Sherry and Melissa are delighted to reconnect with their listeners after a long hiatus! This episode combines segments of two different attempts at recording. Sherry and Melissa’s first attempt contained a lot of laughter and upon listening to it, the hosts noticed that maybe they were laughing a bit too much through the hard stuff. The second recording is Sherry’s fullest truth-telling about what it is like for her to live with chronic illness, while Melissa listens. The final version you are listening to starts with a funny story by Melissa from the first recording and then, after our theme music, cuts to Sherry’s truth-telling.

This podcast is not psychotherapy and does not contain medical advice, but is simply a recording of two friends talking.

Episode Highlights:

• The difficulties of understanding people wearing masks as a Hard-of-Hearing person (including at the audiologist!)
• Feeling pressure to downplay sensory loss or chronic illness issues for the sake of others’ comfort
• Balancing gratitude and positivity with self-love and articulating needs
• The fear that being honest and open will cause people to abandon us versus learning to receive love and trust in others
• The everyday challenges associated with sensory loss or chronic illness and their impact on energy and emotions
• Love languages, listening, and what love looks like to us
• Poetry reading: “Sweet Darkness” by David Whyte
• Guided breathing exercise

Quotes:

“It’s hard to see ourselves or where we’re coming from. I’m always curious how other people perceive me.”

“It’s always the mindset of ‘don’t talk about that, nobody wants to hear about it.’ You know what I mean? Because people are gonna see it as complaining, or people are gonna see it as ‘we don’t want to talk about that, that’s not fun to talk about,’ or ‘that scares people.’”

“Sometimes, we have to be uncomfortable. Because if you’re never uncomfortable, you’re not really connecting with people.”

“I know that getting to where I am right now is learning that I had to turn my love to myself and love my own heart and love me and everything about me. And it’s doing me a disservice if I’m constantly trying to make it about everybody else but me.”

“There’s part of me that wants to tell others how unbelievably ill I am. I have no idea how to get people to understand that, I don’t think it’s possible. But what it’s like to live every single day, all day, every day, feeling so sick that most people, they maybe would go to the emergency room.”

“It’s about receiving love from other people. That’s the challenge of letting myself just be fully myself without worrying that people are going to abandon me.”

“My inward journey is asking me to receive love. And I can’t receive love if I’m not authentic about who I am and what I’m going through and allowing people to love me. And I have to remember that some people aren’t going to be able to handle it. And that’s okay.”

“You can’t ever just relax, because you’re always, ‘What’s the next thing?’ you know, or ‘What symptom am I dealing with at this moment?’ It’s always a symptom. It never goes away.”

“Just the energy it takes to pass as, like, fitting in, or to pass as able-bodied is so much that you, like, need to come home and sleep sometimes.”

“I appreciate, you know, people doing things for me. But ultimately, it’s just spending one-on-one time with me, you know, sharing things about what’s going on with you, and have a conversation with me.”

“You don’t have to choose between this source inside and love from others. You get to have both.”

Links:

Email questions or feedback to Melissa@senselessthepodcast.com or