There's a lot society neglects to tell you as you grow up. Movies, televisions, books and the theatre all try to show snapshots of real-life, to tell stories that you may relate to, or that one day you may experience. The media in all it's forms—from oil paintings to 140-character social media blurbs—tries to portray human life in a certain, optimistic light. Also in a roundabout way, it tries to prepare you for the struggles ahead. I mean, it so obviously fails to do so as the media exaggerates and inflates stories into massive balloons so full of fantasy hot air that the original message is suffocated. The biggest example of this is the classic movie romp style of "rom-coms".

        Romantic comedies as of the last hundred or so years have told thousands of wedding and marriage tales, almost all of which end in the happily-ever-after myth. Now, I do not have the energy nor the time to touch upon the perils of that kind of story-telling. No, I'm here to discuss my troubles with one of the other, small parts of life that these love-dovey movies just gloss over: wedding planning.

        It was only in the last 20 years that Hollywood actually decided to tackle the lead-up and preparation for the most perfect (and expensive) day of any young woman's life. However, the movie directors did it in their usual superficial style (ie. Father of The Bride 1991, The Wedding Planner 2001, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2002, Bride Wars, 2009). Often an actual professional was hired to do all the hard work of planning (my wallet aches just thinking about this) while the bride and groom simply enjoyed their engagement. Or instead, the wedding plan fell entirely on the bride and her family where as the groom merely had to show up at the event to be considered 'supportive'.

        Growing up with these visions of weddings was not only unhealthy, it was extremely unrealistic. There's no way my fiancé and I can afford to hire someone to do all our planning (now referred to as a wedding or event coordinator). We have a small budget by modern standards as statistically average Canadian couples will spend $46,000 dollars on a wedding this year. We planned to spend less than a quarter of that, which means we'll have to be cutting costs by doing a lot of the labor ourselves. Also, note that I said 'we' and 'ourselves'. See, my fiancé and I are a team. That's what this whole celebration is about. So, when we tackle the most expensive and most extravagant event of our lives, you better believe that we do it together. I'm not planning this alone, my family doesn't have the final say, and my new life partner isn't going to sit back and chug a beer amongst the chaos of wedding prep. My story is going to be different from the whimsical and hilarious tales on the big screen.

        Once I put my engagement ring on, I was ecstatic. Then, after a couple hours of basking in the newly-engaged-glow, the reality of what lay ahead of me sunk in. Sure, I was engaged and so in love, but I also had to plan a party for all my friends and family, the biggest party I will ever throw in my lifetime. It was terrifying and I relayed this to my fiancé. As always, he was calm and collected. Together we made a few of the smaller decisions and I started to feel like the process wasn't so overwhelming. Those small choices lead to bigger ones, and now much of the event concept is solidified. In the coming weeks, we'll begin booking vendors for our February 2020 wedding. My fiancé has been a part of the process the whole time and, instead of being crippled by worry, I'm actually excited for what lies ahead.

        The movies were wrong about a lot of things when it comes to weddings. As entertaining as it was to watch the wacky love shenanigans and overwhelming bridal meltdowns, I'm very glad that so far reality is nothing like that.

-Dana.


"Have you ever planned a wedding? Did it feel as crazy as a movie wedding? Was it difficult to plan? Share your experience in the comments!"

      It's been about three months since I started actively working on my weight loss. Calorie counting, stepping with my Fitbit, and swimming once a week have all contributed to this and I hope I've created a routine that I can maintain.

      Initially, I had a lot of water weight just hanging around. During the first month of calorie counting, this just melted off at an insane rate. I was shocked at just how much I lost in the beginning. Like, double digit loss with very little effort. By the second month, I was steadily losing about a pound a week. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't as fast as month one, but still seeing those losses really kept me motivated. I was doing something right!

      I think calorie counting is ideal for me. I mean, I can still have McDonalds, the stereotypical epitome of fatness and unhealthy food. I didn't start this to eat perfectly healthy. I just wanted lower numbers on the scale to prove a point to my doctors (the number didn't matter, the pain was always there). I knew that over time I could make the healthier choices because I felt more confident in my diet. And I did. I started choosing to cook instead ordering in. I would go for a protein heavy meal to stave off hunger. I'd excitedly drink water to stay hydrated. Slowly, but surely I'm making healthier choices and I have the willpower to maintain it.

      So, the big reveal. The thing that I never thought I'd be able to say. "I've lost weight." A decent amount of weight. As of a week ago, I'm now down just over 30 lbs. I couldn't believe it. I've never lost that much intentionally in my life. It felt like such a victory. I did this. I worked hard and earned this.

      Now, I still have weight to lose and I will continue to work on my weight loss for the rest of the year. However, I feel really proud of myself and motivated to keep going.  Maybe I'll never be the "perfect" weight, but I can be healthier overall and prove that my condition exists at any weight. I hope to find a happy medium and work towards that. I'll check in again a few months from now, but until then I'm going to celebrate my current success, not of the weight loss but of my immense effort producing results. All my hard work is what matters. I made the impossible possible for myself. Now, I want to revel in that for a little bit.

-Dana.


Have you ever lost a large amount of weight? How did you feel losing weight? Do you maintain the weight loss? Sound off in the comments section!

You know, I'm really tired of spending money hand over fist because of a few pimples. Unfortunately, after my fiasco a year ago due to basic drugstore brands, I felt I needed to try the more expensive products. Sure, they haven't harmed me one bit. But have they helped? That question is harder to respond to than I'd like.

Short answer? No. Long answer? Still no.

Maybe cleansing my face everyday has helped a tiny bit. However, any basic cleanser could do that. From my readings on r/SkincareAddiction, I learned that there are safe and gentle drugstore brands for skincare. Ones that didn't cost hundreds of dollars. I mean, in total over the last year I spent more than $1200 on skincare products. Worse yet, I don't think my skin looks any different that before I started Lush last May. YIKES!

