What We Have Lost

A few days ago I read an article in the Fibromyalgia Network Journal. It was written by a therapist, who also happens to be fibrotastic. She wrote that it is so important for us to grieve what we have lost because of fibromyalgia. Have you looked at all you have lost and grieved it and then been able to move on? For me, I find that I am always in the midst of experiencing the loss of some new part of my self and my life. Perhaps that is why it has not been so cut and dry as, list my losses and allow myself to grieve and move on.
We are all different of course, but I am guessing that there are quite a few losses that we (the fibrotastic) all share. A pain free day for instance. Can you remember your last?  And all of you who are fibrotastic people, you know what I mean by pain - it looks nothing like the commercials for popular fibromyalgia drugs. We don't just ache all over. Most of us are fighting to live through and with and in spite of pain of the debilitating variety.

Have you had to give up doing things you used to love to do? Your career, your art, your hobbies, your social life? Have these things become impossible because of pain, exhaustion, the necessity of bathroom mapping, hyper-sensitivity to light, sound, smell, touch?

Have you taken the time to grieve your losses? Or are you like me, still struggling not to lose everything, even while watching the life you have built, the life you have loved, be stolen away from you? How do YOU cope with all the losses? I would love to know :).