27 Lessons I Learned After 27 surgeries: A Test in Positive Thinking

It's been a significant entire decade for me. In ten years, I've lost my stomach, began school at 25, got hitched, burned through six of those years without a working digestive framework, dispatched a chocolate business, found a freshly discovered energy for blended media fine art, made a psychological well-being program, and composed a one-lady musical to account it all.

• Breath
• Blended Media Art by Amy Oestreicher through amyoes.com
• Welcome To Me

Called both a "surgical catastrophe" and a "therapeutic wonder," I don't have a body very like I'd envision other people's to be — a female figure with smooth tissue, amble bends, easily displaying tight scaled down skirts, and tossing on a tee-shirt without stressing if certain medicinal augmentations are uncovered. Or possibly, that is the way I pondered their body.

At 18 years of age, I was sucked into a substitute universe of IVs and CT checks. I was decreased together. My body was controlled like a restorative puppet. After ten years, it's difficult to recollect what my body looked like before the scars, ostomy sacks, and IVs turned into a pillar in my physical life.

A Hit One-Woman Musical Doesn't Mean You're Invincible

After my one-lady musical, Gutless and Grateful, debuted in 2012, I had a feeling that I was large and in charge. I at long last shut the entryway on a trance like state, organ disappointment, and the PTSD that originates from years of therapeutic flimsiness. To celebrate such a tremendous enormous point of reference, I got my first elective surgery, imploring that an extremely "gutsy" specialist would effectively turn around my ostomy.

Gutless Performance

Amy Oestreicher in "Gutless and Grateful" (Photo Credit: Brandon Thetford) by means of amyoes.com

Knowing how dangerous this surgery was for my as of now traded off life structures was further aggravated when the specialist really twist around and whispered in my ear: "Would you say you are SURE you truly need?"

I lifted up my head, and with my last ounce of quality, I said, "I simply did a one lady appear, I can do anything!"

Obviously, not anything, as three additional surgeries, a couple of catheters, and two months at Mt. Sinai later, I woke up with a larger number of issues than I came in with. The New York introduction of Gutless and Grateful felt like the climactic closure of a close passing therapeutic adventure, and now here I was back at the starting point.

A Life-Changing Regret

My 27th surgery left me with intricacies that in any case haven't been determined. As years pass by, I will have spent a greater amount of my life in my post-extreme lethargies body than the one I recollect as a youngster. I don't recollect what it felt like to mull over my stomach, or to bounce in the pool courageously. Nonetheless; in return, I've learned things about my body — the vessel for the imperativeness that streams inside me — that I will always remember.

These lessons have made me who I am.

For the most part, I've discovered that through my body, I can encounter the best of what life brings to the table. Staying with troublesome times has permitted me to experience the absolute most valued minutes throughout my life, such as performing my one lady show the nation over for as far back as four years, regardless of difficulties, frustrations, and surgical calamities.

• Singing Tree Revisited Original Artwork
• Blended Media Art by Amy Oestreicher through amyoes.com
• Every surgery taught me some sort of lesson in the force of positive considering.
• Here is my devotion to each of them 27.
• Positive Thinking 101: 27 Lessons I Learned About Life After 27 Surgeries

1.) Life has numerous deterrents, numerous difficulties, numerous gifts, and numerous triumphs — however you just have one body. On the off chance that you need it to encounter the great, you've likewise got the opportunity to withstand the awful.

2.) Emotions are capably befuddling creatures. "Talking things through" or "supposing it out" isn't generally the answer. Probably the most intense sentiments just become exposed when you can express them in inventive ways, such as drawing them, going out for a stroll, or finding a melody that encapsulates what you're feeling. Tell your heart that your brain doesn't generally need to run the appear. Feelings are truly only bolts in your life. Hear them out. They point you in the bearing you have to go.

3.) the length of there is breath coursing through you, you are alive, so wake up. Toss some super cold water in your face, shout as loud as possible, and give yourself a jarring update that you'll never encounter this minute again. Would you truly like to miss it?

4.) Life is about proceeding onward, yet it is not about fleeing.

5.) You body needs every sort of sustenance — entire nourishments, a touch of spoiling, and a day by day open exchange (body-talk, maybe) to ensure you give it precisely what it needs.

6.) You can't carry on with a full life in the event that you don't acknowledge the great with the terrible. Just when you can feel the profundities of misery will you have the capacity to feel the lightest of delights. I'd preferably feel everything than nothing by any means.

