LONG Overdue - ReGROUPing, ReSTOREing, ReDOING AND PODCASTING!

This past week felt like 'coming home' to me.  For one thing, I was home all week with a tweeked SI joint on my right side which was making life 'difficult' more than  usual for me.  Fortunately, I had just met a chiropractor who is certified in ART, which is a technique the hand therapy component of my previous contract business had included via the very talented 'hand therapist' I employed.  ('Quotes' because I consider it 'therapy' when you work on patients and the therapy world, run by people with lots of degrees like mine and more, consider 'assistants' assistants, but do I want to say to a patient 'you're going to go have your assistant therapist sesion now'?  No.. the world is changing and we need to keep up in our thinking and actions, in my opinion.)

I had a reminder of what SO MANY PEOPLE who live with and 'in' pain have to deal with.  I'm always saying 'don't use the word 'suffer' to describe your pain or else you're going to reinforce that when you affect your reality with the power of your mind's thoughts and words.'  But I WAS suffering, and I also have had to deal with this for so many years and decades that it's like putting on an old glove and saying 'okay, I remember how to do this'.  But as 'luck' as only I would have it (as some people say who are around me -- I encounter a LOT of 'coincidences'), my new neighbor is a talented young chiropractor who, like ME as an OT, believes in spending extra time on education in order to get better LONG TERM results and independence for patients.  

So "I'm back in the saddle again" comes to mind as a song, thought I did just post on facebook the Chumbawumba song about 'I get knocked down, I get up again', which has some particular significance for me.  I posted it hopefully cheer the others who are knocked down today and not yet back up again, such as our beauty writer Mariluz Fontanez.  If nothing else, the extreme hardships I've gone through in the last year had a wonderful silver lining: I was at a financial 'bottom' like I never have been at in my entire life and I look at it as a 'test', and with the help of 'a village', I learned and hopefully have shown to the village and bigger community, my commitment to what I set out to do with Lumigrate coming up on three years ago. 

In those three years a LOT has happened: I looked at what I wanted to achieve for myself in terms of the kind of work and schedule that helps my health the most, factored in that I had an aging and apparently ill father who was going to go from needing weekend assistance to full time supervision and assistance as I suspected he had a progressive neurologic disease which was not being 'identified' by his physician.  The physician only saw him occasionally and cannot be assigned full blame for the 'miss take' because I blocked out a 4 day weekend in order to drive over and take him to the doctor to address it, and my dad made me break the appointment.  But the whole thing lead to a snowball effect of a mess that is unlike anything I have EVER in my life observed another family go through.  Even the attorney he insisted on using had what appears to me to be the same condition he had, and so it was like the blind leading the blind.  It frightens me that there can be professional people in the world whose partners and colleagues do not do the 'work' of pulling someone who is clearly incapable of doing the job aside and saying 'it's time you retire'. 

Anyway, it served to revitalize me about the importance of a website like what I created over the past few years and with the held of a growing 'village of supporters', is turning into what 'we' will create it to be.  JC Rowling (sp?) who wrote the Harry Potter series was on Oprah yesterday and they clearly bonded over the fact that they are both billionares from self-made smarts and determinism, who both have concerns about messing something up and not doing right with their financial assets.  They also both clearly feel a sense of endebtedness and loyalty to their viewers/Oprah and readers/moviegoers/JC. I would even say Oprah's seemed to me to have a sense of 'responsibility' of knowing that people out there RELY on her to move their day and knowledge along.  I have to say that I have felt that same way and while I hesitate to compare myself to them or Lumigrate to their businesses, it was nice to see some similarities.  I hope that in 10 or 20 years Lumigrate is helping as many people as their entertainment and education has, and in such important ways as health.  Because truly, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything -- and while they had been broke in the past, they have enjoyed good health overall with small spurts of depression or thyroid issues only.  I guess I came away from watching feeling like I hit a rock bottom with health issues in the past and this year with financial issues and both made me a stronger and better person. 

They also talked about how she came up with the idea to do the story that turned into a book, then series, then entertainment empire. She also was shown speaking at a graduation about 'failure', and said to Oprah that with all the amazing people she's gotten to know since her success, she finds that ALL had moments of 'failure' that were temporary and things that provide you to get a really good foundation under you.  I sat in amazement listening to that, because that is EXACTLY what I have said for months now about Lumigrate.  I was focusing my resources of time and energy on getting the right people around me to write and speak in the Forums, upcoming Podcasts, and future videos.  Lumigrate had not gotten to where it was bringing in money yet (which takes years with an online business typically), but I'd invested my whole 'bankroll' into it, and it would be a massive loss of 'investment' to let it go.  I trusted my instinct about things, and persevered with putting as much time and energy as I could into making new connections.  Unfortunately, I was having to focus more on those that could afford to finanically help Lumigrate more than I would have otherwise, but in a way that made me make connections that I wouldn't otherwise have made, and that likely was 'as it was intended to be, perhaps'.

