Category: mental health

chronic illness, gratitude, healing, Health, life, mental health, MS

Life Only Goes in One Direction 

Amanda, walkamyelinmyshoes

 When I was young, way back in the olden days, I was in such a hurry to grow up. As a tween, a phrase that didn’t even exist in the 1980s, I wanted to make my own decisions, eat lots of junk food and stay up as late as I wanted. As a 15 year old, I thought it was very adult to be going to the bar, doing tequila shots and dancing on the speakers. Yikes! The sweet absurdity of being in such a hurry to become someone older.

When my kids were little, I often reminded them that life only goes in one direction, so don’t be in a hurry to grow up. Then I was diagnosed with MS, and I found myself wanting to go back to the before: before I got sick, before my kids had to worry about having a sick mother, before I had to give up my job. I was wishing for a time machine when that phrase popped back into my head. Talk about irony.

It was from my experience as a misguided youth that I gained the wisdom to pass that phrase on to my children, to encourage them to slow down and not wish away their childhood. Yet, there I was, newly diagnosed, desperately wishing there was a rewind button for life. How easy it is to dispense retrospective wisdom, not knowing how much you’ll need it one day yourself.

With the diagnosis, everything I thought I knew about moving forward got turned inside out. MS took not just my health, but the sweet oblivion of how precarious health can be. The luxury of not constantly thinking and worrying about my body. The career I loved, teaching 6 year olds to read, count and sing in French. The before and after line that changed everything and left me with the desperate, completely human wish to go backwards.

When the phrase popped back into my head, at first it felt cruel, like a mockery of the bleak future promised by the neurologist. Life only goes in direction. The doors to reclaim my health locked from the other side. The crushing grief of accepting there is no before to return to.

It took years to move through that resistance to something like peace. I’d hear people say “my illness has been a blessing’, and think they were completely unhinged. Slowly, reluctantly, I started to understand what they meant. There’s a clarity that comes from being forced to stop. From learning to be a human being instead of a human doing. 

The brutal, beautiful truth is that suffering is one of life’s most effective teachers. The things that MS has given me that nothing else could: presence, gratitude and a recalibrated sense of what matters. Not a silver lining so much as a different kind of light.

Something you can try this week: Spend five minutes with the “before”. Let yourself miss it and feel the grief. Then consciously close that door and ask, “what is available to me today?” You don’t have to feel grateful yet, just curious.

❤️ Amanda

” A tree doesn’t regret losing its leaves because it knows it’s time to shed them for a new, beautiful life.”

chronic illness, healing, mental health, MS

The 7 Phrases That Spike MS Symptoms (And What to Say Instead)

Amanda, walkamyelinmyshoes

Wednesday morning.

 Brain fog so thick I couldn’t remember my daughter’s teacher’s name. 

My first thought: ‘My body is attacking itself.’

My second thought: ‘What if that phrase is making everything worse?’

So I decided to test it.

When I started saying ‘My body’s trying to get my attention’ instead of ‘My body is attacking itself,’ something shifted.

I stopped feeling like I was in a war.

I started getting curious. ‘What is it trying to tell me?’

I noticed a pattern. Every time I spiraled into ‘This is just going to get worse,’ my fatigue would spike within hours. 

Not because the disease got worse, because my nervous system did.

7 Most Common, Least Helpful Phrases, Reframed

1. “I’ll never be the same again” → “I’m becoming someone new”

2. “My body is attacking itself” → “My body needs guidance to heal”

3. “I can’t trust my body anymore” → “My body’s trying to get my attention”

4. “I’m a burden to everyone” → “I’m worthy of support and love”

5. “This is just going to get worse” → “No one knows what the future holds”

6. “I should be able to handle this” → “This is hard, and I’m doing my best”

7. “If I just try harder, I can beat this” → “Healing requires patience, not force”

Why This Matters (More Than I Realized)

I used to think my thoughts were just… thoughts. Turns out, every time I told myself “I’m a burden” or “This is just going to get worse,” my body was listening. And responding.

These phrases flip on the stress response, the same system that would kick in if I were being chased by a bear. Except there’s no bear. Just me, sitting on my couch, flooding my nervous system with panic.

And stress? MS loves stress. It’s like pouring gasoline on inflammation. Within hours of a spiral, I’d feel it. Heavier fatigue, sharper pain, brain fog so thick I’d lose words mid-sentence.