7.) The supernatural snappy fix answer for discovering joy wherever and at whatever point you are is appreciation. When I was stuck in the healing center for four months after a shocking trio of surgeries, I constrained myself to keep an appreciation list from beginning to end. It wasn't generally simple to round out, however when I achieved "Z" consistently, I generally wound up feeling somewhat superior to when I began

8.) When you've been through a troublesome and attempting period in your life, an a portion of you gets to be "injured." This injured self will dependably be with you, notwithstanding when the darkest times are over. In the event that you can listen to this injured part, respect its story, and gain from what it has persevered through, your life will be more profound and wealthier.

9.) Laugh — even in the roughest of circumstances. Snicker when the specialists put your family on lockdown in light of the fact that your folks have unsuccessfully attempted to sneak you out of the ICU to go shopping. (Genuine story.)

10.) Things don't happen for a reason, you get things going on purpose.

11.) Reframing "Why Me" into "Why Not" has the ability to change your point of view and open you up to the potential outcomes.

12.) It's been said commonly that the voyage matters in life, not the destination. Really, the more bypasses your trip takes (the knocks, hiccups, and misfortunes), the more delightful gorgeous sight you'll spot along the way. Each and every turn and turn in life has made me who I am today. On one level, I wish I never needed to experience 10 years of medicinal injury, however on another level I think about whether I could ever have the same astonishing individuals throughout my life, or be pushed to investigate new thoughts and attempt new things.

13.) You are not your life's circumstances. Make your life greater than your current circumstance. Things pass, yet life will dependably be here.

14.) Life is loaded with whatever measure of bliss you fill it with.

15.) Surround yourself with your loved ones since they have the ability to touch off.

16.) When you're not certain of a decision to make, pick the choice that best backings your aliveness.

17.) Finding yourself is not an "occasion", it is a minute by-minute practice — a practice that has no endpoint.

18.) Children are the best instructors on the subject of "bravery", "openness", and "nearness." Soak in their lessons any chance you can.

19.) Every flaw and peculiarity on your body is stunning and particularly you. After my surgeries, I jump at the chance to consider myself a lovely mosaic — broken separated, yet set up together again in an unexpected way, yet still wonderful.

20.) To quote one of my most loved Broadway musicals, Sunday In The Park With George by Stephen Sondheim, "I picked and my reality was shaken — so what? The decision may have been mixed up, the picking was most certainly not. Simply continue proceeding onward."

21.) Speaking of musicals,,, Stay consistent with who you are, take after your energy, and that will be your compass back to yourself when you've lost your direction.

22.) Creativity is more than expressions and artworks. Imagination is the eagerness to see the world in an unexpected way — to see the world over again. See the world with a touch of innovativeness and you'll instantly recognize the gifts in your life, regardless of the situation.

23.) Food feeds your body and empowers your taste buds; yet all the more imperatively, nourishment is a strong association with your recollections, feelings, and heart. On account of my surgeries, for a long time out of the previous decade I was not able eat or drink. I didn't understand until I had that first snack of nourishment by and by, yet simply having the capacity to appreciate, taste, and taste fills the body with rich vibes of being alive.

24.) Even when life feels loathsome, there will be a period when you say, "Recollect when I experienced that? I thought things could never show signs of improvement!" If you endure it sufficiently long, pretty much as life changes, all things change. Roll out it a decent improvement!

25.) Hope, confidence, and trust are more than just pixie dust and eccentricity, it is the medication required for your spirit to hang on until things show signs of improvement. I left my trance state to hear specialists let me know that I had no stomach, I couldn't eat or drink, and no one knew when (or in the event that) I could ever have the capacity to again. I was given no timetables at all, however I made myself trust that "any day now" a supernatural occurrence would happen and I would eat. "Any day" ended up being years after the fact, yet now that I can eat and drink unreservedly, my "willing suspension of conviction" was justified, despite all the trouble.

26.) If you feel alone or separated, recollect that you generally have a place with the universe. There are cells and particles in your body, pretty much as there are cells and atoms in each tree, puppy, or individual. Basically, we are each of the one and the same. On the off chance that you feel something, odds are another person has felt it some time recently. You are dependably a part of a bigger entirety.

27.) Since you're a piece of something bigger, all that you do has meaning. Each word, step, thought, activity, or feeling influences another person — regardless of the fact that you can't see it immediately. Continue carrying on with your best life, notwithstanding when it appears there is "no" approach to — on the grounds that yo