Fibromyalgia AWARENESS Contest ends today -- the process from the OT in me.

Today is May 19th, the last day of our 2011 Fibromyalgia Awareness Day contest.  There are many contributions and they are ALL REALLY GOOD.  'GRATE' as we say around here!  Since we do fibromyalgia awareness EVERY DAY, all day at Lumigrate.com, and have been, 365 days a year, for over two years now, this year I wanted to bring it back 'home' -- that's been my theme for 2011 is to spend equal time in my own community which has AMAZING providers and people who have FMS, and 'inteGRATE' them with the equally amazing nation-wide providers.  I'd had some other things 'in the works' for this year which I started planning plenty of time in advance but the thing is that when people are involved sometimes things don't go as planned. 

In the three LONG years that I've been developing and creating and shepherding Lumigrate, I have learned to not get 'upset' or 'frustrated' when things don't go according to 'my vision and plan', because I'm just one human involved with this 'Lumigrate thing' among thousands at this point, and I have come from being aware, knowing, and then incorporating into my reality and life that there's more going on here than meets the eye, so to speak. I speak here of the spiritual realm, not just what you 'see' with your eye when you look at Lumigrate.com, though there is so much more behind the scenes than you see here, that's what 'development' is all about.   

Every time my brain or ego has said 'argh, this is NOT going right' , every time when I stepped back and just let things unfold as they 'would' -- allowed them to do so -- painful as it was sometimes, devastatingly so here and there -- it ends up clearly down the road of time that 'that was as it was supposed to be.'  And so then after that happened enough, I was able to get more used to it and confident and change my habits and catch it early on that 'oooh, THIS is happening as it is to be unfolding, just go with it -- your job now, Mardy, is to get as good as you can at doing with the flow and steering with your oar, not rowing the boat single handedly.'  

That's very comforting and a relief, naturally. In a way it's like getting on an airplane when all you've known of is cars in your life and trusting 'this is really going to get you there faster and safer than in a car'.   I use that analogy because I was reminded recently by someone who had the roughest flight of her entire life and career of flying this week, that because of my mother's agreement with G-d in the 1940s, I'd not flown in an airplane until I was an adult, and due to a number of factors related to my husband's seizures with changing pressure, my father's long illness requiring increased assistance for my years since my husband's 'passing' from my life through divorce in 1992, now my own different abilities and tolerances, I've been on airplanes about the same amount of times as I've had CLEAR 'G-d Moments'.  

I hope to have MANY more of BOTH in the future now that I'm getting the hang of this AND have my health back and Lumigrate pointed in the right directions. And don't by any means feel sorry for me -- I've lived in Colorado, USA my whole life --- I truly don't think it gets any better than this and I'm easily entertained, fortunately.  However, I do feel it's time for a vacation -- I've only had one week off that I used for my recreation since 1995.  (Make it a brie with that chardonnay, Mardy ... )

So "I go with the flow" on this 2011 FMS Awareness Day activity as well and thought 'well, at this point, what can I do for FMS Awareness DAY --  my original two plans which required the collaboration of one other person on each plan are not going too work for THIS month/event (but are good ones and will happen for future times and different people's collaboration perhaps), and it what came to me was to go back to MY roots as an OT and do an 'activity analysis'.  

'Awareness' is one thing, but 'knowledge is power', so I went back to what I do as an OT/consultant with people with their medical conditions.  

