Welcome to Living with Irrevocable Differences - LIDs LIFE - by Michelle A. Patrovani
Riding the waves, Overcoming, and Living Abundantly
LID’s LIFE is a community that understands your personal journey and provides belonging, support, and inspiration for overcoming life’s irrevocable differences (those permanent, unchangeable circumstances, setbacks, and losses).
Welcome
Let me explain everything you need to know about my Substack, LIDs LIFE.
Mission
Each week, I aim to bring you 'home' - a place of emotional strength, community, and inspiration. I want to provide you with the comfort and support you need to navigate life's challenges and the clarity and strategies to help you access the life you want.
What does that mean? It means creating a life centered around possibilities, outside-the-box thinking, overcoming, abundance, and freedom so you will not be limited by irrevocable differences.
To do it, I will offer you transparency and humanity through communication that will help alter your mind’s programming that has been screwed with by events beyond your control.
If you spend enough time with my Substack, you will:
• Develop greater self-acceptance and courage
• Take more action
• Find your whys and solidify your hows
• Stop blindly conforming to limitations
• See opportunities where everyone else sees problems
• Quit overthinking and learn to better navigate your irrevocable differences
My life, like yours, is one of irrevocable differences.
Sign up now so you can transition to this way of life sooner.
About Me
In short
In 2014, I began writing occasionally on the Internet, with a chief focus on overcoming trauma, children’s incurable progressive illnesses, overwork and burnout, and relationship struggles.
I have written on various online platforms, including Medium, LinkedIn, and Twitter (X), and have built a small community of like-minded followers.
From January to July this year, I doubled my Medium.com followers, more than 13X my subscribers, and 25X my highest-earning writing year income.
My two sons, who turn 29 and 25 this month, are my greatest treasures and best teachers. Both sons were born with incurable, progressive genetic illness that attacks the lungs, digestive system, and other body organs and systems. It took 18 years to get their diagnoses and begin accessing equitable care.
Details
I quit my 12-month-a-year school administrative position (twice) to write. I still hold an 8 – 4 teaching position that pays the bills, gives me time to devote to my newsletter, and 11 weeks of paid vacation a year to do even more of the writing and creation I yearn to do.
Let me share my life story with you. I will start with the challenges, where we often learn the most powerful, life-changing lessons.
In childhood, I suffered the traumas of abandonment, parent alienation, narcissism, cold-shouldering, and corporal punishment.
At age 6, I became a surrogate mother to my baby sister. Parenting her saved my life and taught me everything I needed about healthy babies.
Before I entered my pre-teen years, I experienced sexual abuse by a family friend and community member. Though I told my parents about it, no one did anything to protect or comfort me.
In 1978, I left my parents’ home to live with my grandmother, thinking I was helping her and escaping my childhood trauma. I began considering becoming a nun.
In 1980, I escaped my country, became an illegal immigrant in the United States, and sought sponsorship for my green card through a live-in nanny-housekeeper position. Describing how I cared for my baby sister from age six got me the job.
I also wanted an education, and America was the land of opportunity.
In 1981, I experienced date rape and never reported it as I was afraid of deportation. I became pregnant and chose to abort the babies growing inside of me.
Unable to find and afford therapy, I began a personal journey of recovery. It was f*cking hard, but I wanted to thrive and have joy, so I did the work using various psychology books, my Bible, a journal, and a walk-in closet on the job.
I discovered the life-changing gifts of gratitude and self- and other-forgiveness without expecting any change in those who hurt me.
In 1993, I married and had two sons, four years apart. My husband suffered from addictions, and my sons were constantly sick. Again, having parented my baby sister, I understood healthy babies versus sick ones. Weekly, we visited doctors, specialists, and hospitals. Twice, I quit work to stay home with my boys.
In 1999, I began college at age 31. Eventually, I completed my undergraduate degree by working as a school secretary three days a week, taking 18 credits each semester, and attending six classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Juggling my sons’ illnesses and medical appointments, work, full-time college, and marital stresses eventually took their toll. By 2001-2002, I ended up in and out of the hospital with stress-induced status migraine headaches, the longest lasting 13 months. I was so ill doctors thought I had a brain tumor, and my older son, then six, asked me one day, “Why are you so sick, Mommy? Are you going to die?”
