A few months ago, I posed a question to Samantha: if you knew for sure that your gastroparesis either would or would not go away, would that change anything for you?
Recently, I’ve been spending some time thinking through my own health history and concluding that my gastroparesis is likely linked to having hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. It occurred to me that maybe, to some extent, this is just how my body is made. Maybe it’s not something I can fully “fix” in the way I wanted to and tried to for so many years.
And that thought felt like a relief.
In this episode, Samantha and I talk about what that relief reveals—not about gastroparesis itself, but about the stories we carry around responsibility, control, and what we think it means if we get well or we don't.
We also dig into the three layers of gastroparesis that I introduced in the last Living Well Letter, and I share something I haven’t talked about much publicly: the years I spent wondering if doing this work was somehow keeping me stuck in having gastroparesis. Turns out, it wasn’t. But seeing that belief for what it was—just a story—was revealing in its own right.
If you've ever felt like you were on the hamster wheel of healing, or wondered if accepting your condition and still wanting it to go away could somehow coexist, this episode is for you.
Episode Links:
Crystal’s Living Well with Gastroparesis Program
Samantha’s Thriving With Gastroparesis Community
Theme music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/ben-johnson/cant-stop-chasing-you
License code: LTNISOMTFHZIIXYY
