Have You Mourned Your What If's?

It sounds like a strange question or at least it was to me when asked by a dear friend. "Have you mourned your what if's?" I had to really step back and evaluate the question before I could even begin to wrap my fibro-fogged brain around it. So I started a timeline starting from the beginning of my first symptoms to my current semi-productive state. It has been eight years now since my first twinge of pain that lead to a landslide of bad health to follow and overcome including chronic pain, insomnia, depression, anxiety, Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Almost sounds like a preface to a medical report that ends with no real solution, only band-aides followed by questions and foot notes. But there it was in all its ugly and frustrated truths.
Back in 2004 I was an ambitious corporate climber with the nations largest printing company, The Hearst Corporation. Not only was I climbing at a deserving but explosive rate, I had found my professional niche. I was becoming the youngest executive in a Fortune 500 company not to mention I was a woman in what still is a male dominated field. I found myself at the age of 28 holding the world in my hands without boundaries and loved every second of it, little did I know it was the beginning of the end. After months of pain, being ill and misdiagnosed I was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism. In one full swoop not only was I knocked off my feet but my career took a massive hit and never truly recovered. I was told by the specialists that I should have never survived the severity of blood flooding my lungs and would be lucky to ever fully recover let alone leave the hospital.The collision of emotion hit me like a ton of bricks. I had two small daughters ages 3 & 4 at the time who I couldn't imagine not having their mother to raise them and the sympathies from work that would only last for so long before it effected the bottom line making me replaceable. The two most important things in my life were in jeopardy and totally out of my control but my type A personality ignored the expected and got up, brushed myself off and jumped back in as soon as I was able, or should I say pass for able.
Over the years I fought off bacterial pneumonia eight times followed by the rash of symptoms that brought me to Fibromyalgia. We all have a back story of the person we were before Fibro took hold and changed our lives forever. I finally  made the decision in 2010 that I could no longer do my job the way I was intended to and had become a sideline mom for my girls. The powerhouse executive and practicing soccer mom was a shadow that I have drug behind me ever since. So, the question "Have you mourned your what ifs?" makes perfect sense to me now. I had been holding the what ifs against myself for years, what if I hadn't gotten fibro? Where would my career of taken me? What if I hadn't been in so much pain to play with my girls the way I was intended to, did I miss some pivotal moment that will now never show itself?
I will never know the answers to any of my what if's, but what I do know it's important to recognize what those things are, accept them, mourn them and find a way to forgive yourself for something that was never in your control tp begin with. I am still a work in progress finding new avenues of creation that allow me to feel productive and positive. There will always be the days where it takes every ounce of my being to get out of bed, but I do and even if nothing is accomplished the one thing you can say, is 'I am strong and this is only one day, bring it on tomorrow!" Allowing yourself to forgive, let go of any guilt and mourn the loss of your "What If's" is the first step to reclaiming the new you. The Fibro-fighting bad ass that has no regrets and nothing but a blank canvas to create in front of you. Today is that day, today you become "what if" free!