Title: Visionary Philosopher

Gender: Female

Age: 38

Sun Sign: Aries

Chinese Sign: Metal Boar

Location: Carlsbad, CA

“Looking for the Strawberry”

If I was looking at my life from the outside, I would see a life filled with the types of challenges that I wouldn't wish for anyone to have to go through.  When I was 21 years old, I was diagnosed with not just one, but two, life-threatening, “incurable” conditions.  One is called Crohn's disease, an auto-immune condition that affects the intestine, and the other is bipolar disorder, a mental illness that involves extreme highs and lows that can often lead to suicide.  I was told that I would have to be on medication for the rest of my life to help control the symptoms of both of these conditions, but that there was no cure for either of them, so I would have to learn to cope as best as I could.

Growing up, my mom had taught me to always look for the good in every situation, no matter how bleak things seemed to be.  She called it “looking for the strawberry.”  Well, at the tender age of 21, life had provided me with a monumental opportunity to put my mom's philosophy to the test.  Could I really find a strawberry in this?

Halfway through college, after spending a semester studying in Mexico, I was sick with severe physical symptoms for which no doctor could figure out the cause, I had fallen into such a serious and deep depression that I could no longer eat, sleep, or communicate, and my doctor decided that the only course of action to save my life at that point was Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT), also known as shock treatment.  So I was given ten treatments of ECT, which “shocked me back into my body” so to speak, but I experienced significant memory loss because of it.  A few months later, I had my first manic episode, and was given the diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, Type I.

I mustered up my courage and returned to school the following year, feeling as though I had lost most of the memories from my previous two years at college.  I drew on all of my determination and strength to do well in my classes, and it was a huge personal victory for me to graduate Summa cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa.  Not many people really knew how much I had to overcome just to return to school, let alone to graduate at the top of my class.  But I knew, and I drew confidence from the inner strength I was discovering within me, which would serve me in the challenges I would face in the years to come.  It took about a year for the doctors to figure out that my physical symptoms were being caused by Crohn's disease, so by then I had been give the two diagnoses that would greatly influence my life for the next 14 years.

I would like to say that by finally having “labels” for what was wrong with me, it was easy to just take the medications the doctors prescribed and live a “normal” life.  But that wasn't the case.  During my twenties, I was hospitalized on five separate occasions in locked psychiatric wards for episodes of bipolar disorder, sometimes for up to a month at a time.  I went through several extremely painful and debilitating flare-ups of Crohn's disease, often lasting for months or even years.  (As I write this, I am recovering from my most severe Crohn's flare-up, complicated by contracting a serious bacterial infection.  I was hospitalized for two weeks and am now recovering at home.)

There have been many times over the years when it has felt too difficult to go on, and I prayed to God to please just let me leave my body and go Home because I didn't want to be here anymore.  But I knew how much my family and friends loved me and I knew I couldn't leave them and put them through the grief of losing their daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend, and now aunt (my brother and his wife have a one-year-old son).  So I resolved to stay, as I knew I must be here for an important reason, or else God wouldn't have had me go through all these experiences and survive them.

While the friends I graduated with were going on to get graduate degrees and having distinguished careers in law, medicine, education, business, etc., and were getting married and having families, I was at home with my parents - often too ill to work or to have anywhere near the kind of life I had dreamed of for myself when I was younger.  But all of that “down time” forced me into an inward spiritual journey where I contemplated life, why we are really here, and what is really important.  I discovered that a lot of people who had external lives that I envied really weren't at peace or happy on the inside.  In taking the time to go deep within and listen to my own heart and higher self, I discovered a secret: that the greatest treasure in the world - God's Light, Love, and Peace - was inside my own heart, and that I could radiate this Light, Love, and Peace out into the world, bringing the energy of Heaven down to Earth and helping to create the true Home that I longed for here on Earth.  I learned that this kind of “work” was as important as any other kind of work, and that I could do it even when I was sick and bedridden or at any other time I consciously chose to.

Now I have reached a point in my life where I realize what I have gained from these challenges I've gone through.  I have looked for and found not just a few strawberries, but an entire field of them: red, juicy, ripe, and sweet.  Every difficult experience has shaped who I am and provided me with so many gifts - my gratitude for being alive and passion for living every moment to its fullest; my desire to help others and make the world a better place; my inner strength, spiritual growth, and closeness to God; my peace of mind and clarity about who I am and why I'm here; the incredible friends and family who have been there to love, support, cheer me on, and pray for me; the deep compassion I've developed for others and for all living things; and the tools I have gained which have taught me how to live not just an ordinary life, but an extraordinary one.

In February, while I was in the hospital, I started envisioning how I would like to celebrate my 35th birthday, which was on March 27, 2006.  I saw a clear vision of the people I love all together, a karaoke show, dancing, a magician, delicious food, fabulous desserts (including strawberries dipped in chocolate fountains), and a beautifully decorated room filled to overflowing with love, joy, and the celebration of life.  That vision helped to keep my spirits up while I was in the hospital, and now it has come true, exactly as I had envisioned it!

Life is good, and I've learned that it's filled with lots and lots of strawberries.  Just keep looking for them, don't give up, and they will appear.

Member Since: Sunday, June 25 2006

Last Visit: 220 days ago.

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