Pain to Purpose – a Column by Ellijahna Victoria

A quote that has circulated online notes, “Healing takes time, and you walk that path in your own way.” While most of us probably would agree that this is true, it’s easy to forget that the process doesn’t always look pretty, and it takes much longer than anticipated.

Recently, I saw a tweet that responded to the old saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” by urging people to “stop glorifying trauma as a life lesson we’ve been blessed with.” This challenged me. If you’ve been reading my columns, you know I often talk about how…

My grandma always said there were two things that mattered in life: God, and finding a rich husband. While I don’t necessarily agree with the latter, religion certainly was a core element of my life — until I was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease. I grew up in a…

Eight is the number of doctors who didn’t listen.  Five is the number of diagnoses that were wrong. Two is the number of doctors who referred me to a psychiatrist for “making up” too many symptoms. Four is the number of new doctors who finally listened to me and…

I used to think happiness was being skinny, in both sickness and in health. Beauty meant pain, and I was willing to suffer for it. Perhaps this superficial outlook on life was caused by my childhood experience of growing up as an ethnic minority and not having anyone that looked…

Ellijahna Victoria. 27. Former journalist. Writer. Media adviser. Cushing’s survivor. Wait, what? Describing myself as a Cushing’s survivor still feels weird. This wasn’t how my story was supposed to go. But of course, that’s life — things don’t always go as planned. My storm began in late 2015. Back…