How I Built Confidence, One Breakfast at a Time

Making breakfast for myself, gave me, a chronic illness warrior a lot of confidence. But how does making breakfast build confidence? I want to share how it happened, what it did for me and what I’d recommend from this experience.

Without being too repetitive, I’ll give you a brief background and some links to relevant posts of mine relating to this background in case you wish to know more about my story.

So here’s the brief background…

I was 11 when I was diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis. Later in life I was eventually diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), fibromyalgia, arthritis, MCAS, adenomyosis, and a few other conditions whose names I can’t remember right now, but can certainly feel them! 😀

I’m 38, and I’ve been making my breakfast for over 22 years now – my mum made it for me on school mornings till I decided I’m all grown up and I should take charge. I don’t think I understood how important this was until October 2015.

In October 2015, my legs gave way – I had a huge health crash. My legs felt as if 10,000 nails were being hammered in them. I couldn’t stand on my feet because the pain was so excruciating. If I made it to the bathroom somehow then making it back to bed wasn’t possible. I was on a wheelchair for a year.

It was a year when mum made my breakfast.

18 months on, I was diagnosed with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. A condition I always had, a condition that always showed its signs, but it was always ignored by the doctors I had met.

Relevant Read
Being Diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
Connecting Endometriosis and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
Dysautonomia: How POTS Changed My Life
My Experience: Treatments to Manage Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome

In this one year of my inability to stand or keep my legs hanging on a chair and allowing gravity to pull it down further, doing anything for myself was tough.

Breakfast should have been the last of my worries.

But with my mother having endured a stroke in January 2015 due to a doctor’s negligence, she had her own health to manage.

I felt I needed to make a change and at least try to improve my self-sufficiency and my confidence.

Making Breakfast = Confidence Building

I decided, even if it’s just toast, I will make it myself.

My elbows would lean on the kitchen counter keeping me propped up.

Every time those nails would hit my legs and the soles of my feet, I’d alternate the leg I’m standing on.

I’d tell myself I can do this.

Strangely, during the time I was in bed for a year, my brother had come to visit me (it wasn’t strange that he had come to visit me, it’s the next part, that I’m about to share that was). We were channel flicking and came across Kill Bill Volume 1.

There’s a scene in which Uma Thurman, paralysed legs down wills her toes to move – if you haven’t seen it, then you can here:

She gets her toes to move, and eventually her legs too after 13 hours of trying to will them on.

Yes it’s all cinematic liberty, but I was like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, willing my legs to get through each day I made breakfast.

Soon I wasn’t just making toast, I was making the best omelettes ever and a host of other types of breakfast which worked for my endo and EDS friendly diet. And yes, I reworked my diet quite dramatically during this time too!

So I wasn’t just making breakfast, I was mentally, emotionally and physically involved in putting the right things in my body for my conditions.

Even today, in 2022, as I use my walking sticks for support, or the kitchen counter – I still make my breakfast with definitely lesser pain than I had in 2015, but this post isn’t about my pain reducing because that didn’t happen because I was standing to make breakfast.

But what breakfast making did, it willed me to get out of bed in the morning, because no breakfast would mean a drop in sugar levels, blood pressure and severe migraine and nausea (my mum was always around on really bad days as a backup).

What making breakfast did was, it created a ritual, a habit for me. Making breakfast was a time where I was connecting with my nutrition. I was connecting myself to a healthy start. It was allowing me to divert my attention to something positive. It was soon becoming a symbol of self-sufficiency, a symbol of confidence, a symbol of achievement, a symbol of progression, a symbol of my strong will.

The fact that “I make my breakfast” is the first thing I tell people when we discuss my health (and I tell them proudly) shows that it really is my medal of the day, a medal that hasn’t diminished in value, instead it has been the building blocks of encouragement that I can do this for other tasks in my day.

Making breakfast made me feel good about myself. It still does.

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Is there a ritual you do that has quietly gone ahead and built your confidence as a spoonie? Is there something you do that helps you? If you could share your thoughts in the comments section below then that would be so nice.

Thank you.

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I have a podcast too. You can check them out here along with their transcripts or if you don’t wanna read them then they’re available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts too. 🙂

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Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I am a patient and have created this platform to share my experiences. This is all purely informative and in no way am I providing medical advice. Please consult a medical professional.