My life, probably much like yous has changed very dratstically due to chronic illness. Pain and suffering entered my life and altered everything in it. Over the last 10 years I often have had these bizarre conversations with myself when I try to figure out who I am now, compared to who I used to be and wonder who I will be in the future.

Am I just a patient, a lupus sufferer, a poor pitful me? Am I still an achiever or must I set all that aside? Am I still allowed to dream to aspire, to set goals and meet them?

Will my body cooperate with my ambitions? Will I find the energy to accomplish? And what about my mind? Is this depression always to be? Is my mental energy gone as well as my physical energy? If so, where did they go? Is there any chance of finding them again? How much of the old me is left? Does it matter?

I felt comofortable with her. Su Wood, Nurse manager, wife, mother, grandmother, and friend. Most of the time I liked her, worked hard to get her where she was. But where was that?

I dont have to ask if you feel the same. I know you do. When I told a lupus friend I was writing this article and what it was titled, she started to cry. I know she struggles with the "who" just as I do, just as you do.

Change is always difficult exhilarating and challenging. But change that is forced upon us is often unwelcomed and hostile. This change in my body has certainly been both of those. I often feel that I turned against myself. That feeling is heart breaking in its accuracy becasue that is what the body had indeed done in the guise of this disease, lupus.

Does my body define who I am? Am I thought whaloid, white, middle-aged women I see in the mirror? I certainly hope not. But who am I if I'm not longer me?

Am I still a wife? Thankfully, yes. Perhaps not as good a one as I was. At least in my own eyes I feel like less of one because I can no onger contribute to half the income in our familiy.

Am I still a mother? Certainly, but my children are grown, off and living lives of their own as they should. They are old enough to understand my limitations but I sometimes sense that my son does not quite understand. How could he? I'm still Mom to him and he has no way of knowing what it is to be me. He would like his children to know me as I was, but that is not possible. My daughter often understands to much and take my pain upon herself, much like she did as a child. She always cried when I cried. Therefore, I often put on a happy face for her, but I somehow feel she knows the truth, and knows that I am trying to fool her and tolerates my behavior.

Am I still a grandmother? You bet. But they live several states from here and the effort and the cost of the trp makes it difficult to make it too often.

Am I still a friend? It is bizarre to be a stranger to oneself, is it not? Who am I if I am no longer ourselves. We are perhaps the sum total of what and who we love. If that is the case I am my children. I am my grandchildren. I am the Columbia River I view from my front porch. I am the 10 foot rhododendron outside my window ready to burst into bloom. I am one of the Canadian geese honking their way overhead. Who am I?

I am still me. I am the only one of me there will ever be. I am different than you, yet we have similarities, which unite us. I am an individual much like a snowflake, with my unique composition, design, and talents. I have my own unique hopes and dreams. Those have not changed. I may have to alter them. I may be slower to achieve them, but I know without hope I am no one. Without the desires to achieve there is no tomorrow.

So for today I write this article. Tomorrowe I plan to sew a new curtain for the bedroom. Over the length of the community pool, to take along walk at least three times a week. I hunger to lose weight, one pound at a time. I desire to wash winter off the windows and let in the spring, one window at a time. I crave to feel the dirt and want to plant a few lily bulbs. And thus it goes on....my life. Not as it was, but altered, different. Is different such a bad thing? I've already learned a great deal about myself I didnot know before. But I have descovered that I am   still me.