Finding Hope

Finding hope while living with a difficult-to-treat headache disorder seems impossible at times. Trying treatment after treatment without success, feeling like your health with never improve, wondering how in the world you can possibly manage to survive another day of it… It can feel like the pain (physical and emotional) will never cease.

I’ve had all those thoughts at times. Finding hope was the only way I could pull myself out of the depths of despair.

My first step toward finding hope was examining — and ultimately redefining — what the word meant to me. For many years, hope meant finding an effective treatment so I could return to my normal life. Any sense of hope was dependent on the migraines going away. That also meant that when a treatment failed, I was utterly crushed.

Then I read The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman. The definition of hope he lays out in the introduction of the book was tough to swallow at first:

“Many of us confuse hope with optimism, a prevailing attitude that ‘things turn out for the best.’ But hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to ‘think positively,’ or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality….

“Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see — in the mind’s eye — a path to a better future. Hope acknowledges the significant obstacles and deep pitfalls along that path. True hope has no room for delusion.

“Clear-eyed, hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them.”

These words eventually transformed by entire approach to chronic illness. I began to see that I may never be pain- or migraine-free. As hard as that was to accept, it freed me to begin learning how to live a fulfilling life given my reality. No one wants hardship or strife, but no one is immune from it. My burden happens to be chronic migraine. It’s a heavy one, for sure, but wishing it away did nothing to lighten the load.

So I began learning to live WITH migraine rather than always fighting against it and wishing it away. This was not easy or quick. It was not linear. It was grief-filled and heart-wrenching. It also built the foundation on which my truest sense of hope resides.

I no longer hate migraine. I don’t like it and I’d be thrilled to be free of it, but I acknowledge it will (probably) be a constant presence in my life. I also recognize that migraine is a part of me. It has taught me so much and has shaped the person I’ve become. And I really like that person.

Acceptance is often confused with resignation. I am not resigned. I haven’t handed my life over to migraine. I keep looking for treatments and will not stop until I’m migraine-free.

In the meantime, I work every day at making the life I have the best it can be. And that’s what gives me hope — believing I can live a rewarding, joy-filled life even with constant pain and chronic migraine.