Hi Everyone! So glad you are here with me 💖.
Well it is May 2025 and sign up for my songletter started in April 2022. For those of you who don’t know me personally, you may have forgotten you signed up for this letter sometime in the past 3 years. Also, my last name has changed just for some added confusion. I used to be Nicole Silva, ND. And if that doesn’t jog your memory head to my website to help you remember my story and what I do. I will be implementing the name change slowly but surely, so you will still see Silva pop up occasionally.
I am finally ready to embark on this journey of sharing myself and my knowledge with the wider world. What a journey it has been getting to this point!!
I have so much knowledge and experience to share, and I want to do it authentically and from the heart. I so appreciate any time you choose to spend with me on this journey, as I will surely make some wrong turns and some right turns. I hope you will help guide me with some feedback along the way.
My plan is to share some teachings from the esoteric to the concrete and factual. I want to share the new things I am learning about the conditions I live with and treat, and to also give you chronic complex illness news updates as they come up (the news update will always be near the end of the email).
Have you ever felt stuck with something and unable to move forward?
Of course you have. We all experience this at some point in life. And if you are following me because you live with complex chronic illness, then you likely know, the days of just being able to bulldoze your way through, are behind you. Which is pretty sad for most of us, it can be so satisfying to bulldoze, sometimes I still do it just for the enjoyment, consequences be damned (I’m lucky to be well enough to still do that occasionally, so I feel you if you aren’t). But I’ve also learned to savor the slowing down, and I am sooooo grateful for that. Even if, in the beginning, I did have to get over the fact that it was forced on me by chronic illness.
Something that is often reflected to me by others about my nature, is that I am the most consistent person they have ever met. I show up, steadfast, nurturing, reliable. This is likely in part due to my neurodivergent brain and being on the autism spectrum. But I actually feel more like my neurodivergent brain matches my essence, not that who I am is defined by my neurodivergence.
This consistency of mine can go both ways. I have consistently failed to launch this songletter for the past 3 years. I have felt so stuck 😣.
I think it is important to identify what is behind the stuckness. When we define something, it can make it easier to navigate. Similarly to how we look at symptoms as a signpost to navigate the issue or imbalance underneath.
What is behind the stuckness?
Is it autistic inertia (difficult to get going, and once going, difficult to stop)? Is it burnout? Is it a million other things, unhealthy boundaries, trauma, unconscious or subconscious beliefs, your relationship with time, decisions that have led to particular life circumstances, uncontrollable events that have led to particular life circumstances, or core wounds – like not feeling seen, neglect, abuse, abandonment, etc.
The list could go on and on. How can we sift through all this?
These are the 3 elements I have identified that can stop us from meeting our goals. (Some help and clarification identifying these came from Mark Silver at Heart of Business, I highly recommend them if you are an entrepreneur.)
1. Fear of taking the leap, e.g. pretty self-explanatory, but can be due to a multitude of reasons
2. Spending too much time in one area, e.g. mental/emotional/spiritual healing vs. practical steps
3. Concrete obstacles or priority changes, e.g. health issues, a task turns out to need many more steps than you realized, family issues become a bigger priority, etc.
One way to sift through these 3 elements and figure out which one or ones are at play is compassionate accountability (this is a practice taught by Mark, whom I mentioned above). It is where you get real with yourself about what element is coming into play, along with where and why. And allowing yourself some grace around these things, especially the things out of your control, because giving yourself room to breathe, and to be human, allows you to shift.
I was spending much of my time focusing on the mental/emotional/spiritual healing, as a way to avoid doing the practical things. It was the practical things I was afraid to take the leap with. It can be easy to disguise fear of taking the leap with the need to keep working through your underlying issues. And of course, I had plenty of concrete obstacles and priority changes along the way. I always wondered if I just had too much on my plate, or if I was just unskilled at navigating life. The real problem was that I couldn’t find a balance between these 3 elements, because I hadn’t made any clear distinctions.
I have found this process takes constant re-examining and re-negotiating at many points along the way 🧐. And if you are like me and have a strong victim pattern to heal, you can easily become a victim to the challenges of chronic illness, life’s obstacles, and the fear of taking the leap. It can be really difficult, when you often don’t feel well, to identify when you need a break and when you need to push through.
There is so much beauty to be found in struggle. Navigating my own stuckness has revealed this to me yet again. I wouldn’t change any of my suffering and struggle with this over the past 3 years. I have come out as a more whole, healthy individual. Now all I have to do is take this final leap, get you this songletter, and then do it again next month!
Please know, it is never my intention to minimize someone’s suffering or struggle. There are times when words like these will seem more like a slap in the face, than a lovely balm.
When living with chronic illness, it’s important to realize when certain approaches or mindsets are helpful, when they are not, and find a balance between the two. So there’s a time to focus on the discomfort… to feel it… to bring compassion to it… and to let that compassion transform it. There’s a time to focus your energy elsewhere, like on your passion. There’s a time to think about your chronic illness as a gift, and there’s a time to let yourself feel the burden of it. And you should let your knowing guide you. If you’ve been spending too much time in one place, you’ll likely know because you’ll notice you are feeling extra miserable. Or you may even feel stuck.
My stuckness has shown up not just in getting this songletter going, but also in so many other aspects of my life, such as reconditioning my body while living with POTS and hEDS, getting consistent with my physical therapy, and finding balance in my life despite my chronic illness. I know you know what I am talking about. I hope you stick with me on this journey, I definitely plan to talk about many of these challenges in more depth. I don’t have everything figured out, but I plan to share as I do figure things out. And we can figure things out together, because learning is always a two-way street, so please do reply to this email if you feel so inclined.
How do you deal with stuckness?
Are you spending too much time in one area?
Could you benefit from some compassionate accountability? (I know folks in this community can be especially hard on themselves.)
Are you just afraid of taking the leap?
In the stuckness with you,
Nicole Wilkinson, ND
NEWS!
🦋 HEDGE due to release results in late 2025 from their attempt to identify a gene for hEDS: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/hedge/
🦋 A Potential Biomarker has been identified for hEDS and gHSD: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/new-research-identifies-potential-biomarkers-for-diagnosing-hypermobile-ehlers-danlos-syndrome-and-hypermobility-spectrum-disorders/
Both of these above are exciting advances! But don’t get too excited, even if they do develop into tests they likely won’t be available to use clinically for several years.
🦋 One of my patients let me know about this news source for Fibro! The articles are very interesting. Some of them back up things many of us who treat this patient population have known for a while, but maybe it is news to you, and it’s exciting to have more evidence. https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-terms/fibromyalgia/
Also, just a tip, when you read news articles that suggest something is THE cause of a complex chronic illness. I know they do this to be attention-grabbing, but the reality is often that they may have identified A cause or A contributing factor, not the ‘one ring to rule them all’, so far that doesn’t seem to be the way nature operates.
😆 And just for a laugh, since I already brought Lord of the Rings into it, if you are a fan, a little poke at pharmaceutical ads……. Side Effects of the One Ring