June is Migraine and Headache Awareness Month

Every day of June there is a blog challenge for MHAM - Migraine and Headache Awareness Month. I decided to take up the challenge (even if I'm starting on the 7th day) #MHAMBC Day 7
So today's topic is : What activities or hobbies do you participate in that help build hope for you?

This topic is perfect. This whole theme for the month is perfect. Hope. It's what we need most and fight against the most. So what hobbies help me? Two things really:

1. Writing. It has saved me. I've always been the kind of person who has needed to write out my feelings for them to make sense. I need to see the words on a page and then I can translate them into something I can understand. I just need to get them out. So honest, unfiltered journaling has helped and so has my novel. My main character has New Daily Persistent Headache (like me) and helping her process her bitterness and anger was healing for me. And curing her was so cathartic ;)

2. Crafting. This has always been my de-stresser. Creating something fills me up. Knitting. Sewing. Drawing. Painting. Whatever form, I need to do it to survive. Too long with all that energy inside myself and I feel fretful.

On a good day those two things are enough. They hold the tide. But when I have to spend the day in the silent, dark there is no crafting or writing and it gets harder to hold onto hope. It's a battle that is never won for good and that's the hard part. You can't beat despair and bitterness once and for all if the attacks never stop coming. It's every day. But I can say, four years in, it somehow gets easier. It feels like it should be the opposite. You get used to it and you learn how to live with the monster of chronic pain. You learn to find joy in the dark.