I feel a bit scammed. Skincare is such a tricky thing and it's very subjective. What works for one person doesn't for another. I understand the need for variety, but preying on people who are desperate for solutions and vulnerable due to self-esteem issues is pretty crummy. Thanks capitalism.

Well, I think I've learned my lesson. No more trying brands in a sweeping manner without tons of research. I've read so much about my skin type and conditions via SCA and I will continue to do so. Over the next month, I'll be phasing out most of my Kiehl's products (except the Vitamin C serum. I can only order that online from other brands). In their stead, I'm switching to Cerave cleansers and moisturizers. As for a toner, it's really up in the air right now. Maybe I won't use one at all for a while and see how I fair. Still, I'm going to keep my eye out for something soothing and cheap!

Setbacks are normal, but this is a bit rough. I'm only two months into truly pushing myself on skincare and to lose a whole year's worth of work really sucks. Maybe this spring will go better.

-Dana.


What products did you feel scammed by? Did you buy anything that you later felt was overpriced? Do you find expensive skincare routines worth it? Leave me a message down below!

I thought receiving a diagnosis was an achievement in and of itself. I thought everything that came next couldn't be as bad. The logic was, "If I know what's wrong with me, I know what I can do to help fix it." I never counted on my illness begin incurable. Modern medicine is so advanced that we've made AIDS treatable to the point that it's very unlikely to die from it anymore; so in my mind there shouldn't be many incurable illnesses left. Turns out, not only was I wrong, but I was being very naive.

Fibromyalgia is what I was diagnosed with recently after decade of searching for answers. It is a chronic pain condition that causes widespread pain throughout my body as well as sleep problems, sensitivity to high/low temperatures, muscle spasms, overactive nerves, bad joints, fatigue and many other issues. Basically, I can't walk very far or stand for very long and using my joints for prolonged periods of time can cause serious problems. On my bad days, I end up confined to bed rest. Even on my good days, I can really only tackle a couple short tasks or run one errand without causing a painful flare for the rest of the week.

While knowledge is power and knowing what caused all these problems helped me, I didn't realize how limited my treatment options were. Exercise is usually the blanket, throw-away advice from doctors and rheumatologists. However, it only seems to help a small portion of fibro patients improve, for some it can make the pain much worse. I, unfortunately, ended up in the latter group. As I continued my research post-diagnosis, I found that there was very little new information on treatment. "Pain management" was a term used most often, talking about how to learn to live with the pain. It also seemed that there was very little research going on about how to cure fibromyalgia patients and most efforts seemed focused on just dealing with the pain. Learning this broke my heart. They weren't trying to make us better, they just wanted us to complain less and do more. (Shut up and be useful.) This kind of thinking is not helpful for the patients who just want to be better, who want to eventually be pain-free. For now, we accept that pain-free may not happen, but we need to hope it is a possibility. Hope is all we have.

Around this time, I heard the phrase, "Fibro won't kill you, but you'll suffer every day until you die of old age." While that isn't the greatest outlook to have, as a person with this disease I feel like it still rings true. Fibromyalgia as it stands is a life sentence of pain, insomnia, and the inability to complete basic daily tasks. Like many fibro sufferers, I can't work. Since my wrists lock up, it makes it hard to drive a car or use a computer for long periods of time. Working retail or any other minimum wage job that would have me on my feet most of the day also wouldn't work as I usually can't walk or stand for longer than five minutes at a time. The only other choice is working as a call center employee, but with the emotional toll that can take on a person's mental health, it's extra dangerous for a fibro patient to take on that kind of work. This is because fibromyalgia patients have a suicide rate 10 times higher than the general population [1][2]. The cause for the high suicide rate is split between the fact that fibromyalgia cause severe depression due to pain levels and the anti-depressants with suicidal side effects often prescribed to fibro patients to treat their pain.

Speaking of treating the pain with prescriptions, there aren't many options in that department either. Anti-depressants are usually prescribed as fibro patients often present as severely depressed and many doctor's believe the pain to be psychological. (It's all in our heads! No.) There are some pills that some patients have had limited success with such as Lyrica and Gabapentin, but, like exercise, they only seem to work for a small portion of sufferers. Many fibromyalgia patients then go on to rely on opioid prescriptions like Tramadol to make it through the day. The problem there is that with the number of overdose and addiction victims rising, doctors have been taking away valid opioid prescriptions from non-addicted chronic pain patients [3][4][5]. This leads to loss of function and increased pain flares for patients who had returned to almost full function. Unfortunately, this problem is not being addressed as the chronic pain community doesn't seem to have a voice loud enough to be heard over the shouting about overdose deaths.

Therefore, fibromyalgia patients find themselves in quite a bind. We can't work, and sometimes even taking care of ourselves is too much. Adding onto the fact that there just isn't enough research being done to cure us and chronic pain patients losing access to their prescriptions, we can easily start to feel like we've been imprisoned in our own bodies. I continue my own research and participating in fibromyalgia communities in the hope that I can find ways to ease the pain and break free of this life sentence.

Dana~


"Do you suffer with chronic pain? What's your biggest hurdle? What treatment have you found to be the most helpful? Let me know in the comments below."

My lucky break has arrived! One of my many, many job applications lead to an interview which lead to the contract signing a month ago. I finally had someone who was willing to take a chance on me. The only downside? The job was not only very part-time, but it was contract work. There was no salary nor benefits involved. The hours I got were determined by how many clients I could juggle and the locations changed every day as I had to visit clients in their homes or at local meeting places. It also was only slightly related to my desired field, but I was desperate. So begins the story of my first side-hustle.