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February: Now With 80% Less Emo

February 13, 2015 By Jenny Ryan 1 Comment

I love February; unlike most of the rest of the world, my personal new year has always started then. Plus, it means I’ve survived January, although happily this year was not that bad.

I’m also happy for you, my dear readers, because my emotions lighten up and my sense of humor starts to come back. So I feel less need to inflict my Angsty Emo self on you in every post. Which is not to say that things are not still hard. Today, for example, basically my entire body except for like, my left earlobe, is on fire at the level of pain that makes it difficult to breathe.

But, in the annoyingly consistent principle of Both/And, I have a happy thing to share as well.

I have spent the past couple of weeks in agonizing pain.

AND

Over those same couple of weeks I have decluttered  the entire guest room! The Room of Doom! The room where for years I’ve dumped everything I didn’t want to deal with (of which there were MOUNTAINS).

So now this:

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Looks like this:

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Plus Mr. Cranky Fibro Girl and I went to dinner with real, live, in-person people, AND THERE WERE CUPCAKES. Containing three separate forms of chocolate.

AND

I had happy things to write about in a blog post.

AND

I have to go lie down now with some serious pain medication, because: agony.

Once again, I am the Queen of Contrast (but happily for everyone, and 80%-less emo one).

 

Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

One Of Those Days

February 3, 2015 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

You know how sometimes you feel ground down to the barest possible nub of yourself due to spending the past 75,000 days in a row in a fibro flare-up, but you drag yourself to physical therapy anyway to be proactive in taking responsibility for managing your health, only to have your therapist gently inform you that, according to the surveys you’ve periodically filled out to assess your progress, you’re actually doing worse than you were when you started 3 months ago?

So you go home and decide to declutter a little bit more of the guest room and then put the meat on to marinate for dinner so you can experience some feelings of accomplishment? And then your husband calls while you’re in the kitchen so you’re bragging to him about what you’ve done so far today, but then you smell something really odd, whip around, and then yell, “I have to call you back!”?

Which you do, after a couple of minutes and a flurry of activity, and your reassurance that everything is now OK takes the form of statements like, “Don’t worry-it was only a small fire.”?

Yeah. Me too.

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Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

And A Writer Is Born

January 23, 2015 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

I’ve been decluttering a lot lately, and I happened upon a few of my earliest pieces as a writer-probably circa 1983.

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Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

Same Old

January 7, 2015 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

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January, much like August, is not a very good month for me.

I feel dull and grey inside, bored with everything, and convinced that there is nothing new left to experience.

But sometimes, when I least expect it, a cracks forms in the grey and a tiny surprise peeks through.

Filed Under: CFG And The Camera, CFG Dishes On Herself

F*&%#ing Fussy August Syndrome

August 12, 2014 By Jenny Ryan 2 Comments

For various and sundry reasons, August has always been a difficult month for me.

I am SO OVER summer in the South. I am tired of being hot and sweaty all the time. I am impatient with this transition time between seasons, and I want fall to be here RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!

I feel ghostly emotional echoes of that weird limbo time between the end of summer vacation and the beginning of school, where you’re mourning the end of the one, and (if you were me at least), impatiently awaiting the beginning of the other.

I am bored of EVERYTHING: my books, my TV shows, my blog, my hobbies, my ideas, my thoughts, my house, my chores, my errands, my lawn, my To Do list, my body, my meal ideas, my clothes, gravity, the need to stop and eat food, and the fact that I am required to breathe air in order to live. Pretty much every single atom that makes up my physical, mental, and emotional existence I declare to be stupid, dumb, boring, yucky, and poopy.

Basically, I just throw a giant temper tantrum.

This one is a bit better than meltdowns I’ve had in the past. I haven’t swept through the house, dramatically declaring that I am a talentless, unoriginal hack who couldn’t write a good sentence if my life depended on it, and who will clearly never have another good story idea, ever again, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!, and therefore I have no choice but to erase every trace of my blog off the face of the digital earth.

I haven’t had bad mood swings or manic-depressive episodes, thanks to good medications and recent, healthy changes in my diet.

But I am just pretty much sick of everything.

I was talking about this with Lynne last week during our session, and she said, “So it sounds like you’re just feeling kind of fussy,” and then we were both hit with the realization that, oh, I was obviously suffering from Fucking Fussy August Syndrome, or FFAS, for short. (Clearly, our pioneering discoveries in personal growth research know no bounds.)

Just recognizing that I am weary, and worn-down from pain, and tired of my full-time job of managing a chronic illness, and sick of all the million and one things that we all have to do to keep our daily lives functioning, has brought some relief. As has just letting myself feel fussy (but not so much that it runs me).

So I’ve decided to give myself this month off. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like, but just giving myself permission to let go of things if I need to has quieted some of the inner yelling.

I may or may not feel inspired to write, so in case I don’t I’ve decided to re-run some of the posts from the early years of the blog. I hope you enjoy them.

Here’s to some less fussy times ahead.

 

 

Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

As If We Needed More Evidence That I Should Not Be Left In Charge Of Any Living Things

June 16, 2014 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

(From a recent session with Lynne.)

Lynne: So how have you been doing this week?

Me: Well, you know how when you were little you’d have a bruise, and you’d keep pushing on it, and then you’d go to your mom and say, “It hurts when I do this,” and she’d say, “Well, then stop doing that”?

