My Own Healing Journey – NaPodPoMo

Welcome to Self Powered Healing. I’m Barbara McNeely, the creator of Self Powered Healing, and this month, November, I’m doing something quite different. Perhaps you’ve heard of this thing called National Podcasts Post Month, or maybe you haven’t, but it happens every November, and podcasters commit to publishing 30 episodes within the month of November.  

So I’ll be doing that for the month of November. We’ll see if I get to the end and succeed with the 30. That’s the plan.  

Today. I’m going to tell you my own healing story. Not because it’s the most dramatic, not because it’s a miracle healing. I mean, it’s not even a hundred percent healing, but I primarily, I want to tell you about it. Number one, because it’s how I got to self powered healing in the first place. And it’s something that’s influenced all of my life choices since I was 16, but primarily because of what I’ve learned.  

Since I was probably as a child, I’ve always been very analytical. I would study things and see how they worked, and be curious about them, and always wanting to understand why things worked the way they did, and what caused things to happen, and why was my favorite question.  

When I first started having migraines, it was the start of my junior year in high school. The first day, I had this terrible migraine, and the first thing I wanted to know was why, what had changed. Now let me back up just a bit. To be fully honest, I thought it was a bad headache back then. I didn’t learn until I was like 48 years old that I’d been having migraines most of my life. I just thought they were bad headaches.  

But when I finally saw a doctor who was treating everything, he was explaining they were migraines. And if you’ve had a migraine, you can go back and remember The ones you’ve had in the past and you know they were migraines, not headache.  

So back to the story. So by the second day of school that year, I figured out what was the problem because I looked at what had changed and yeah, I’d started school, but I also suspected it was a perfume that I had been wearing to school, which I hadn’t worn all summer because we were always outdoors swimming and stuff.  

So over the weekend, I tried it one more time and sure enough, that same bad migraine came up. So I thought it was an allergy and I put that perfume away and never used it again. Over time though, I added more fragrances and perfumes that were causing a problem. And then it was haircare products and such, and anything that contained a fragrance to the point that 30 years after that, I was, I had a 100 percent fragrance free home.  

But something happened around 2001, and those migraines that would happen because of perfumes and fragrances and chemicals were happening all the time. I literally got to the point where there were periods where it was 24 seven for days on end. And come to find out you know what doctors don’t really want to know why, they don’t, you ask them why and they just ignore you because they don’t know why and they don’t care why.  

But I would ask again and again, why am I having these 24 7 migraines? What, what’s going on that suddenly I have this problem? I persisted though, I saw numerous doctors and neurologists. I fired more than one of them. And I was even fired by a neurologist. He told me that I had too many symptoms for him to help me. And the only thing the doctors ever offered me were drugs that were supposed to help prevent the migraines.  

But here’s the catch with that. They tell you take this drug and it will prevent your migraines, but also avoid your migraine triggers.  

Yes, avoid your triggers. Well, you know, I didn’t know what they were at that point apparently. But I kept looking for answers and I wound up with a doctor and the only good that came out of that doctor’s visit was a list of all the foods to trigger migraines and trust me when I tell you it’s a long list and it leaves you with a very boring diet, but I was desperate and so I followed that list and eventually figured out what foods were triggering migraines for me and so now today I avoid MSG and I avoid many different kinds of nuts along with still the fragrances and chemicals.  

Am I truly healed though? Not really. I mean, I still have to avoid these things and it’s not always easy. You can’t go to a potluck dinner because you have to ask so many questions. And too often you wind up somewhere where there’s fragrance plug ins or air fresheners in the building and that becomes a problem for me.  

But I think the thing I learned the most was just how much people hold on and keep hoping, believing that there’s going to be an answer. I spent three years in total misery and wouldn’t ever give up. Did I think about it? Oh, once or twice, but he never did.

I was in a forum for people with migraines and read some of their stories that made me think there’s their stories were much worse than mine they’d had the most of their lives and still they hung on looking for answers And if you’ve got a healing problem, you’ve had something that you’ve tried to solve or got a chronic condition you might understand that having told you my story.  

I invite you if you have a story that you think others would benefit from hearing to to let me know, because I would love to have you on my show and we can talk about it. You can visit selfpoweredhealing. com forward slash share. And from there you can. fill out a little form and we can have a little chat and see what happens next.  

Thanks for listening today. If you have any comments on this episode or on the whole NaPodPoMo concept in general, you can visit this page to leave comments. selfpoweredhealing.com/november2024. You can also find a listing and link for all November’s episodes on that same page selfpoweredhealing.com/november2024.  

By the way, Self Powered Healing is still looking for interviews with people who are want to share a story of healing. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear about it and see if maybe you could share it on our show. So if you’re interested in sharing, then visit selfpoweredhealing.com/share to schedule a chat.  

You aren’t committing at this point. You’re just having a chat with me to see what your story’s about. It will be confidential unless or until you decide you want to share. And if you get there and there’s not a convenient time for you, send me a message because we’ll always find a time.

And remember this always,