Have you been challenged by a living with a condition that just makes life harder? In this episode, I sit down to chat with my friend, Alysa Bejenaru. She is a Registered Dietician by education, but a conqueror through experience. As a woman living with Celiac disease, she’s modeled the importance of listening to your body, being kind to yourself, but also how to use every minute of the good times to do wonderful things in the world for and with others.

She also is the wife of a former professional athlete and current professional baseball coach, she has created a large support-oriented community of women who are in the same place called, WAGS (Wives and Girlfriends) in Real Life.

Alysa is quiet teacher of resilience, creativity and the power of connecting people. The secret to her success and sanity is rooted in the mindset of continually handing the fear and challenges over to God and leaning on his tender care for her life’s purpose and possibility.

When the tough times come, Alysa’s therapy has been writing about her experiences. Through her blogs, she’s documented her feelings and insights that have in turn helped many other people to navigate their way through their challenges too.

 “It was when I took the scary step of sharing my story, I became connected to new people and relationship which helped me to feel so much less alone in my challenges. It’s one of the reasons I believe in the value our sharing them.”

Within the WAGS in Real Life community, Alysa has used her experience of sharing stories to help women become more confident in sharing their own too.

We also discussed life with chronic disease and other medical challenges and how easy it is to become defined by it, and many things that have helped Alysa to deal with the mental, physical and emotional challenges. Some of the things that worked for her are:

• Try to lean into the reality, and just let it be. Don’t fight it and accept it.
• Using journaling to “offload” the negative emotions, especially when there’s no one else to share it with.
• Learning to accept that God’s ways are higher than ours, and trust that He’s working it all out for us.
• Realizing and accepting that God has us where he wants us, and sometimes His answer is “no’ to our requests and prayers.

You can find Alysa at the following places online:

http://wagsinreallife.com

https://www.facebook.com/inspiredrd/