But if you are sick or in pain, your exhaustion changes you and the number of spoons you have. You work, and play, and clean, and love, and hate, and that’s lots of damn spoons … but if you are young and healthy you still have spoons left over as you fall asleep and wait for the new supply of spoons to be delivered in the morning. Most healthy people have a seemingly infinite number of spoons at their disposal, each one representing the energy needed to do a task. The Spoon Theory was created by a friend of mine, Christine Miserandino, to explain the limits you have when you live with chronic illness. “Do you know about the spoons? Because you should.

― Jenny Lawson, quote from Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.” Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. “When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate.

A funny book about horrible things