Why put yourself out there? Easy… Help someone else.

Most of my ideas about what to write about come from things people ask me.  I carry around paper and pen all the time and sometimes, someone says something to me that I start to think about.  I write it down and then I use that for things I talk about here.

The other day, someone said to me, “Why the heck would you write a blog about your weight loss journey and post things about your personal thoughts and struggles for all the world to read?  That’s crazy!   Why would you do that?  What are you going to get out of that?”   I mumbled through an answer but I thought about that awhile.

I am an information junkie.   I have always been a frequent flyer at the public library, bookstores and the internet.  Been an information junkie most of my life.  When I went to the doctor and they first told me I was hypothyroid and had Hashimoto’s disease, my first stop was Barnes and Noble.    When I have something, I am going to try to find out as much as I can about it.   So you can imagine how much research I have done about my disease.   I have read all kinds of factual information, but the thing is that when I was searching, not just for information,really searching for something else.

I was searching for someone who had written a program with proven results.  I wanted to talk to a person who had done that program, had success.

I wish I had found Dr. Jack sooner, but I also wish I had found someone just like ….ME!

Whenever I found a website about Hashimoto’s, I always read through the articles, and then unlike others, I read the comments from top to bottom looking for people I could relate to, and then I wrote to them.   I wrote to the author of the website, the author of the book, the people who posted on there who had success.   Some wrote back,  offering advice, many did not.

Their ideas ranged from practical to bizarre, some, I would need a medical degree to decipher, and many were just form letters with ads explaining I would get nothing without signing up.     I was always searching for someone REAL.   I  just always wanted  find the person who actually had done something, and been successful.  I looked for genuine people, with success and failure, someone who could relate to MY story.  I was looking for a doctor or an author, or a person who wouldn’t judge what I had already done wrong, and would offer some sign that there was hope for me.

Of all the authors, doctors and bloggers I wrote to?  Dr. Jack was the only one  that actually responded to me with a personal note.  He was the only one who actually called me on the phone and the first one who seemed genuinely interested in my story and not just trying to sell me something.  As a matter of interest, he did not tell me about his program right away, he instead,  listened to my story and explained to me why things might not have worked for me before.  He actually tried to provide me with information from the first moment I talked to him.   He explained what I needed to know and what to expect.  Before I committed to anything, he explained things to me that no one had ever told me the entire time I had this disease about what Hashimoto’s really is and how it could be reversed.

When I first talked to Dr. Jack on the phone, I had never met him.  I had no idea what he looked like, I had no idea where his office was nor anything about him other than his credentials and the webinar I watched.  But when I talked to him on the phone, my heart knew this was the person I had searched for.  He was genuine, kind and gave me the facts I needed.  Above all things, he did not judge my past failure.  He did not care what a mess I was, he just reached his hand out to me and offered me help.  My ongoing story is this blog.

Somewhere in the vast universe of the internet, someone else is searching for an answer.  I know many people are.  And maybe what they  need to save themselves is that there is  someone who they could contact that has had success and who will answer!!  I can help the, find that!

When you have Hashimoto’s, you read a lot of stuff that is just factual, WEB MD kind of stuff,  but is not from real people who have found real answers.   I know how hard I searched and for how long.  I know how much time I wasted and I know how discouraged I was.  Worst of all I know how  little hope was left inside me.

I am just hoping that those people who are searching either find Dr. Jack, or they find me.  All I want to do is just  show them where the I answer can be found.  I want to spare someone else the agony that I went through, the humiliation and the embarrassment.   I want them to know that they are NOT the problem and they are not alone.  I want them to know that they can get help, if they want to get rid of their symptoms.   No one has to just learn to live with this, like I was wrongly told so many times.   There is an answer.  I just want them to have the hope I was so desperate for and that it is okay that you have to struggle through to get to the answer.   If I could spare one person what I have gone through, it is so worth a little personal discomfort.

Maybe it took me a long time to save myself.   But, there is no way I am going to selfishly keep this secret to myself.  I wouldn’t be much of a person if I didn’t try to help someone else. I can’t just walk past the ones that have fallen down and not reach out to help.

If one other person gets the relief they need?  Well, then that’s what I got out of it,…. and that is definitely worth me sharing a few painful, crazy, silly, sad, scary, hopeful, embarrassing, true stories.