Lifeunwitnessed- Healing Journey

 I remember my first migraine very clearly.  It was in high school, just before Christmas and I was in the drama room watching a video of that year's musical production.  I was there with my boyfriend, we'd only been dating for about a month, when I got the worst headache I'd ever had.  I was prone to headaches, especially in the summer when I would often get heat exhaustion but I'd never had one like this.  It felt like someone was taking a drill to my left eye and boring into my brain.  I remember running out the back door into the parking lot because I felt nauseous.  My boyfriend followed me, and I promptly vomited on his shoes.  It wasn't the only time I would vomit on him, unfortunately.   For the longest time, my migraines didn't really impact my life all that much.  It was shortly after that first incident that I was introduced to triptans, and Immitrex became my new best friend.  If I was able to take the Immitrex with...

  I've always had an interesting relationship to food. Growing up, I was a competitive dancer who was always on the muscular side, so was constantly being told I had to watch my weight. My mother constantly yo-yo dieted, so that didn't help with the relationship either. I eat my emotions, like me mother did before me. However, that's not really what I want to talk about today. Starting in January, I finally gathered enough resources to go on a very restrictive food plan to see if I could pinpoint what was triggering my migraines. It was a very long list of foods to avoid, and I actually found it pretty easy to do- I guess all this healing is starting to pay off! However, we go to my mother-in-law's house for dinner once a week and the list of things I couldn't eat was way too long for her to manage, so, we agreed that while I was on this food plan, we would order in from restaurants where I knew there was something I could eat. We did this for 8 weeks, but I ...

 I don't know why I thought this would be a quick and easy process. For some reason I thought, yup, I'll cut out all the migraine trigger foods, go migraine free for a month and then start introducing foods back in and I'll have it all figured out.  It hasn't worked that way. I haven't written in a few weeks because it felt like all I had to say was- I've had another migraine.  I'm now in week 8 of my trigger-free diet, and I've had a migraine every week.  There has been no change. So, where has that left me. Well, I think I may have identified some new triggers- sesame, and Worcestershire sauce.  As well, it's shown me that most of my migraines probably aren't caused by food.  Some are due to changes in atmospheric pressure and some may just be a result of programming.  Deep, deep programming.  You see,  I watched all the women in my life suffer from difficult situations, relationships, life circumstances.  They were strong women, but t...

I got a migraine on the 9th.  Not a big one.  Not super painful, but enough to make me sensitive to light and sound, and to feel nauseous.  No reason that I can figure out.  Just a migraine. I had a session with my intuitive healer and guide on the 9th and she reminded me that our bodies like routine, habit, predictability and that our bodies also listen to what we think.  I have a bad habit of thinking about migraines and my internal monologue quite often goes something like this 'wow, I haven't had a migraine in a while, I bet you I'm going to get one soon.  It's inevitable.  That ginger that I had in my smoothie this morning is probably going to give me one.  Or maybe because I didn't sleep well last night.  Guess I should get ready for a migraine.  I know it's coming.'  I guess my body listens to me, and wants to give me what I expect.  So, my new mantra is:  I no longer get migraines.  I love my body.  And s...

 It's been a week since my last migraine, and I've been feeling pretty good.  I menstruated this past weekend, and did not get a headache.  This is good. I've been monitoring my food intake more closely- tracking my breakfasts and lunches to see if there's something food wise that I've missed.  Maybe green onions, or sesame seeds, or ginger. I did eat some breaded chicken fingers last week, and had some wings and poutine last night for the super bowl.  So far, no headache. I'm celebrating this small victory.  Finding joy and gratitude in even the smallest of things helps me to shift my thinking.

 There is either something that I'm eating that is a trigger, or my headaches are being caused by something else.  I had another migraine yesterday.  It may have been caused by the maple sesame chicken that I made for dinner (even though the recipe came from a migraine free cookbook), or maybe it's because the atmospheric pressure dropped.  I don't know.  So, I'm getting even stricter with the diet, and writing down EVERYTHING I eat so that I can see if there are any correlations between food and my headaches.  Maybe I have a trigger that I didn't know about- like sesame, or broccoli.  I tend to be special in so many different ways, why not in my triggers? But, I know that I am on the right track.  I pulled some oracle cards the other day and here's what came up. Embrace your sensitivity- stop trying to fight against it or deny it exists.  Find a way to look at this migraine thing as a challenge or an adventure rather than something arduous a...