Do you ever feel like a failure? Feel a bit lost or worthless? Then I completely understand where you are coming from and have written this for you.
Feeling like I’m a failure is the area that I’ve been working on recently. It’s seems like a bit of a grim topic to be looking at, really. I’m sure many people go through this at some stage or other. What if you could clear your sense of failure? Surely you’ve heard that it took Edison a large number of attempts before he invented the light bulb? If he had given up, we might still be lighting kerosene lamps at night.
People Fail Before They Succeed
Check out this great post of six entrepreneurs who overcame failure to achieve great success.
So I have been working on releasing the pressure valve within me towards fear of failure. What does that look like (I’m guessing that you are thinking)?
That looks like me taking all my skills, tools and techniques, and checking in with myself. Do I have this belief in me? Why yes, Bianca, you do. So, rather than continue to live with this stressful belief of “it’s not okay to fail” I’m going to clear any stress around it, using the right tool from my toolkit. So today the statement I cleared was “I am 100% okay with failure”. That means that if this blog post is a fail, still I’m okay with that. Even if I fail at something that means a lot to me, like my business, I am completely okay with it. I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and give it another go.
I know this may come across as lots of hot air or letters on a blog post; however, the clearing work really does make a huge difference! I am really okay with failure now. The emotional charge that I felt prior to doing the work has now receded. What is left is the space to make mistakes, take 1,000 attempts if that is what I have to do. And be completely okay with whatever happens. As long as I’m taking action and not stuck doing nothing because I might fail.
I chose to start this site because I know what women who are fertility challenged are going through.
When I was 24 I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. It was also referred to premature menopause. When you are 24, it’s hard to imagine something that your mother is experiencing, happening to you right now. Besides, I was meant to be a mother, I was sure of it.
A Life Changing Experience
The hardest thing at the time was that my diagnosis came in the same year, in fact just months after, a major life changing experience. I was living in Sweden and had been for about 3 years. It must have been around June or so, in the summer, when the headaches began. Now you have to understand that I had been having headaches since I was a kid. I didn’t think too much of them, just kind of felt them and dealt with it. This, however, was something a whole lot different. They took over my entire ability to do the simplest of things.
I recall on a number of different occasions arriving home of an evening and having the energy to curl up in bed and nothing more. So my life started to shrink as I had little energy for anything apart from getting through a day of work. And, I started popping ibuprofen to handle the pain. In hindsight, not the smartest of moves.
Approximately a month later I developed double vision. At that time I was playing softball with a local team – a great way to meet people when you are an ex-pat. For the life of me I couldn’t hit a ball. Hardly surprising when you are seeing double of everything. It was around that time that I saw the first doctor. It didn’t help that I had a head cold at the time. She prescribed me some standard meds and rest and left me to it.
Seeking Help
I went on a trip with my then boyfriend to Norway for a week. It wasn’t the most fun trip as seeing double really put a downer on my enjoyment. I would love to one day go back and see the fjords in a single image only!
The following week my boyfriend joined me for a few days as I was working for a client in a different area of the country. During that week my family back in Australia found out that I was really not in such great shape. They insisted that I go to emergency and get checked out immediately.
Arriving at the emergency ward, the doctors in that part of the country wanted to check my blood as there were lots of tics in the area during the summer. I recall the doctor saying ‘we need to check this out first. These tics can do some strange things to you’. Suffice it to say, there was nothing wrong with my blood. Only thing was now I was back in the capital city where I was living and as I wasn’t a national, I fell through the cracks.
Cracking Under The Strain
A few weeks later I couldn’t take it anymore. I could barely get out of bed and I wasn’t feeling as though I had a life. I discovered that my work had a doctor that I could see. When I went to see this doctor she checked me out and spoke to me for some time. At the end of the consultation she looked me in the eye and said, “yes I will put you on sick leave. I will also send you for a CT scan. But Bianca, I think you’re just stressed”.
Okay, so you might not believe me but at least someone is going to see WTF is going on inside my head! This is not normal!
As soon as the CT scan was complete the radiologist called me over and said ‘you have a brain tumour’. OMG the relief! Can you imagine someone telling you that you have a brain tumour and you feel relieved?! Well I did. Especially after he assured me that it didn’t look like cancer. It was too round and well formed for that and was likely a cyst.
Back At Hospital
Within the day I was at the hospital speaking to neurosurgeons who wanted to operate on me immediately. My family were keen to get me back to Australia for the operation. After a few days of tussle the doctors in Sweden made it almost impossible for me to fly back and I sighed in relief because I really didn’t want to travel for a day with the kind of pain I had.
So within a week of the CT scan I had brain surgery to remove the cyst which was very successful. A month later and I was allowed to fly back home to Australia to continue my recuperation there.
It was when I returned to Australia that I started to wonder where my period had gotten to. Cue the premature ovarian failure diagnosis after seeing several doctors.
Fertility Challenged
It could be worse. I was alive. But I felt I had to pay the price of my fertility to survive. Even though the doctors told me there was no relationship I couldn’t help but wonder and consider that my body is interconnected. How could something as traumatic as what had happened not impact upon every cell of my body, including my ovaries?
