffering reader, to share stories of victimhood or mindsets of defeatism. In particular, I didn’t want to cultivate that air of self-congratulation or wallowing in hardships that is so often rife in health-blogging land. I was well aware that the more attached we become to our challenges, the harder they are to work through as they stick to us as part of our (business, social or even our core) identity: this was not what I was choosing for myself.

Rather, I wanted to deliver the essence of that thing, deep inside myself, that had kept me pushing forwards with unwavering optimism and almost bewildering tenacity. This “thing”, this powerful core aspect of me, has insisted upon feeling whole and intact, whatever life or my body seemed to “throw at me”, and the more I have tuned into it, the closer I have got to manifesting that reality. You see, never once did I lose this sense of “everything being all right…really” through all the dark-tunnel years of fibromyalgia, electro-sensitivity,  chronic fatigue (or whatever we choose to call these things, since labels are so very arbitrary and can be such a sticking-point to true or sustained recovery). I always sensed there was a much bigger picture emerging to the surface of my life through what presented as all these weird and wonderful health challenges and I still know I was right.

Whatever your particular “challenge”…it could be health, could be life’s so-called external circumstances such as finances, work or family issues…the raw materials that I share here are so often clues to how to go about addressing any of those situations in a broader, more insightful, way that suggests to you the wonderful possibility that everything is working in your favour. I refer to them as clues because those things that feel like they are going most “wrong” with our lives often hint at ways in which we have become separate or dislodged from a fundamental aspect of self, a sort-of core truth, leaving us feeling perpetually misaligned with our own lives, going around in circles. Our journey back to the kind of wholeness that delivers greater joy, better health etc. is like a trail of breadcrumbs left by the clues of our “symptoms” as we examine them with our widest, most instinctual and lease pre-judging set of “eyes”.

A magical thing happens when we get even close to wholeness; we feel an updraft, as it were, lifting us up to a new level of experience and we become the spiral that breaks us out of the tedium of circles. Suddenly, we are viewing things from a more advantageous perspective than before and everything seems clearer, crisper and more vibrant, somehow. Without having to “solve” anything, we make better sense of some of the chaos that once bewildered us and we love ourselves more completely, less conditionally, than ever before. We can tell when we are getting there as we feel the joy build in our heart and the excitement in our gut; life starts to feel appealing again, even with all its difficulties. Its as though nothing has changed yet everything has. Its fascinating how better health almost always comes in this feeling’s wake; as soon as we surrender to the not-knowing part of how we got there, since this is not to do with “figuring anything out”.

When we dare to step outside of the mainstream, beyond only hearing what medical science has to say or what other people think is possible for us, beyond an ingrained sense that we are “small” and “know nothing”, that someone else needs to step forward and “help us”, things have this miraculous way of coming together, conspiring with us to deliver us into completely new territory, where we feel…yes…more whole than we ever did before.

I am testament to the reality that this open-hearted clue trail has led me directly to a degree of wholeness and of unconditionally blissed-out love of life that was completely unknown to me before my health supposedly “crashed”; that crash serving as the much-needed catalyst to deliver my highest and, certainly, speediest evolution…ever (out of many lifetimes of playing with, I suspect, extremely similar themes in order to become the expert of them). In fact the coming-together of many sources of greater understanding, gathered across lifetimes, converging around the pivot point of YOU, is  what a healing journey is all about. It’s as though we regather many scattered parts of ourselves; all these apparently broken aspects that we once threw out on the wind, to serve as scouts and experience-collectors, and as we piece that disparate jigsaw back together again, we realise their amalgamation (however odd its uniqueness may seem, compared to a more mainstream idea we once had) looks like the wholeness we have long searched for. This is who we are.

When you also allow that what YOU are going through is making you the absolute expert of YOUR particular circumstances, allowing you to know and own things about yourself that no other party is qualified to tell you, then you too will experience a new kind of wholeness born out of self-responsibility; that is, taking responsibility for the experiences you are having. Paired with its seeming opposite factor; that, really, we know nothing so remaining open and surrendered to all possibilities is the only way forwards, this stance becomes especially powerful…a sort of super-power. This dichotomy (I know everything…and yet I know nothing) made whole…as us…is like a giant key to the doorway of selfhood; and better health and wellbeing lie just the other side of this, already waiting for you.

An overarching desire is to be of service through the sharing of these experiences; to shine a light for others in case what I offer or play-around with might be of help in their own unique journey. Writing about my health experiences is something I do for love and I spend a great deal of my time doing it, purely for that thing – love. You will find plenty of that love here and on my @living_whole_health instagram account.

In addition to Living Whole, I write an even more longstanding blog; one that goes deeper into some of the same themes and off into many other directions, in an (if that’s possible) even more playful and self-exploratory way. That sister blog, which I started in March 2011, is called Spinning the Light  and I invite you to take a look.

When I’m not writing, I’m a professional artist working in (for many years) oil on canvas and (most recently) a combination of digital methods, drawing on my expertise as a painter. My art can be seen on my primary website Helen White, ordered as art prints and, of course, you can keep track of it daily via my “other” Instagram account @helenwhiteartist.

This post is taken from the updated About section of my Living Whole blog; shared here as a refreshed introduction to any new readers that have recently joined me. Its so good to see you here – please do keep the conversation flowing with your comments (and subscribe to my two Instagram accounts since I used them both daily for snippets of inspiration).