This year has looked very different than I would have ever imagined it looking a few years ago. In 2016, my life started to take a turn that I really didn’t feel equiped to handle and that I resisted every step of the way. Shortly after returning from Israel that summer, I began a healing protocol for my psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis because my medications had stopped working and I was in a constant flare-up. I spent the next year focusing on ways to get my health on track, cooking almost every meal for myself, spending a significant amount of time alone resting and also finding that the relationships I had in my life were adding more stress than joy. I looked around at the life I had so carefully crafted and did not love what I saw. I was working much less and constantly wondering where the next paycheck would come from which only added more stress to my sensitive system.
In fact for most of 2017 I wasn’t even working on my dreams as I had been used to for so long. Things got so low that I had to take a job in Brooklyn, an hour commute from my home in the Upper West Side, doing marketing for a real estate startup my friend was launching. I was grateful for the income but my soul was deeply confused. Just 8 years earlier I had been SO sure of my path and had been living it out in every moment of every single day since then. I launched an online magazine (shout out to Bella Life!) in 2010 and had over 100 contributors writing for me in the hopes that it would one day be turned in to a talk show – and it was! I hosted 2 seasons of my very own show on global television and had been so proud. Not only that but I was sure that I had made it, obvi. Cut to years later after being a spokesperson for one of my favorite skincare brands (still love Fresh so much) on QVC, hosting events all by myself for up to 400 people at a time, getting countless brand partnerships and so many dreams coming true, I was confident that I was on my way to everything falling into place. But God had other plans….as usual.
The truth is that all of the things I had been focusing on and working on were not my true calling and what I was put on this earth to do. They all used a bunch of my skills like sales, hosting, being on camera, building strong relationships, but they weren’t using my life experiences to it’s fullest and that was always what I had dreamed of doing. When I was 15 years old I hit one of the lowest points of my life. My body was breaking down with scaling skin that bled through my sheets and clothes often and the bullying at school was absolute torture. I started praying to God to end things for me because I would never do it myself but I wanted to be out of the pain I was in so badly. God’s response? A message I will never forget. In the midst of my pain I heard “My child, this pain is not about you. It is about everyone else. Please trust me.” It was a message that I didn’t fully understand at that age but every cell in my body knew that it was true and it comforted me like the best friend I needed throughout some of the darkest moments in my life. I began seeing my life as an opportunity to serve others through the pain I had been through and still come up against often.
So during the years when I was achieving all kinds of goals and thinking I was on track, I wasn’t focusing on the reason God had brought me through so much darkness for so long. What I always knew was the whole reason I was born, even if I couldn’t see the whole picture yet.
At the end of 2017, after I left my consulting job in Brooklyn and found myself stressed about my finances again, I decided to take the leap I had been avoiding for an entire lifetime. I chose to speak about my journey with living a live while also dealing with a chronic illness. I can see now that God did this masterful thing where he stripped my life of so many things in order to leave me with the hardest choice I had ever been faced with in my professional life. Do I keep doing things on the surface or do I take the plunge in to my most vulnerable parts and let the world see them? I started small, step by step, and almost immediately I was encouraged and rewarded for that brave step. After not having much work come in for over a year I started getting brand partnerships that were specific to my conditions, I took the stage at conferences centered around health and most of all, my level of fulfillment was at an all time high because I felt that I was truly making a difference in people’s lives.
I am telling you this story for a couple of reasons my love. First of all I really need you to know that if you feel that the world is crumbling around you or that you are in a moment of your life when nothing seems to be working in your favor, this is a divine message. I don’t mean that in the annoying self-help way where we just slap the word “divine” on something and create a message from our mess like it doesn’t totally break us in two. It’s brutal. I know! And even if you can’t see it in this moment I am holding that truth for you in my heart until you can.
I am also sharing this with you because I am feeling incredibly nostalgic right now and I want to remind myself (and you!) of how far we have come. As of tomorrow, Chronicon will be happening in exactly FOUR WEEKS. This project has taken every single ounce of my heart, my truth, my vulnerability, my tears, my joy, my rage (at injustice), my creativity and my trust to bring to life and I am honored to be on the journey with you by my side. I created Chronicon because for 28+ years of living with chronic conditions, I felt alone in a way that was heartbreaking and made me question my very existence multiple times. When I found out that I was not the only one who had a chronic condition that felt this way throughout their health journey and that there are 133+ Million Americans that also have a chronic illness, I knew we had to come together and break the cycle of isolation.
I hope to see you at Chronicon on October 28th my love. It’s going to be a day we will never forget. And if you can’t join us live for whatever reason, my friends over at Healthline.com are going to be live streaming the whole thing. I will have more details on that in the next couple of weeks. Be sure you’re following along with our journey on our Instagram page as well, we are growing and it’s so beautiful to witness! Loving you and grateful for your tremendous support as I have navigated this journey throughtout the last 10 years.