1. What overall motivates the person, which is the simple difference between PT and OT, OTs include more psychology/mind/spirit since it's about what 'occupies your time' and PTs are more body/physical. In this case it's a whole big group of providers and the public involved through Lumigrate with much diversity of knowledge and reasons/motivators, so then you go with 'overall', as you would if you were doing a group with OT, and I worked to bring in as many of the motivators as I could to this activity.  (For this, it was everything from being eligible to win a contest, learn more about something YOU want or need to know more about) by looking overall at what motivates people/the person, get to know other people and be known by other people who are providers at Lumigrate.com OR AT LEAST I THOUGHT IT WAS.)  Then the magic happened ... I'll leave it to you to read all the contest submissions now and in the future when we have continued discussions I hope, but but something unexpected and GRATE happened from the providers who wrote -- it was truly stunning to me and now I have PROVIDERS and not the public with FMS challenging me to be as honest and revealing as they are -- I'm not the only one out there anymore saying 'this is where I am at'.  Powerful stuff and I have again had moments of quiet and deep pride and gratefulness for having had fibromyalgia and Every Thing that has occurred in my life which has lead to Lumigrate being here, 24/7, 365/2.1 years now.  (The link is at the bottom of this for you to go read if you're so inclined.)  
2. Create a Plan: Long term goal and short term goals which all have timeframes on them.  I gave a deadline but made it a reasonable deadline.  In this case I had it be a week after FMS Awareness Day, since everyone was so busy doing all their own FMS Awareness Day 'stuff' they'd not have time or energy to do something else for Lumigrate more than likely.  
3. Provide support -- sometimes I've worked with patients 7 days a week, other times once a week or less, but you check back with them.  Facebook and Twitter was what I did initially, then I realized some of the people I most thought I'd see appear with a submission didn't.  Here's were I made a mistake: I messaged people who were users of Lumigrate and who had written in the past who had an interest in FMS THROUGH the website.  Yenta immediately saw hers and responded by posting it on Lumigrate, so I thought my way of contacting worked for ALL and everyone had gotten an email THROUGH Lumigrate TO their email provided when registering.  (I get things when someone fills out a Contact Us, so I thought the private messages to anyone on Lumigrate also dropped to their email -- that's how facebook works, but that had to do with functions set up that weren't set that way).  UGH.... I found out only this week that all my hard work previously on that aspect had dead ended.  
4. Then mostly, realize it's an ongoing process -- 'Rome wasn't built in a day' and 'Oprah has taken 25 years to get to where SHE is as a person and leading teacher through a different mechanism she created which is now helping hundreds of millions of people directly and society as a whole indirectly'.   What she understood about child sex abuse and it's affects on adults after her show had been on two years ago is pale in comparison to what she has learned by building upon that for the next 23 years.  She really 'gets it' now and I'd said many years ago when she started wearing shoes to walk in instead of to show off in, she'd have, created her 'Rome' as a person.  Tell me what YOU've noticed about THAT if you have some time, I believe she's 'there' -- I saw her go out barefooted recently because it was more important to her she get out there than have her fancy shoes on.  Gotta love it, I've chosen many times to cut appearance corners in order to do what I think is more important and overall try to look acceptable.  I've worked so much recently, however, that how I look overall and feel overall has about reached the extent of what I'm willing to compromise about.  And THAT is MY 'ongoing process' so I hope that this push recently to revitalize the pages of Lumigrate.com and through it/them the energies and people who have participated is synergistic and long-lasting to get us through the summer where we are all able to take some times off, reflect, and take care of ourselves and move forward to be, in another 23 years, as wise and healthy and successful as Oprah is as a person.  (Her last show is within a WEEK, and I'm planning something 'around that' for next week -- stay tuned.) 

So I've done my best to work in enough time to get ahold of everyone directly through email, the providers earlier in the week, the people with FMS just today, so I'm making this similar to what I'd do with a therapy process as an OT with a patient: Asking people who are interested in being in the contest but who need more time to do 'something' to make themselves present on the stream before the deadline for the contest is up -- California time or Hawaii time if there's anyone in Hawaii -- basically when the last person on the Earth is going from the 19th to the 20th, that's when the contest will be officially closed BUT those who found out about it late and get the bare bones in today can send me what they'd REALLY like to say once they have more time and I'll edit that in for them so that is how it will appear for the 'forever and ever' that I BELIEVE will have a LOT of views and provide a LOT of awareness AND KNOWLEDGE about what FMS 'is'.Live and learn... learn and live better!! ~~ Mardy

To find the activity without a link (good to know how to get somewhere without a link):

www.lumigrate.com  Forums.  Fibro/Fatigue/Pain section which isn't far down the list. Awareness forum. 

From here you just click on Forums and scroll and there you are!