Wellness

Welcome to Spirituality and Your Health! In the months that follow we will be exploring the role spirituality has in healing and maintaining health, both physically and emotionally. But before we jump into the health aspect, we need to define what spirituality is. By default, many people think “religion” in association with spirituality. A spiritual person is thought of as someone who prays a lot and sings hymns and is generally very devout. So taking care of one’s spiritual side means dressing in our Sunday best and sitting in a pew for an hour, right? Yes. And no. It depends on who you are.

Let’s begin with the basics. Every person on earth has a longing. There’s a desire, a fire burning in our hearts, a pull that lives deep within us telling us we need to do something, be somebody, find our place in the world, define who we are, to belong in this life. This is the spark of creation itself. It is the driving passion that makes us feel alive when we are indulging it. All people have this longing, it is with us when we are born. We cannot choose to have this fire, we can only choose how it manifests. That choice–what we do with our fire–is spirituality.

Spirituality can be affirming or it can be destructive. Some spend their fire energy, or eros, doing good for others: teaching, volunteering, healing. Others use their eros to satisfy something for themselves: painting, taking classes, rebuilding engines, …

Who would guess that 3,006 milligrams of anything could control a person’s destiny? Simply, your anticonvulsant pills are your keys to life, rather than merely survival. This is why you need to know what the latest medical breakthroughs are regarding epilepsy research and how you can apply this knowledge to your seizure type(s).

When my pills work there is no threat of seizures, and I usually know in the morning what cards I’m dealt. My payoff is that my legs work, my work on The Epilepsy Connection is more efficient, and I’m bestowed total control of the outcome of my day, minute by minute. Working pills are my “genie in a bottle” that grants my main wish – health. I thrive when given a day with nothing to adapt to; I can focus intently on what I choose without aborting seizures to remain conscious. There is no need to strategize an urgent place to sit to prevent injury. Peace is not something I search for but rather it is a morning gift and revelation as well. There’s a huge red ribbon lushly wrapped around it. To say that this is refreshing is a massive understatement.

One day, when health stability and the inspiration to write a winning article coincided, I headed for an aesthetically beautiful place to write. I was there with my mother, just days before, on an unstable day guided by the wheels of a chair. Friends I met on my visit with her took “triple takes” in …