Something finally clicked for me. My body can’t heal when it thinks it’s under attack. 

Healing happens in safety. In calm. When my nervous system can actually exhale.

Why I’m Not Pushing Positivity

I tried the “think positive!” approach. It felt fake. My brain knew I didn’t believe “Everything is amazing!” when I could barely get out of bed. The forced optimism just added another layer of failure.

That’s when I learned about neutral reframing. You’re not pretending everything’s fine, you’re just offering your brain a different pathway. A gentler one.

Every time you choose the reframe over the catastrophe, you’re literally building new neural connections. With repetition, those new pathways get stronger. The old ones fade. Not instantly. But gradually. Like training a muscle.

Want to Try This With Me?

Pick the phrase that shows up most for you, the one that feels automatic, like a reflex.

Write your reframe on a sticky note. I have one on my bathroom mirror, and one on my coffee maker, because apparently I need the reminder before caffeine.

When you catch the old phrase creeping in, pause. Read the reframe. Say it out loud if you can. You don’t have to believe it fully yet. You just have to practice offering it as an option.

That’s it. One phrase. One week. Let’s see what shifts.

❤️ Amanda

chronic illness, healing, Health, mental health, MS

The 6 Words That Became My Prison

Amanda, walkamyelinmyshoes

‘I’ll never be the same again.’ I said those six words three weeks after my MS diagnosis, not knowing I was building a prison.

The moment I first said those words, I was trying to feel excited about all the growth in my garden. Instead, I was terrified and overwhelmed with all the work that growth was making for me. 

My body felt like I’d been squeezed through a pasta maker and dragged behind a pickup. I couldn’t find the energetic, motivated person I’d always thought myself to be. (I’d actually always struggled with fatigue but I had a close personal relationship with Denial.)

I repeated variations of that sentence daily for 3 years, swirling in the fog of confusion and grief a life-changing diagnosis brings.

Saying ‘I have MS’ is just a fact. But it’s the way I said it, with defeat, with finality, like it was my entire identity. That’s what kept me stuck. There’s a difference between ‘I have MS’ and ‘I AM sick.’


Your brain builds neural pathways like garden paths. The thoughts you repeat are the ones you “walk” most often. Over time, those paths become smooth and automatic. For better or for worse.

Because your brain’s job is to keep you safe, it takes your repeated thoughts as truth, so whatever you tell it often enough, it starts to believe and look for proof.

When you start choosing new, healing thoughts, you’re simply walking a new path. With practice, your brain learns to follow it naturally.

One morning I woke up thinking ‘I don’t think I can get out of bed today.’ So I didn’t. I spent 14 hours scrolling my iPad, feeling like a burden, spiraling into anxiety about the future. The next morning, before my brain could start its doom loop, I thought ‘What’s one small thing I can do?’ I watered the plants. That was it. But I wasn’t in bed all day.

When I worried that people thought I was faking because I could walk, or that I wasn’t ‘sick enough’ to be on disability, the vertigo would kick in and my ears would ring. Not exactly at that moment, it took some reflection to realize the connection, but the symptoms weren’t just random examples of my body betraying me. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy in action.

Staring at my garden one day, trying to squash the overwhelm at the weeding and pruning calling to me through the fatigue, I watched the hummingbirds flit from one buddleia to another. I envied their boundless energy and wished I could breathe it in.

Then I wondered what it would be like to be an animal and not have the overthinking, negative-biased human brain. That flipped the switch, and I thought, “What if I shift my perspective?” 

Adjusting the lens of how I looked at things, from “I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired” to “What can I do to help myself heal?” was the game-changing move that stopped the carousel of terror and started a true healing path.

These days, when I catch myself thinking ‘I’ll never…’, I pause. Sometimes I can shift it immediately: ‘Not never. Just not today.’ Sometimes I can’t, and that’s okay too.

That garden I was standing in when I first said those six words? I learned to tend it in a different way. Some days with energy, some days from a chair, sometimes just watching the hummingbirds from the window. But I was no longer terrified of the growth, because I was part of it.

The prison was never MS. It was the story I told myself about MS. And I’m the one who holds the key.

What six words have you been saying to yourself? Write them down. Just notice them. That’s where the door starts to open.

