Dealing With Life Changing Illness & Disability

This is directly from my personal experience of 3 bouts of life changing sepsis, 25 surgeries, amputation and cancer coupled with 50 years of training in mindfulness, meditation and martial arts, I am 72 years of age.

First you have to accept yourself.
Accepting who and what you now are. This will take time and you have to allow it to happen in its own time.
This will give you the freedom to work with what you have rather than mourning what you’ve lost.

Then you have to accept others.
When you have accepted yourself you then have to accept others and their varying views and opinions. Many will empathise and help, some will not be able to accept you and can be downright rude, that’s their fault and not yours.

You need patience and kindness.
Healing takes as long as it takes, you need to be patient and kind toward your body and emotions and then toward others.

Then you need to separate your conscious from your emotions and thoughts as they belong to your body and are not who you really are. This gives you an objective rather than subjective view. When you are your emotions and thoughts you are imprisoned in your body. When you are your consciousness you are free of them and can view them separately. This can be done through mindfulness and meditation training.