Lynne: Um, no?

Me: Never mind.

Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

Come Yay With Me!

June 2, 2014 By Jenny Ryan 5 Comments

I just found out that Cranky Fibro Girl was named one of the Best Fibromyalgia Blogs of 2014 by Healthline.com!

Of course without you, my wonderful readers, none of this would be possible; I’d just be some random, goofy girl talking to herself in cyberspace 🙂

Thank you so much for the community you’ve helped me create here over the years.

16 Best Fibromyalgia Blogs of 2014
Healthline

Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself

Don’t Worry Mom, Your Torch Has Been Safely Passed On, Or, If It Hurts, Then Stop Touching It

March 13, 2014 By Jenny Ryan 1 Comment

As part of our efforts to sneak healthy changes into our lifestyle, last weekend my husband made each of us a standing desk to use in our offices here at home. While he uses a desktop with two large screen monitors, I use one large screen monitor and my laptop.

When he first set up my system he tried to convince me to let him hook up a separate keyboard , so that I would  just use my laptop as a second screen. This idea I rejected on the grounds that none of the keyboards we tested “sounded right”.

My husband has been with me long enough to know that there’s no response to something like that, so he let the matter drop. But after almost a week of working up so high my wrist and elbow really hurt, so I just called him at work and asked if we could go look at keyboards tonight.

“OK,” he said, in the tone of someone who is excited that I finally came around, but is wise enough not to push.

“I know I haven’t wanted to do this before, but I’d really like this sharp pain in my elbow to stop.”

“”Mmm. Can I make a suggestion?”

“Um,” I said, suspecting what was coming, “should I stop?”

“Yes,” he replied. Move your laptop back down and just sit for today.”

“OK,” I agreed, unlike my behavior in previous similar situations.

So I’ve been happily working away on my old desk, enjoying the reprieve from arm pain until I caught myself  thinking, “Man, why is my neck hurting so badly?”

You know that skill that you supposedly develop as you grow-globilization, maybe-where you learn something important from a situation and are then able to use that lesson in new situations? Well apparently I don’t, because it took me MANY MANY LONG MINUTES until I realized that if I moved my laptop down a level, perhaps I should move my screen down as well.

No one tell my husband, okay?

Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself, CFG On Love And Marriage

When I Don’t Want To See

February 9, 2014 By Jenny Ryan 3 Comments

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This week my inner Vision got a little cloudy because I got stuck in a story that my mind was running, and so I ended up in an anxious, paralyzed, beating-myself-up kind of place.

The past three or four weeks have been really good for me. My pain’s been pretty manageable, I’ve decided what projects and goals I’d like to work on this year, and, most importantly, January has been SUNNY. But then a few days into this week my pain suddenly spiked to over 10 levels (the “official” pain scale does not have nearly enough numbers to rate fibro pain) and I freaked out because, WTF, pain?!

Pain always knocks me out of alignment, especially when it’s so unexpected. So I found myself madly scrambling around, trying to find an explanation for why I hurt so badly. And, as so often happens for me, the explanation my mind came up with was to blame myself for everything. Clearly I must have done something wrong this past month, so this pain must be all my fault. And since I had caused this pain myself, I deserved to suffer for my mistake (or so my story went).

This, unsurprisingly, only served to paralyze me in anxiety and shame, which in turn then stirred up more pain.

Luckily I talked to Lynne who reminded me to question my thinking and took me through “The Work” by Byron Katie, one of the most helpful tools I’ve learned for dealing with my monkey mind.

“The Work” is a series of questions you use to help untangle the stories that are causing you pain. Here is a sample of the dialogue I had with thoughts:

My story: This is my fault. I caused this pain. I deserve to be punished and suffer.

Is this true? YES! It is the truest thing that ever existed! Why are you even asking me this?!

Can I absolutely know that this is true? (Can I absolutely, 100% guaranteed know that I did “x”, which caused this pain?) No.

How do I feel when I think this thought? Horrible, awful, ashamed, anxious, afraid, sad, stuck. (Related questions: Is this story working for me? No, not so much. Can I think of a good reason to keep this story? Not really.)

Who would I be without this story? Free, forgiving, accepting, compassionate, kind, understanding, open, loving, creative.

Is there a story that feels as true or truer than my original story? I don’t know exactly what caused this pain flare-up.

And that’s the part that got me stuck. I HATE the randomness of this illness. I hate not being able to predict how I’ll feel in the next hour, let alone next day or next week. I hate not knowing “why”. I hate that things can be going really well, and then suddenly they’re not. So I scramble to find a reason, any reason, for why this might be happening. Because even if it means blaming myself, convincing myself that there’s some kind of explanation for my pain feels a lot better than having to accept that sometimes it happens for no other reason than the fact that I have fibromyalgia.

Which sucks. A lot. But if  I can get to this point in my thinking, I can at least stop adding mental suffering to my physical pain.  It’s not much, but I’ll take all the relief I can get.

 

Filed Under: CFG And The Camera, CFG Dishes On Herself

Word Of The Year Week Two

January 12, 2014 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

Here are some of the ways that Peace showed up for me this week.
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Filed Under: CFG Dishes On Herself, Uncategorized

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