Spoonie

I often use the hashtags #spoonie or #spooniecommuity, and today I will explain what that means.

Once there was a girl who had lupus. She managed to get out to a restaurant with a friend one evening. Her friend was struggling to understand her lack of energy, so she wanted to explain it. The first object she saw was a spoon, so she used that in her analogy: “Imagine everyone starts each day with 12 spoons; a healthy person uses less spoons to complete any activity, while a sick person uses up spoons a lot faster. So for example a healthy person might use 1/4-1/2 a spoon for a shower, but a sick person may use up 3 spoons doing that exact thing. So a sick person uses up their spoons much faster...they are called spoonies = in need of spoons (energy).”

This applies to any chronic illness. I am a spoonie with Lyme, Mental illness, among other things.

The spoonie community is a very good community to be a part of.  And I use the hashtags so I can find other people and vice versa.

 Last night in my live I touched on it briefly, but it is very important for me to be in it because, although I have many friends, having friends with chronic illness brings understanding on a whole new level.

The reality is, unless you’ve got it (in my case Lyme), you don’t get it. And that is OK. We don’t expect everyone to understand.

Through this community I have had the chance to meet many others who have a number of my diagnosis. And I can talk with them, ask questions, and relate to them. Seeing so many others live daily with chronic illness, and somehow get through pushes me to do the same.

I don’t want this to sound like I don’t value your friendship, because I love all of you. I just tell you because this is something that helps me.