You are not alone,
You are not crazy,
It’s not all in your head.
You deserve to have hope, meaning, tolerance, compassion, validation, and competent treatment.
We didn’t choose Lyme, yet we must choose how to relate to it
None of us chose to have Lyme or chronic illness. You are not at fault or responsible for your illness. You are not responsible for the shortcomings of our current medical system, despite having to live with the reality of them every day. You have had to learn to advocate for yourself, to know deeply your body in ways that you may have never expected or wanted to.
It can be really hard to be in touch with the positive aspects of our journey with chronic illness when we are in pain, isolated, scared, exhausted, or some combination of these and other symptoms. And yet, those who have gone before us keep coming back to remind us not only that healing is possible, but that somehow, some way, their journey with chronic illness has enriched their lives.
Our illness calls us to realize our limitations as embodied beings, to accept our fragility in a way that previously we may have wanted to avoid. It often is accompanied by tremendous loss, and yet so many of those who have walked the path before us consider this loss to be calling us towards something greater— something that connects us with all life.
Quotes from a Lyme Legend
“These kinds of diseases, like Lyme, they reduce a person down to the core. The old life gets stripped away one layer at a time like an onion and sometimes we weep. It’s a difficult process and one that our culture doesn’t understand, and doesn’t have much time for it, either. There is, however, and many of you have seen this too, a tremendous rebirth that can happen on the other side. And lyme people always start out the same way. They don’t feel good, they go to their doctor, and their doctor screws them around… In this kind of a disease process, we find parts of ourselves we did not know that we had, and a different kind of self begins to come into being. This process is very much like stories in ancient shamanic cultures where they would say, there would come a time in somebody’s life when the spirits of disease would come and eat their body. They would strip them down to the bones and then the bones would be boiled into nothing. Then there would come this moment in time where they would start to reconstitute. The body would regenerate around the bones in a new way, and the person is very different from then on”— S. Buhner
“I don’t see Lyme as just a disease… It’s a journey to the depths of the Self. It teaches us a lot about ourselves, and about the world, and about our culture. In many ways I look at people with Lyme disease as our teachers, and the organisms themselves are our teachers. And the teachings that they bring are really crucial to the time that we live in”—S. Buhner
Transpersonal Realities of Lyme - Guidance from I-Ching
Hexagram 47 from the I Ching as translated by Wilhelm:
47 – Forty-Seven | K’un / Exhaustion
A Dead Sea, its Waters spent eons ago, more deadly than the desert surrounding it:
The Superior Person will stake his life and fortune on what he deeply believes.
Triumph belongs to those who endure.
Trial and tribulation can hone exceptional character to a razor edge that slices deftly through every challenge.
Action prevails where words will fail.
SITUATION ANALYSIS:
This is the realm of the Shaman.
You have exhausted every alternative, spent yourself completely, taxed body and mind beyond your former limits.
Survival and salvation lie beyond your reach now.
Only transcendence to a new existence — a higher plane of being — will see you through.
The Old You is just a dry husk.
You can’t return to it.
Metamorphosis is the only grace offered.
You can only return to your homeland as a New You.
We are a developing resource
This site is currently in development and is meant to be a resource, support, and affirmation for your experience with Lyme and/or other chronic illnesses. While it can not provide specific mental health referrals for you yet, Lyme Mental Health encourages you to explore professional support from a therapist that is familiar with chronic illness and/or Lyme Disease. You deserve to be supported by someone who has the ability to validate what you are going through and what you have gone through. Furthermore, we would encourage you to reach out to your local Lyme support group. Below is a link.
Lyme Support Groups: https://www.lymedisease.org/lyme-disease-support-groups/
Over time, the site will compile more resources for you. For now, our site operator has to move slowly as they too suffer from chronic illness.
please note that this site does not have the capacity to offer medical advice, specific mental health referrals, or assessment. If you are having a medical or psychiatric emergency please dial 911 (medical) or 988 (psychiatric).