Praise Report

Six months ago I walked out of my endocrinologist's office with a prescription for heart medication, another to regulate my thyroid hormones, and a diagnosis that included the words, “ticking time bomb.” 

Forty-five years of repressed emotions and learned behavior had manifested into a sickness that was wreaking havoc on my body. 

Twenty-five pounds had dropped from my already small frame. 

The signature light that twinkled in my eyes, gone. 

My skin was gray, my hair was falling out, and my bones were tight, brittle and distorted in ways that limited my range of motion. Walking up stairs felt hard. Reaching behind my back to put on a bra, impossible. 

Daily anxiety and depression crippled me. Even the smallest of tasks brought on crying spurts. Getting out of bed in the morning was hard. 

Facing my work everyday, the work of trying to help other women heal, felt cruel. Impossible.  

Hyperthyroidism was the diagnosis. “Don’t worry,” my doctor assured me. “There’s medicine to control it. Many people take it for life with no issues.” 

My heart sank. 

When I was little, I used to wet the bed. And not just the bed. And not just when I was little. By the age of 8, when most young kids had long learned how to go to the bathroom and relieve themselves, I was still peeing on myself, regularly. My family had taken to calling me pissy-etta-smith. Ask them today, and they will say, with love, that it was meant as a term of endearment. 

Everyone wondered when I would grow out of it. 

Grow out of it. 

When I was even younger than 8, I was living with my mom, bouncing around from Seattle to Texas and California and back. Hitchhiking was one of our favorite forms of transportation. A teenager when she had me, and struggling with drug addiction by the time I was toddler, those early days with my mom often included me being dropped off at friends’ houses, or sometimes family. Places where people with kind eyes would let me stay until my mom got back. 

Let me stay. 

I learned in those spaces to shrink small, to be quiet, as to not be a bother. To make due, as to not be a strain. It meant, often, not asking to go to the bathroom when I knew I needed to go. Gripped by fear of speaking up for myself, left in these strange places, I would hold it for as long as I could, until I couldn’t. Then I would pee myself. Shamed and embarrassed, I would often try to hide my clothes or wet sheets. 

But you can’t hide from yourself. Not forever. 

Eventually I stopped peeing the bed. But I didn’t stop trying to not be a bother to the people around me. That skill, honed as a little girl, was my bread and butter. I could anticipate the needs of others, adapt in any situation, wait my turn, go without. 

I carried that behavior that I learned as a little girl into a 19-year marriage where I let my husband dictate everything from our bedtime to our budget. 

I carried it into my friendships, into my workplace and leadership style, every part of me defined by those early days where I had learned that silence meant safety. 

But it doesn’t. Silence can mean death. 

Walking out of that doctor’s office, the same heaviness that I carried as a little girl consumed me. But thankfully, this time, informed by the work of GirlTREK, and inspired by the thousands of women whose stories I had learned intimately, I knew I didn't have to carry it anymore. 

When you google hyperthyroidism, it will tell you that common causes for the condition include exposure to toxins, stress, and Graves’ disease, an auto-immune disorder where the body attacks itself. 

As I read more and more about what I was experiencing, my sadness turned to relief and the load that I was carrying lightened. 

At least I wasn’t going crazy. And for years, as symptoms that I couldn't understand showed up, that’s exactly what I thought was happening. 

But I wasn’t crazy. 

I was traumatized. That’s what I learned through my research. And the healing that I needed couldn’t be prescribed in a pill. 

On my knees, in the darkest of hours, I began to ask God for union, connection, strength, and answers. 

And they came in so many forms. 

My assistant recommended a hypnosis and reiki healer. 

A friend recommended a therapist. 

Women from the GirlTREK community put me on their prayer list. 

Trusted advisors sent resources and recommendations. 

I started reading everything. The Untethered Soul. The Power of Now. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. The Astonishing Power of Emotions. The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. Becoming Supernatural. 

I woke up and did daily affirmations. I brushed my teeth to Abraham Hicks recordings on YouTube. 

I went to bed listening to sound baths. 

Much to my man’s chagrin, I started filling our house with crystals. Blue calcite for my heart chakra. Green overtine for my crown. 

I wrote daily confessions in my journal. I left nothing inside. 

I dove deep into shadow work, guided by my favorite astrology apps Chani and Co-Star. 

I prayed sometimes hour by hour. My favorite apps, Abide and Pause, helped me find the words when I didn’t have them. 

I took two months off from flying. 

I stayed home and cooked more. My friend Jeanine shared recipes with me. 

This feels like a long list, but I am sure I am missing some things. 

The point being, everything I’ve done since I walked out of the doctor’s office was about giving myself permission to explore the feelings I had repressed for so long and to speak the truths that little Vanessa had been holding in. 

In the process, I have learned to hold others’ disappointments with more ease, and most importantly, ask myself what I need and take the time to give it to myself. 

I did also take the medication. 

Until I walked into the doctor's office last month and was greeted by the smiling face of my doctor. 

“Your numbers,” he said, “are all normal. I am looking but I can’t find any signs of abnormality with your thyroid. Stop taking the heart medication.” 

Then a few weeks later, “Stop taking all the medication,” he said. 

One of the first books that I reached for on this healing journey was The Power of Awareness. 

Chapter 3 is my favorite. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind [Romans 12:2],” it states. Just as the moth, in his desire to know the flame, was willing to destroy himself, so must you, in becoming a new person, be willing to die to your present self.

Death to every low vibration, I declared. 

Death to every old version of me who couldn't ask for what she needed. 

Death to every unrealistic expectation that I had ever set for myself, or projected on to the people around me. 

Death to the disease that was trying to take root in my body. 

First, by the power of my mind, I made it true, and meditated on it daily. 

Then, as new life came to me, in small and miraculous ways, instead of fearing it, I trusted it and went towards it. 

This is what the past six months of healing have been like for me and I share this now, just hours after finishing Day 2 of the 9-Day Prayer Trek, for any person out there carrying old habits or behaviors that are making you sick. It’s okay to put it all down. It’s safe to believe that goodness is yours and will come to you. It’s imperative.

Vanessa