I receive devastating news - a diagnosis of an illness that changed my life.. Miriam McGuirk

but I realized only now that actually that was the start of me going on a treadmill going on that hamster wheel that was getting faster and faster and faster I was really pushing myself to succeed and and and reach goals and I don't know why but I was very driven and I have to say my writing career got pushed kind of to the backburner except at one point I went back to Dublin and a friend of mine introduced me to an editor of the paper and he I don't know why but he asked me would I write a couple of articles and he asked me to do a couple of interviews again I'd never ever done anything like that in my life I said okay now I was working full-time and delivered and he said you could make a good writer and he said if you were prepared I could train you a week and train you at the paper to be a journalist but I still felt Dublin was quite enclosed and small and I really wanted to get back to to London sadly my writing got pushed to the backburner and I perhaps wasn't having as much fun was all about work but the good news as I say was I went back to my my old passion which was sport and health and fitness and I applied for a job at a health club I went in there as a deputy general manager and I loved us now the hours were still long and I still worked weekends and that's where I met Chris who ivory Chris of my superhero so we're now in the early 90s and Chris and I met in 94 and we got married in 96 and one evening at work I collapsed again and I knew this was serious this time now the rocks have grounded me before now for 24 hours I thought off we go again walk through the door don't ask me how I got home fell in the door actually and that was it within weeks I had five operations everything had started to close down nothing was functioning so you could imagine the emotion I didn't know what was going on the shark the anger the yeah fear and after the operations doctor came to the house one morning and he said I really want you to listen now to what I have to say please don't fight me on this because your work with me will find a way to manage it and he said you have a me and I'll explain in me has anyone heard of MA yeah if you imagine waking up every morning with full-blown flu in a fever in a fog not hardly ever to get out of bed to walk down the stairs even put the kettle on to make a cup of tea to even try and prepare breakfast this huge effort and that's 24/7 and he said it was the worst case scenario because nobody had been able to diagnose it now I knew for years something wasn't right but me any I'm sorry and I said to him I don't have time for this you said I think you're gonna have to give it all the time it needs and a few weeks after that he actually diagnosed as well where I had been suffering with really bad pains and my or my joints muscles all the nerve endings everywhere and the diagnosis was fibromyalgia and of course I didn't realize them you know we need energy to sleep we need energy to eat and I went into total meltdown and I went into total denial and I refused to accept how I was so three years passed and I would be lying in bed in the morning as Chris was heading to work he'd come home in the evening and I was sure there I it was just it was just I don't know it was just send this in this gray fog and then one morning I realized that actually the world's no magic wand there was no fairy godmother who was going to come along and say yeah I can sort this out for you I had to do it I had to take responsibility but the one good thing through all of this those three years where I was able to so little is that suddenly I picked up a pen and notebook again and I don't know how words just came flooding out just I I couldn't write them down fast enough now I've never been trained to write poetry but it seemed like I was formatting and had the foundations within 10 15 minutes of a poem and then within two or three days the walls actually a complete poem ah what a sense of achievement so I had a start a middle and an end that gave me a lot of hope and at that point as well I decided that I had to take control so I researched everything on fibromyalgia everything I could find an Emmy but even though I was eating healthily my immune system was shot to pieces or nothing nothing was being absorbed and so it was all about and I still to this day I adhere to a really really strict regime and so it's about rest time up time how I ease the the times when I have the energy to write and that's how I started and also I started to use everything was organic and natural I used to say if I can if I can put on my face and I can't eat it it doesn't go on my skin and what I eat has to be really theme food and then I started to use natural supplements that supported my system but like I did nothing really really changed and then Chris appeared home one evening with tickets for Southwest Turkey well I went into total panic Southwest turkey why would I want to go there we've never been I couldn't even pack a suitcase never mind get on the plane and I don't know how well we did and we we we we got on the plane I arrived it was a four and a half hour flight it took me five days just to recover from that flight on the fifth day for the first time in years there was that much energy and Chris almost carried me on his back and threw me into the sea and you know within 15 15 minutes I felt different I felt I can't begin to describe I just felt better than I had felt for years so by the fifteenth day was about that much energy I was relaxed I was smiling I was laughing and I said to Chris gosh if I can have that much energy after 15 days what would happen after seven weeks two months so what I did was armed with my notebook and pen now remember it was a very different culture Eastern culture different way of living and thinking and this was this Western woman not a clue of the language nothing so I had to learn so I have my pen I had my notebook and a friend of mine gave me a word processor little word processor and the first time I went out I stayed seven weeks and within seven