Kali J Desautels

Today is a weird anniversary for me – 5 years ago today is what I fondly think of as the “Day the Shit Hit the Fan”. 5 years ago today, my body started to fight me again for the first time in 10 years, my anxiety and depression became completely unmanageable, and I spiralled into a months long search for answers to help me get out of bed and back into my life.

I remember needing to sit down at the butterfly release, and then I drove my son to an ultrasound and I could not get out of the car, because I was shaking so badly and all I wanted to do was climb out of my own skin. When I got home, I laid down and could feel the bed vibrating from my own shaking form.

5 years ago today, the grief of losing my Grampa, my eating disorder and over exercising triggered my autoimmune thyroid disease to change drastically, and I began the long journey to my eventual fibromyalgia diagnosis.

That was a hard, hard year. At the time, it was the hardest year of my life. My ability to parent my kids suffered, my ability to function as a person and a wife and a friend not only suffered but completely fell apart. I did not know that this beating of my soul would result in the largest amount of growth that I had had in decades. When I became well, I could not imagine how happy and healthy I would feel. I could not imagine how much love I would feel for others, nor how much confidence I would find. I also had no idea that this anniversary would find me in another hospital, working through an even more insane year of “growth”. All I can hope is that 5 years from now, this will feel like a long long time ago, too, and that the changes will be just as meaningful as the ones leading to the anniversary.

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