❤️Amanda

What path are you creating with your thoughts?
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chronic illness, mental health, MS

Big feelings after MS diagnosis: What I’ve learned in the decade since

Amanda, walkamyelinmyshoes

First, relief. An answer to the strange symptoms that quickly consumed my life. See, I’m not making it up. It’s not all in my head. Except, uh, it was.

In no time, relief morphed into terror at the possibility of a very bleak future.

Three days after diagnosis, I found myself in the grocery store, choking on sobs as I reached for the Honey Nut Cheerios. How to make friends and influence people.

Everything felt impossible. Like I was walking through mud. Breathing took all my energy. My brain was on strike. The neurologist handed me a two foot tall stack of pharmaceutical pamphlets textbooks and said, “Pick one.” Not. Helpful.

I was on my own. So I figured it out. S-l-o-w-l-y. Let me help you get there faster.

My Post-Diagnosis Survival Kit (also handy for general life, especially these days)

1) First lifeline: Stepping outside for 5 minutes, and staring at the sky.

There’s something about the wide expanse of the sky that calms the swirling thoughts and grounds you in the reality that the planet’s still orbiting the sun and life keeps moving forward. 

Even when it feels like your life has crashed down around you.

2) Game-changer discovery: A simple breath technique that works. Baby belly breathing and extended exhales.

First let out a big exhale. This tells your body you’re not in imminent danger and immediately calms down the nervous system.

One hand on your belly. Inhale through your nose for 4 counts, feeling your belly expand.

Exhale through your nose or mouth for 6 counts, feeling your belly deflate.

Five minutes of deep belly breathing and your thoughts stop swirling. Your body shifts into a lower gear.

3) Five minute rule: This became my rule for healing that changed everything. You can do anything for 5 minutes, even on the hardest days. Walking, cleaning, cooking, crying… anything.

Once you prove it to yourself through consistency, it automatically makes you want to do more. That’s how change happens.

Small Shifts, Big Changes

Healing isn’t about giant leaps. And you can’t just heal your physical body. It’s an ‘all hands on deck’ situation of body, mind and spirit. It requires patience, self-compassion and consistency.

But healing is possible. Even if MS is incurable.

The mindset shift: From fixing everything to just doing one tiny thing.

Some days you have to congratulate yourself for moving from the bed to the couch. Or brushing your teeth. Or choosing an apple instead of the cheesies calling your name.

It all counts, and it adds up. 

What I’d Tell My Newly-Diagnosed Self

Your overwhelm is temporary.

You don’t need to figure it all out today.

MS doesn’t get to write your whole story.

You’re already braver than you know.

Your One Next Step

Three micro-actions:

  – Step outside for 5 minutes

  – Try five baby belly breaths, in for 4, out for 6

  – Say one kind thing to yourself

Start with just one.

Remember: You’re not alone in this.

I see you. You got this!

❤️ Amanda

Get Your free MS mindset reset Guide
chronic illness, gratitude, Health, life, mental health, MS

From Chaos to Calm: Your 3-Minute Reset After MS Diagnosis (or anytime)

Amanda, walkamyelinmyshoes

Everything just changed. Your mind is spinning.

You want relief. You want answers. You want to feel better now.

After the relief of finally getting my diagnosis, an answer to my 23-year medical mystery tour, the overwhelm took over. My first neurologist handed me the stack of medication information and told me to pick one. Yeah, I fired him.

I didn’t know where to start. So I did what most of us do. I looked for answers everywhere else.

There’s so much information out there. Diets. Protocols. Supplements. Exercise routines. Many people claim to have the one “best” way to handle your life-changing diagnosis.

But here’s what I learned. You’re the only one who can decide what your healing journey looks like. And when you’re caught in a storm of information and emotion, you can’t hear your own wisdom. You need to find ground first.

MS can make you feel powerless. But creating calm, even for three minutes, is something you can do right now.

Here’s your reset:

Set a 3-minute timer.

Place one hand on your heart, the other on your belly.

Take slow breaths into your belly, the way a baby breathes. The way humans breathe naturally before stress teaches us to hold our breath in our chest.

Close your eyes or look at the sky.

Notice one thing you’re grateful for or hopeful about.

That’s it. Do this once today. Nothing more.

This isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about giving your nervous system permission to settle. Because healing can’t happen in chaos.

Do you have a quick reset to share? Let me know in the comments.

I see you. You’ve got this.

❤️ Amanda

Mindset shift: Chaos to calm.
Take 3 minutes to breathe and stare at the sky.
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