…and hello 2022!

I’m not into numerology but I like the idea that 2022 adds up to my favorite number, six.

I’m paying less and less attention to these sorts of ideas that pop into my head as after living 52 years, I realise that most of the time they have meant nothing. I accept them as a fleeting excitable and hopeful thought.

Hope is everything.

This time last year I added Membership to the website. My hope was to establish a library of videos of some of the most inspiring people I’ve met. I did this so I could share some of the most important things I’ve learned about managing chronic pain.

At the core of everything I do, is the mission to be able to help others and avoid them the horrid impact misdiagnosis has on life.

The Membership also helped me raise some funds to rebuild PainTrain My Health Summary (PainTrain MHS). After telehealth was catapulted into our lives due to COVID-19, I realised a huge door opened for my communication resource. People and healthcare practitioners were forced to get tech-savvy and I thought, ‘hang on, that’s exactly what PainTrainMHS was waiting for!’

But, setting up the Membership ability on this website cost me a little bundle (for the plugins). Also, making the videos and editing them called for a lot of sitting time – I can’t do that easily.

So in wrapping up another year and making things neat, tidy and as hopeful as ever for a productive 2022 I need to offload as much additional pressure as possible. That includes making Membership resources.

What that means is that the Membership resources are now going to be FREE for everyone.

The world is way savvier when it comes to supporting people and causes they feel most about – I figured you don’t need Membership to nudge you if you would like to keep supporting my work.

To those of you who became members this year, THANK YOU and I hope you enjoyed your exclusive access. Your support gave me so much fuel… and continues to do so.

If you feel strongly about continuing to support my advocacy then THANK YOU, you can donate via Paypal… anytime! And if you really, really want to give me the ultimate support, then please subscribe to pain-train.com.au and give me your feedback.

Back to hope

What is there without hope? What is there without believing that what comes next may be better? How can we move forward, come out of our flares and smile and laugh on occasion if we don’t believe that our situations can change and become much better?

I’m in no way happy a pandemic came along, but I’m certainly grateful that the world now has far more understanding for people who live with an invisible illness, that the world holds far more support for people who can’t get out so easily and that the world is heading for a more inclusive way of living. Who would have thought working from home would be so welcome, in fact encouraged?

Who could have imagined that the healthcare world could be accessible from our homes?

I’m so hopeful for 2022 because I can now so confidently say, ‘I can’t make it IRL, can we zoom?’ without apology or explanation. And, this year it also got a whole lot easier to slap down my cushion in the middle of a full restaurant… and sit on it. It’s also become easier for others to understand why I couldn’t be somewhere and it became hilarious listening to people rave about online shopping (hello, we’ve been doing it for years, even before it was all setup online officially).

I bet you can rattle off many examples of feelings of inclusiveness – even the word inclusiveness managed to pop up on this website for the first time, where until now, all we could talk about were our exclusions and how foreign we felt within the world.

Thank you for another year of love and support

The love and support from ALL of you means the world to me.

I truly hope you have a happy and joyous (don’t you love that word?) season, and prosperous and pain-free 2022.

xx Soula

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