So here we are! Lyme Disease and a Spoon Giveaway you don't want to miss.

For those of you who know me from my jewelry/bead/book/pie/vintage/Zack blog called Pretty Things, welcome, and thank you for coming to the not-so-pretty side of the street. For those of you who have found me via a different route, welcome as well! I hope you'll sign up to follow my posts as well as feel free to send me emails, comments, or even suggestions for blog topics. I'm also always interested in guest bloggers.


So why Lemon, Sugar, Hold the Lyme? 


Well, you've heard that adage, if life hands you lemons, make lemonade, right? Well, I don't know about you, but lemonade kind of sucks without sugar. (And yes, I know, I know, bacteria love sugar so I should use Stevia but I'm just not ready to get into all that stuff quite yet!) It's even more fun when someone finds vodka along the way. Then you have a party! And "hold the Lyme" -- well, a play on words. Lemon disease sounds odd, but so does Lyme disease. But it's not about a fruit, I can tell you that.


I can tell you a lot more as days go by, but I wanted to kick start this blog grand opening with a giveaway. The talented and lovely Maire Dodd partnered with me to make a truly beautiful and meaningful piece of art for those of you out there suffering not just from Lyme, but from all kinds of invisible illnesses. I'm a fan of the blog "But You Don't Look Sick", and on their fabulous blog, the story of The Spoon Theory was born.

Christine Miserandino wrote a wonderful story that really does describe what it's like to live with lupus (the disease I was first misdiagnosed with). Please click her name to read the story -- it's clever and exactly to the point. There are a lot of "spoonies" out there. Those with Lupus, Lyme, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Hashimodo's -- so many weird and uncontrolled diseases that have in many cases ruined our live and in almost all cases certainly have changed it forever.


Maire stamped these vintage silver-plated spoons with the words "inner peace". When you have just one spoon left, you need to cling to that inner peace with all you might. You really, really do. The rose quartz is known as "the love stone" and is supposed to be the stone of unconditional love. As I'll explore in this blog, many of us who have a chronic illness find that our network of friends and family we count on starts to dwindle as people tire, or can't understand, or just get so bogged down themselves. That's natural, even if it hurts. But you have to count on YOUR LOVE for YOURSELF. You have to. You must.

Interestingly, the stone is also meant to encourage forgiveness and to help you let go of anger and resentment. That means the anger and resentment you may feel towards yourself, too. Believe me, I am in the middle of a HUGE existential crisis and I should probably drape myself in rose quartz post haste.

To kick off this blog, 

which I hope will be a place of healing not just for me, 

but for anyone who needs a place to vent, share, or (believe it or not) laugh, 

Maire has given me three spoons to give away. 

If you are so inclined and win one of the spoons (open to the US and International), we would love for you to make a small donation to Karuna Shechen, a non-profit that helps the Himalayan regions.

Why the Himalayas? Well, besides that they desperately need the help, I look at us as "C'Lymers" (thank you dear friend Keith, for the name). We're climbing the Himalayas, and we're going to make it down the other side, one spoon, one step, one laugh, one tear, one story, at a time.

Me, in healthier days.

Please share this with your groups and friends. I will announce the winners next weekend. Don't forget to subscribe!


You can reach this blog a number of ways:

www.LemonSugarLyme.com

www.LemonSugarHoldtheLyme.com

http://lemonsugarholdthelyme.blogspot.com/

and finally

http://www.UphillClyme.com, which will eventually link directly to the guest bloggers pages and their stories.