A week ago I was awake with a cramping belly and abdominal tightness. The feeling was reminiscent of the discomfort and pain that landed me in the hospital twice, both before and after my eventual liver transplant success story.

The cramps subsided, but I felt off all week, lacking in vitality and energy, and needing more sleep than normal. The timing was bad; I am rehearsing every night for a big Revels holiday show, fine-tuning the preparations for the weekend’s performances. This final push keeps me up later than usual. I don’t have the control over my diet that I do at home, or the time for the holistic and lifestyle practices that helped me heal in the first place.

Familiar fear entered my thoughts, after years of hope filled progress and holistic support for healing from Hepatitis C and liver disease. This recent episode landed in me with a feeling of fear that maybe I wasn’t as well as I thought, and that I wasn’t out of the woods after all.

The fear of what could happen reminded and returned me to the darkness of unknowing and of illness. The fear was here again. What I did with the fear was now up to me. I could wallow in it, and go further into a funnel of darkness, or address it and make changes.

Fear holds us back. It is the emotion we run from. It scares us. And, it keeps us from being well. To really grow and change, we must deal with the root of our problems, our fears, identify and wrestle with them, and try to conquer the fear.

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