ksullivan, Author at We Bad Apples

December 11, 2017

Be You Bad Apple – Work Through It

Breathe It’s only one life You’re living in Time to human Up, be your Own best friend Pickup your feet Don’t let them Drag. You’re a Wonderful gift To this earth Get busy Get moving On your Journey There’s no Time to lag. Breathe, work […]

by ksullivan

December 9, 2017

Are You Listening to Your Body’s Language?

If your body could talk, what would it say about your needs and lifestyle? Would your body tell you what the gurgling in your stomach meant about your diet and how that would later affect your mood? Would it mention that you forget to warm up with stretching while exercising and your repetitive lifestyle is causing gradual discomfort, pain, injury or illness?

Why is ignoring what your body’s trying to communicate common place in our society? We ignore pain, work through it, mask it and then ask why it exists when it becomes unbearable and we’re burnt out?

Stationary lives and lack of movement greatly impact our ability to use our bodies fully and accurately. Your body wants to be balanced and well functioning. Comfort is what we seek to feel happiness. We avoid discomfort at all costs emotionally and physically. Figuring out our own health needs are difficult. It’s easier to choose convenience and place blame with thoughts like, “Genetics are to blame for our current situation” and we’re waiting for someone else to come up with a fix to our current problem.

Desire alone cannot change our lives. Until we rearrange our priorities and we choose to listen to signals being communicated with us by our own bodies, we’ll be stuck in the same routine, fighting the same internal conflict and making no progress.

Your mental state, the emotions you feel and the physical signals are all tools your body is using to communicate with you. You are the captain of your own vessel. You choose how you feel in this life. You’re in charge of your own health journey, the advice you buy into and that which you ignore. You can hear your body telling you that pain is coming before it’s painful if you pick up on those signs. Numbness, burning, tingling, awareness of individual body parts are all signals that should be listened to rather than ignored. Weight gain, mood swings, stress, and mental challenges can also be a reflection of what’s happening systematically within your body. Whatever’s calling your attention, that part of your body trying to tell you there’s an issue before it becomes something worse. Are you ready to listen and take action?

I’ll step off my apple core now.

Apple Out,

K. Sullivan

Body

by ksullivan

December 3, 2017

Let Them Reject You

Loneliness can stem from rejection, from feeling isolated in our choices, our needs, and desires. At some point during the surrealism that is getting an Interstitial Cystitis (IC) diagnosis I began to loathe small talk. “Hey how are you?” became an insult to me as […]

by ksullivan

November 13, 2017

A Guide for Mindfulness

Take a deep breath and enjoy your brookside seat. Let the reflection run through you freely like a stream. There are small pools and slant angles in your mind to retreat. Set thoughts free to flow with the drifting by leaves. Let the reflection run […]

by ksullivan

Mandatory Sentence: Gluten Free

I have been diagnosed a suspected celiacs.

Suspected sounds peculiar but I refused

To be subjected to being the subject of

Further testing. My mother cannot imbibe,

It makes me regurgitate the protein. I’ll choose

To believe I’m positive in my diagnosis, purely

Due to feeling better when I don’t giving-in to the

Sweet tooth lurking within. I’ll choose gluten

Sensitive positive versus hell scoped invasion.

What they forgot to tell me when I chose,

A gluten free lifestyle is I’ll feel alone. More

Alone than lonely. Alone in my decision,

Rejected as strange. I’ll be the odd piece of

Person in any room. I’m now the freak.

A zoo animal prepared to face an inquisition

Of my outlandish need to nourish myself

Appropriately. Temptation is now going to

Sit at my side doing what she does best

Tempting me towards taste and desire.

She’ll attempt to sway me back towards

Her land of delicious misery and sweet

Suffering. I’ll be strong and resist her.

I’ll miss dearly the delight of giving into

Her. Saying no will be my biggest challenge.

How it feels to be gluten free in a glutenous

World: A display of sharing is no longer

A restoration of my faith in humanity

But the makings of torture. A potluck

With all my favorite enemies lined up

And staring me down. Ash fills my mouth.

