Unlike the disability rights crowd I’m content to use the word “courageous” to describe what it’s like waking up every day and having to live with an illness whether chronic or in remission.

As a fifty-three-year old woman, I don’t think anything or anyone is normal in this world. One day I simply couldn’t get out of bed again. So I stayed home.

Yes, I tell you: give me some kind of prize for having had a breakdown. Call me courageous even though I recovered and I’m in remission. No one should have to deal with an illness every day of their lives regardless of whether or not they still have symptoms.

First of all, folks, it’s courageous to practice wellness in a climate where others want the right to choose to be ill. Only the ill times were no joke for me.

My belief is that you can find your kind of wellness within your illness even if your condition is more severe.

I’m not going to minimize or discount the pain people are in. Nor do I want others to gloss over the pain I’m in. Though I report from the land of Well and Plenty I didn’t always have this fertile tilled soil. It’s too darn hard to get where I’ve gotten that you bet I expect others to have compassion for all of us.

We cannot live our lives in mortal fear of emotionally clueless people who have no compassion for us and our trials. That’s why I say: give us some kind of Nobel Prize just for waking up and being able to go out the door in the morning.

Whether we’re still in pain or doing better isn’t the point. The exclamation point is that each day we’re trying our best to survive and thrive.

We’re winners just because we get up in the morning.