by Julia Hidy

It wasn’t as if one day I no longer had enough energy. The slide into my energyless pit had taken two years. In 1990, career and family dramas chewed up my free time. Busy running a multi-billion dollar project, I barely noticed that weekends and holidays no longer refreshed me.

By April 1992, I’d fallen into a semi-catatonic state. My life virtually stopped. I’d become sleeping beauty, but without the prince.

As I stepped away from my career, I had to keep working to avoid bankruptcy. Without enough energy to climb the stairs to my apartment, I’d want to scream when people would say, “But you don’t look sick. You look normal.”

My life was redefined when one of my physicians told me, “I’m sorry there’s no cure. Don’t expect to recover – ever.” Three Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) viruses and a painful, chronic condition known as fibromyalgia ruled my every moment. A year later, with severe aches in my hips and dark patches on my face, I was also diagnosed as having lupus, an autoimmune disease without a conventional cure.

I made a decision to never stop trying to become healthy, and to get my energy back. My attitude gave me hope, and made me look for new ways to improve my health.

A catatonic year had a two-year chaser of excessive sleep. Struggling to survive, I was determined to relearn how to thrive. Naturopaths, Contact Reflex Analysis, Network Chiropractic, and massage and shiatsu therapists helped me greatly. Meditation eased my stress, while yoga and walking kept my muscles from freezing.

Specific vitamins and supplements, vegetable juice fasts, and a non-yeast vegetarian diet also helped me. I reluctantly took adrenal and glandular extracts with notable results in only a few weeks. An aspartic, multi-mineral supplement plus vitamins C, E, A, D and B6, digestive enzymes, and anti-candida remedies sat alongside my salt and pepper shakers.

I turned my home into a spa and sanctuary. Sea and Epsom salt baths, castor oil packs, and peanut oil rubs gave me relief from the pain. I went natural: cotton, wool and silk fabrics replaced their synthetic counterparts. I’d begun to feel better and sleep less.

These treatments and lifestyle changes only began to work really well once I adjusted my thinking patterns. I looked at how I was stealing my own mental and emotional energy from myself. I also considered this concept: if at the level of pure energy we are all created equals, what was I doing to deprive myself of this pure energy?

An optimist before my illness, I’d spiraled into patterns that were far from positive. I became aware of my personal energy use habits and started to choose whether I’d have a negative or positive thought or emotion. With practice, I began to generate more positive than negative energy flowing through me.

I still had more to learn. It was time to find out how to get more energy on demand. Did I receive, retain and recycle my energy positively or negatively – either into my own life or activities, or into the lives of people I’d exchange energy with. The three R’s of personal energy exchange made me more aware of how I used or was exchanging my energy with myself, or with other people at any given moment.

Then, I worked on reducing my incessant, and often self-deprecating, negative mental chatter, so that it became positive too. Loving myself more, I reinstated balance into all areas of my life.

I could recover quickly if I’d had just a few negative moments, but a day of mostly negative energy would cause a relapse into chronic fatigue for a few days. The connection became clear: think negative, be negative; think positive, live and be positive, and have more energy.

These days, people have a hard time believing that I ever suffered from CFS and fibromyalgia, let alone lupus. I’ve found that paradise is conveniently located in the seven-inch space between my ears. I work smart, not hard, these days. Prior to my illness, I’d been responsible for $1 billion in projects. Three years after my diagnosis, I was back on my career track and have never looked back. I currently work full-time as director of a software company, am writing a non-fiction book, and consult with a world-leading naturaceutical developer.

I still see my health practitioners monthly, take vitamins and other supplements, pay attention to what I eat, and don’t drink alcohol. Continually converting my energy use habits has given me a quality of life for myself that I could never have imagined was possible before my illness.

I live a happy, simple, and fulfilled life shared with other self-energy giving people. A constant sunbath of positive energy helps keep my life on track and fills me with more than enough energy to recycle into all areas of my now energy-filled life.

Julia Hidy is the author of the forthcoming book, Energy For Your Life: The Essential Guide. She lives in Toronto. If you have comments or questions, or wish to receive two sample chapters of her book, e-mail julia here.