It's Just Growing Pains
The journey to understanding is often filled with misconceptions, fallacies, and ignorance, but when you arrive at your destination, everything seems clearer. Almost as though the fog has lifted and from atop the mountain you can finally view everything below. Most of the time, when I share about our journey with chronic illness, it is from the vantage point of the mom and caregiver. However, when it comes to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, this is a journey I've been on my entire life, even when I was unaware. Jayde-Rhiannon grew up hearing her doctors consistently state a phrase that made me cringe, "It's just growing pains." I cringed because, as a child, I routinely heard the exact phrase. I remember being in my early teens and retorting, "Well, I really need to stop growing!" When I was younger, I excelled at gymnastics. Friends thought it was neat I could do a split with the greatest of ease or contort my body with my legs behind my head. The most comfortabl