Kahlil Gibran on Pain
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
From Kahlil Giran’s The Prophet
I am writing to let you know what a terrific impact your Woman’s Day article had on me. I just finished reading it, and I have to say thank you for writing that memory issues are at the forefront with fibromyalgia. I am fifty-two and was diagnosed in 1996. Ever since then I’ve been locked in a ferocious battle to retain and recall things. Memory problems have been listed as secondary symptoms in every resource I have encountered, and I was nearly convinced I had some other medical problem in addition to fibromyalgia, until I read your article. My job is difficult enough with a sharp memory(I work in the healthcare field), but when the fog descends, and even on days when I feel on top of things, I struggle to remember details. I am obsessive about writing lists but that is often not enough. It makes me paranoid, feeling that my co-workers think I’m lazy or an idiot not to be able to recall things that come easily to them. I hate to cite my fibro as an excuse, but now I realize that it’s not an excuse, but a reason to explain my memory issues. I wish sometimes that fibro manifested in some visual way so others could understand what we’re going through.