weeks I really managed so well it was amazing and we were 500 meters from the sea so every morning I'd go slowly down to the water and I just feel amazing afterwards and then I gone right and I rolled six pounds in seven weeks and that was just I thought that felt good and I started to write short stories then but that now now we're in the first time we went was 2001 and I said to Chris what about we start to spend more time how Internet Southwest Turkey and that's what we did and the first year we spent time at the beach but then things changed then we moved up to the mountain well I've never thought of myself as a mountain girl with sheep and goats and chickens and scorpions and snakes but we were 2,000 feet up a mountain in a village that hasn't changed for about 150 years and surrounded my pine forest and all I would hear his bird song it was it was just magical but it took me another three years to actually adapt to that way of life and to stop thinking of how I used to live because I still hankered after that old life that old Miriam but that old Miriam didn't work I really have to start embracing this new Miriam and and ways of doing things and I looked around at home the villagers lived they lived this really really simple life and they'd always say - Miriam no stress no stress was I would actually create that stress myself because I thought I would ought to be doing more at that point I was writing I started to write we call them blurbs then you call them vlogs now blurbs for other websites but not in my name because I was using a pen name for about 20 years then I was afraid I'd lost all my self-confidence my confidence my self-esteem and I I was hiding behind the computer I was hiding behind my name but the response was really positive I got loads of invites for tea or people wanted to come and visit me um and I said to Chris gosh and I also wrote for some health forums which is helping other people who were in the same boat as I was and I said to Chris gosh maybe it's time to start writing that book but not on my name so I put all these blogs together and I created a book my very first book this is in 2013 I decided to become a full-time writer and it took another eight years before I was ready to go out there and allow people to read my work because it I still felt quite quite shy and anxious about it and and the book was called tales from Turkey in my pen name found a local publisher but it took eight years having lived in the darkness in the wilderness and isolation all those years to suddenly be thrown onto a stage in front of a hundred and forty people I have to say I had a few kind of freaky scary moments of how am I gonna do this and my book was launched but somehow I managed to do it and that gave me more confidence so in the February 2014 I decided maybe it's trying to write in my own name maybe it's time step onto the stage and be merry McGuirk so I went back into my cave I started writing and eight months later I signed a contract with a new publisher small publisher local independent publisher in Kent and in June 2015 I stood as Mary McGuirk with my first book shattered dreams and scorpions at midnight a search for sanctuary and the response have to say I was blown away by it but people responded to the book and then six months later a pocketful of inspiration which is a lot of the wisdom I suppose I took from the main book to this so that was six months later and as I said earlier and now in my fourth book for me the turnaround was accepting how I was the old Miriam was gone so who was going to who was going to step in for that that's face will the real Miriam the Miriam that I always was but I was hidden behind work and you know the pen name and all of that but I would say from me the power of words whether you're talking whether you're listening to someone whether you're reading words have tremendous power words you know they're magical because through words you can go off into your imagination you can create all kinds I'm sure when you're reading your books you just you're immersed don't you just get lost in it and that's the power of words but words can influence you to change they can inspire you shouldn't never give up and if I say to to everyone I say to myself as well never give up hope never ever give up hope um because what I'm doing now is pretty relentless and if you had again said to me all those years ago that I would be writing because I had to learn how to be in business again I had to learn what a being an author is in 2017 because you have to run it almost like a business although I'm not in writing business but also learning about social media I know nothing I've been away from it all for 17 years but by god I had learned and I jumped on that set alone I've grabbed the opportunity and I was say to each of you don't be afraid to ask for the help grab the opportunities asked for the help because I couldn't do it on my own you we all need that support and I would say as well and that's sometimes I get very tired and I say you know what I only ever wanted to publish one book and here am I am i forth I've done my time out of here and then something will happen and I'll go back as I call up my writing cave or someone will say something or I'll get inspirations right if I go again but I would say the most important thing whatever you do enjoy it have fun and if you are passionate about something and you are focused and you can visualize it chances are you're gonna make a living out of it chances are you gonna make an income out of it but I will say again never ever give up never give up and keep asking for that you

Channel: Miriam McGuirk

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Keywords: Miriam McGuirk, Miriam McGuirk Author, Pocketful of Inspiration, Shattered Dreams and Scorpions at Midnight, look alive, life, miriam, author, bloggers, book, books, dublin, ireland, irish, irish blogger, irish speaker, irish storyteller, irish writer, miriam mcguirk author, pocketful of inspiration, speaker, storyteller, storytelling, writer, writing

Id: u2zOOLeBDos

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2018