Our Journey To Self

04/07/2020

Are you thinking of seeking teletherapy. Needing help in this tough time. It's okay not to be okay.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/148yda3GpWtfwHdSOPgdcYobwyf4oreOFO287V8yffH0/prefill

03/20/2020

Governor J. B. Pritzker Issues Critical Telehealth Executive Order-teletherapy included for people under a lot of stress or needing help at this time. Please call 815-398-8422 or email [email protected] if you'd like help.

March 19, 2020

We are very pleased to announce that, in response to our request and proposal, Governor JB Pritzker has just issued an important Executive Order that requires all health insurance issuers regulated by the Department of Insurance to cover telehealth services. The Order applies to provisions of mental health & substance use disorder treatment and general healthcare. The technology authorized to be utilized goes beyond traditional telehealth methods to include:

Cellular phones;
Facebook Messenger;
Google Hangout;
FaceTime, or;
Skype.

These methods do not have to meet the HIPAA standards per the Waiver issued by the federal Office of Civil Rights.

The services may be provided by any in-network physician, APRNs, psychologists, clinical social workers, other mental health providers, and other substance use disorder treatment providers who are licensed, registered, certified and/or authorized to practice.

The health insurance issuers shall NOT impose utilization review requirements that are unnecessary OR impose any treatment limitations that are more stringent than the requirement imposed upon in-person care. There are also NO PRIOR AUTHORIZATION requirements allowed to be imposed for in-network providers. Finally, no cost sharing requirements may be imposed upon patients under this order.

We thank Governor Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Insurance for their swift response to our request. Further, many thanks to IABH Legal Counsel Jud DeLoss for developing a draft Executive Order that we shared with the Governor's Office - a majority of what he drafted is included in the final order! We are pleased to see such a swift and positive response to our request and grateful for the Governor's continued leadership during this critical time.

03/19/2020

03/19/2020

http://ourjourneytoself.com/2020/03/17/lessons-on-the-journey/

03/18/2020

Advice for someone starting a new journey in life.

03/18/2020

The journey provides lessons we need to learn, hence the lessons on the journey. Some of us have to take the journey-we can't say no-it is our north star.

09/21/2019

A pioneer hiker, Emma Gatewood, was the first woman to walk the Appalachian Trail solo in one season. At the age of 67, after raising 11 children, Gatewood started hiking, inspired by an article in National Geographic, and set her mind to tackle the 2,168-mile trail. She completed the hike three times, the last at age 75, making her the first person to do so. She also walked 2,000 miles of the Oregon Trail, averaging 22 miles a day. In total she walked alone through 14 states. The impetus behind her marathon hikes is rooted in her experience as a survivor of domestic violence. The last straw was an incident when her husband Percy beat her so badly he broke her teeth, jaw and cracked her ribs, nearly killing her. A sheriff’s deputy arrived at the house, and arrested Emma, not Percy. She spent a night in jail until the mayor of the small West Virginia town where they lived intervened when he saw her blackened eyes and bloodied face. He granted Emma a divorce — unheard of in those days — and she raised her last three children alone. Her youngest daughter Lucy who witnessed the brutal violence showed her mom the National Geographic article and urged her mom to set out on an adventure. Hiking for Emma, was an act of self-care, healing, resistance, independence and a way to regain her inner and outer strength and find her way back to herself. When asked why she hiked, she said simply “Because I wanted to.”

09/21/2019

I love her statement: You've earned that place at the table.

09/21/2019

09/21/2019

September is National Su***de Prevention Month. Learn the signs and start the conversation. Together we can save lives.

06/24/2019

I share this on Our Journey to self page because we all have signs in our body that we should pay attention to.

There are at least eighteen signs that help you understand your baby before it speaks. Parents, especially young parents with their first baby, are always trying to understand the baby and they are frustrated when

06/18/2019

Consider this when on your journey to find yourself. This year I just had an awareness of a repeating pattern in my lineage I wasn't aware of.

Have you ever heard of the term inter-generational trauma? What about “generational curse?” Inter-generational trauma is a concept developed to help explain years of generational challenges within families. It is the transmission (or sending...

06/18/2019

06/13/2019

Learning to fail is a skill like any other — which means it takes practice.

06/13/2019

A not radical (but radical) idea: What if we just nurtured our children to become the best version of themselves they could be, and called that successful?

06/13/2019

Dear Ones:

I absolutely failed at being the perfect caregiver for Rayya when she was sick and dying.

As soon as she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I decided that it was my job to take care of her, and I intended to do it with excellence, honor, patience, skill, spiritually, grace, and unconditional love. I decided that being the perfect caregiver to Rayya was my soul’s mission and the entire purpose of my life.

Well, friends: I failed at it.

Again and again, I failed.

I was overcome by exhaustion, by my own grief, by anger at her for being an uncooperative and ungrateful patient, by resentment of anyone who disagreed with me about her care, by anger at God for letting her die. I fell apart. I fell short. I was humbled by the realization that other people were better at taking care of her than I was. My ego was shattered and my heart was broken when sometimes she chose other people to be with in her vulnerability, because they were better at comforting her than I was. Because they didn’t need anything from her, the way that I did.

By the end, I got so fragile, I became somebody who other people had to take care of, because I was such a wreck. So I failed at being Florence Nightingale. I failed at being an angel. And right before she died, I apologized to Rayya that I had not been better at my “job” of taking care of her.

That’s when she told me that I had it all wrong. My job on this earth was never to become a perfect caregiver. Or a perfect anything. My job on this earth (according to Rayya in her last days) has only ever to learn how to find mercy for myself. Mercy for the difficult — sometimes impossible — dilemma of being human.

So for anyone out there today who is “failing” at being the perfect caregiver, the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect friend...please drop the knife you are holding at your own throat. It was never your job to be the perfect ANYTHING. Your only job is to find mercy — starting with you. Again and again and again.

I love you all.

And if you want to listen to my entire SuperSoul interview with Oprah Winfrey about this, the link is right here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oprahs-supersoul-conversations/id1264843400

Be gentle to you.

Onward, LG.