It absorbs any moisture and leaves me

breathless and wanting. I’m unsure if the

Sponge sucking the space from my throat

Is jealousy or fighting the impulse to imbibe.

I know I must practice constant will power,

Be good to my insides. I cannot further

Inflame the damage years of giving-in has done.

A little scream slips out of my lips as a hiccup.

Everything I can’t touch surrounds me.

I hold my breath scared of what the

smell brings with it. Desire, the insatiable kind.

Apple Out,

K. Sullivan

Fuel

by ksullivan

My Monster Has a Name

My palms are clammy. My thoughts race. Electricity crackles in my rib cage rendering my lunges immobile. A voice, I’ll call her Reason, she scorns me, “Suck it up buttercup, you’ve got a job to do.” Reason is telling me I must stay put and […]

Body

by ksullivan

Question Everything

Where do you find your truth? Desperation can make a person do wonderfully horrible things and all too trusting in their dire hour. I was raised in a family where the adults were to not be questioned. Do as you’re told was a family staple. […]

by ksullivan

What’s your story apple?

I’ve felt the crushing weight of asthma as your lungs fill with inflammation leaving no room for air. I understand the inability to control your mind and mouth from following various rabbit trails as they hop sporadically through your head. I’m intimate with chronic pain and know she’s a cruel mistress, relentless in her pursuit of body destruction.

I’ve lived with a deep loneliness that at times fills me with cement and leaves me to rot in a bed. I’ve been frozen in fear, breathless and gasping for relief from my inner torment all the while wearing a smile on my face. I've had my intelligence questioned at moments where words would rather strangle me than roll off my tongue.

I deprived my body of food for days at a time in high school to feel skinny. I forced my body to ingest non stop during high stress moments in college. My weight has fluctuated at 5’6” from 90 pounds to 220 over the span of 15 years. I challenged my liver to binge drink professionally with the longest streak I don’t remember being roughly 14 days. I remember telling myself this is just what college kids did.

I gave away too much and don’t recall enough memories. I've been intimately abundant in alcohol consumption, dissociation and what I’ve blocked out from my childhood years due to trauma, death and exposure to addiction. I’ve felt broken. I’ve believed I was worthless because I was limited, unwell.

Asthma, ADHD, Anorexia, Addiction, Anxiety, Binge Eating, Depression, Interstitial Cystitis, Tension Headaches, Repetitive Strain Injuries (effecting my back, knees and wrists), Chronic Pain.

My diagnosis list is long and the shame I’ve felt about who I was in the past, is still existent but I know it doesn’t define me. I am not a label. I’ve chosen to heal, naturally. I’ve chosen to change. To pursue more meaning and make this life journey about being comfortable with who I am and the only home I’ll ever truly reside, my body. I’m resolved to be my best self. I use my experiences to educate myself on what they mean to me, others and ways to overcome these life circumstances.

I choose to disseminate the truth, my truth. I believe I’m on the path to learning to manage my conditions - both mental and physical - with natural medicine, remedies, activities and real healing. Who I choose to be in spite of all I suffer is a person worthy of love. I choose to be someone who believes the world is still beautiful, that nature gives us what we need to optimize how we feel and function.

This journey has not been easy but with supportive friends and steadfast determination in myself, I continue to persevere and move forward. I try to live in this moment and accept myself where I’m at. I know I can’t fix my body in a day but each day I get better at managing and mending. All of life is a practice, I’m making mine about health and healing.

My suffering led me to try new things. Through the use of The Rossiter System, Yamuna Body Rolling, Functional Fitness, Foam Rolling, training my mental health and other pain/stress management tools I’ve found ways to alleviate pain or discomfort. I studio the human body, my ailments and other's experiences in depth. I completely changed careers to focus on giving people a more pain free existence through the tools I've learned. I’ve chosen to pursue mastery in helping others overcome their own health ailments.

I will continue my education of the body to help share what I believe is effective truth about health and healing, here. I will share the struggle, the nightmare that can be this journey towards self mastery and health. I am on the correct path, set forth to seek healing my own body fully and sustain it for life. I’d like to help as many others as I can find success in their own body’s health and wellness.

Apple Out,

K. Sullivan

The Bad Apples

by ksullivan