My Healing Journey through Poetry following a Health Crisis

So I wanted to be here to tell my fellow autoimmune-rs that all is not lost and with  some effort we  can retrieve our life 

And to you my good friends here , what an invisible illness feels like and that with a little support  we can have the life we deserve

The reason— I decided to take some help and invited two of my friends who wonderfully resonated with my challenges and became my cheerleader, 

Together we will navigate our writing journey , 

But first a little on how I discovered the writer in me.

Growing up I had no plans of becoming  a writer and was getting ready for a corporate life  and eventually landed my dream job.

Then somethings changed.
A few years into my job I found myself falling in the trap of a sickness cycle I was advised rest which I followed, but even then my sickness only increased by the day.

Finally after passing through several doctors and umpteen number of tests done I was diagnosed with a rare kind of Autoimmune disorder.

I was put on steroids/NSAIDs which actually rendered me immobile and coupled with the severity of the flare episode—my days of ordeal  began

What I need you to understand that here is it is not easy to live a physically absent life.

And yet for someone like me, it is more real than reality.

One fine morning into my young but seriously adult life, I realised my genes have taken precedence over my dreams, my wishes, and my life goals.

You have no escape, your life fortified within four walls, your muscles hardly twitching and your only connection to the outer world is that piece of sky barely visible from your Venetian glass.What do you do?With some days of fret and non-acceptance, I learnt to move away from the real world  and crawled towards creating my own, finding keys to a land, which till then was drowned in the noise of conformity and  structured living.So, I stepped out of my  utterly non-happening physical life and took the ladder to the world where nothing mundane mattered.

I slowly trained myself to visualize and audiate in a way they never teach you in school.

I entered a world where I heard the earth humming, rain making melody, the sun blinding sight, and that rare vibe of unconditionality you long to experience in that human-infested world.

By then I was quite done with the sermons, and social in-sensitivities and began to find solace in taking the flight to that final frontier where I have never gone before,Not because I had no choice but because now I wanted to. How they say the tiger has tasted blood….

But see the irony , Your brain can always grow wings only to realize your roots are too deep for you to take a flight and lose yourself amongst the clouds. And that is where you learn to create your microcosm within the ever-expanding macro one — living without any Terms or Conditions.

Simply put which I keep sharing I converted my terrace into a green patch.

In one such morning, sitting amongst my green babies inadvertently, I took refuge in my journal.That was a moment of exhilaration I still recall with some fondness ….

The imageries dancing upon my eye’s vision slowly turned into alphabets, alphabets turned into words, words into sentences, sentences into thoughts and thoughts into feelings.This experience helped me create a world of happy co-existence for the first time away from life’s cacophony,
Slowly confusions that blighted my mind-sky ,metamorphosed into soul searching connecting me to myself.

Things started changing when I stopped ‘becoming’ and allowed myself to ‘just be.’

It was November 2019, that I joined a support group for my kind of Autoimmune disorder. To my astonishment that group had 50 thousand members.
While sharing my experience with the group I realised I am writing to some audience.
Another significant observation was that most people who were engaged meaningfully were either writers or artists or in someway self employed working from home.

Standing upon a heap of failure trying to get back to my previous normal, I was slowly realising that it was time to embrace my new normal, though becoming a writer sounded very distant.

Finally came 2020, with its musings. 

I could sense the restlessness around me which I felt in the initial years of my quarantine and I thought why not share my experience of coping  with my friends, hoping it will help them cope.So walking over my inhibitions, moving through clouds, I started on a journey of a life time.

All the words my pen scribbled connecting me to myself, breaking and decoding an existence of cellular kind, that was lazying sweetly in some remote corner, now found wings.To cut the story short I gathered courage to publish my first article in one of my social media pages.

What followed was a healing journey of pure magic.

 Can you believe the next day I re-connected with almost 25 of my friends from school and university !

That’s how my roots found nourishment and grew flowers. How those flowers conversed with the wind, travelled the distance and after being around virtually, for almost two years now, I can say I am safely home.

Now that I sit here and call myself a writer and most importantly poet I look back to connect the dots, and wonder did all this happen because I refused to take note of my inner calls
 Was it universe’s way to lead me to this path of creativity and importantly writing that was so long hiding in me?

When in days of ignominy, where I withdrew from active normal and social life, I have asked the blank wall in front   ‘Why Me?” 

Searching for that answer I think I had to wait to reach this day — Maybe….maybe….to introduce myself to the world not only as an autoimmune crusader but also a writer

But calling my self a poet…..that’s a beautiful healing journey of self-discovery for which I will now like to invite my two panelists, excellent writers and my friend Somsubhra Banerjee https://shombnrje.medium.com/ and Manali Mitra https://medium.com/@Manali_Mitra

(Follow the video for this discussion on writing as passion and writing for healing)