So why last week felt like coming home?  I was back in person with Chris Young for the first time in 2 years or more, but this time in front of a podcasting microphone setup at the TalkingDigital studios.  Adam Cochran is spearheading that portion of Lumigrate for me, and is part of the 'Village' I give credit to.  We focused our limited time on a conversation about what we did in the past related to forming a live fibromyalgia forum and basically just let people listen in to us talking about why we did it and what we found as challenges, and how I've addressed those challenges by creating a website in order to then continue what we were doing.  But THIS TIME, people can tune in to listen, or stop by to read, or download and watch a video -- and it's not just me, Dr Young and a handfull of others (who you see in the Videos tab on Lumigrate), but national Internet-savvy people like Deirdre Rawlings, ND who gets to always say she was the first official sponsor of Lumigrate.com, Marc Sprulock, MD, Jerry Rand, MD, Yenta, Alice ("Life is Good"), Karen Richardson, OTR, CDRS ("Karen's Korner") and MORE.  

I'm pleased to announce that Aimee Shannon's going to be able to focus more of her talents and resources in the direction of Lumigrate and that's just such perfect timing since Dr Young and I would love to have our materials being utilized across the country in support groups and educational forums 'live' and via technology on the Internet and television, etc. She certainly has the skills and abilities to make THAT happen!

The videos were watched by a fair # of people and let us know what the uses and difficulties are for video format, which becomes less of a factor now that the economy is recovering and people will get back to purchasing the electronics they had put off doing which allows people to watch on their televisions.  There is a 'learning curve' and almost a 'wave delay' that goes on with these things and I've had to learn to just 'go with the flow' and then figure out how to reposition myself for what's going on.  But we ARE talking to people about video again, but doing it the way the market is going to be in 2011 we forsee.  

The podcasts as I'm envisioning them will add a dimension of FUN and portability to the Lumigrate Lineup, and I hope to get each provider who wants to significantly participate with Lumigrate to have at least one podcast by the time we're looking at leaves coming on the trees next year instead of falling from them this year.  I hope a lot of people buy their parents the electronic gadgets they need to stay up on information and learning on Lumigrate.  (hint, hint, we're now within 3 months of the Holiday season!)

And with the Forums, you'll see that we have TWO PhD Psychologists, who actually work together part of the time, now in the Forums (Chris Young and Paula King), two new chiropractors (one locally who works on me and just got me out of this latest 'crisis' in under a week which is really quite remarkable, the other is in New Jersey and specializes in fibromyalgia and like me, also has it himself).  We have lots of good information coming in from Tom with JuicePlus+ and Robin Thomas with Usana has been busy with varied family responsibilities but we communicated this last week and she's looking forward to having more time to devote to Lumigrate.  We have new spiritual writers coming in as well, which I'll tell you more about in a future blog. 

Why did I let the Blog go for a while?  I was having to spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with the 'financial crisis' and due to the wisdom of people that have been around for a while and are seeing where Lumigrate is going, they're going to help take it there finanically, so I'm able to now turn my time/energy back to doing what I do best -- communicating with people.  Networking.  Facilitating.  Nagging busy providers for content that I'm seeing or feeling or sensing the need for on Lumigrate.  Finding the technical people or advisors who can provide the training or provide the services we're needing to get from where we are this minute to where we can be in the future if we all just operate like a village and come together. 

Thanks to all who have stood by me this last year or three or 50.  I'm very much looking forward to where it goes from here.  ~~ Mardy

PS -- This is a video on YouTube which I found today because Mariluz is at the age I was when I will NEVER forget listening to this late at night, driving in a blizzard following a semi to show me the road, to a job I thought I needed to be working in Grand Junction, Colorado.  I was not yet diagnosed properly, and I was exhausted trying to meet the 'demands' of everyday, normal life as I knew it -- family back home to be with on weekends, a company on my back about my expense account for my dinners which needed to be gluten free in a time that meant eating fish and potatoes at $15/night places, not the Holiday Inn restaurant or McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken like other OTs did I guess.  Looking back on it, there were other solutions I could have looked at, but it would have meant not being completely independent and 'on my own', or it would have meant 'quitting' and I'm not a quitter.  I went to dinner with a gal pal who is 39 who said something about wisdom with age, and I said 'wait til you get to 50'... I was 39 when I was making the mistakes of my past, which I hope I will ALWAYS remember fondly when I hear Chumbawumba and 'I get knocked down, but I get up again'. ... (there are some references to alcohol and spending time that might be considered bad words to some, so please use your judgment about watching).  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LODkVkpaVQA