I separated from my husband in 2003, and we divorced in 2005. In those two years, I became a special education teacher, began my first master’s degree, and found and furnished an apartment, chiefly with Salvation Army furniture, for my sons and me.
We all remember that first night, eating pizza out of the box and sleeping on the floor.
For the next 12 years, my constantly ill sons and I were dragged through court on one false claim after another. My mom said, “It [was] the only way [my ex-husband] could date [me].” Funny, not funny, Mom.
In 2010, I became an assistant principal at my school. My workdays became longer.
In the spring of 2014, the boys finally received Cystic Fibrosis (CF) diagnoses, which then came with an average life expectancy of 37-41 years.
Three months later, I was in a car accident that totaled my car and left me needing surgery and more than a year of physical rehabilitation. A decade later, I still have daily pain and mitigate it with at-home physical therapy routines and exercise rather than drugs.
By 2015, I began writing online, chiefly as therapy for myself. My goal was to find healing through writing, which I had always been drawn to, even as a child.
In May 2016, as my sons and I struggled with their CF diagnoses and the grief that came with it, I read a New York Times article titled, “When Do You Give Up On Treating a Child With Cancer?” The story was about 14-month-old Andrew Levy, who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia – a subtype of acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) – with a low survival rate.
In the article, Barbara Sourkes, Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychologist at Stanford Medical, stated, “When you have a child with a life-threatening illness, you have an irrevocably altered existence.”
Dr. Sourkes’ words resonated with me and helped me make sense of my lived experiences. Through her words and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF), I found increasing strength to navigate the daily dance of fear and hope that I knew intimately through my sons’ illnesses. I was motivated to reclaim my lost dream of a doctorate degree, and the idea for this newsletter and podcast was born.
That same year, when I was asked to deliver a video message to the care teams for the CFF’s annual North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference (NACFC), I explained, “When the tsunamis of life come at us, and we feel like we are drowning, you help us ride the waves.”
Dr. Sourkes, through that NYT article, her books that I found and read, and the CFF helped me ride the waves of trauma, illness, injury, grief, and fear. They still do.
In January 2017, I quit my 16-18-hour-per-day school administration position, emptied my savings, and moved to Florida to give my sons a better quality of life and hopefully longer life expectancies. One loved it there, and the other hated it.
That month, I also wrote my first viral article on LinkedIn. On the last day of my job with an unethical, laissez-faire boss, a district supervisor came to my school to tell me that the leadership training she attended that day used my LI article as one of their training and reflection tools. She was shocked to see I had written it, was proud to announce it to her administrator colleagues, and wanted to tell me. Her visit and encouragement remain with me to this day.
I spent the next seven years teaching, navigating my sons’ health needs, at times in two states simultaneously, completing my doctorate, and longing for more time to write.
In 2022, I successfully defended my dissertation and returned to school administration despite a list of cons that far exceeded the one item (income) in the pro column. In August 2023, I quit public school administration forever and became free.
Today
Today, I access more of the life I want: 30-40 hours of reading, writing, and self-care per week, time for my sons and core relationships, ten-plus weeks of vacation per year, solo writing and self-care intensive trips, increased well-being and overcoming the irrevocable circumstances and challenges of life.
The tsunamis still come, and I continue to ride the waves.
I want more people to experience this life. You can have it by joining my LIDs LIFE Substack.
My commitment to you
In this Substack, I promise to do the following:
• I will give you all of myself.
• I will share the tough stories (mine and others) that help me learn to better ride the waves.
• I will tell you about my mistakes, failures, and weaknesses and how I constantly overcome them.
• I will inspire you and give you hope, emotional strength, community, clarity, and strategies (whys and hows) to help you access the life and freedom you want.
• I will reply to every response or comment you share with me as soon as possible.
What I ask of you
You do not have to agree with anything expressed in this publication. I only ask that you think deeply about the content, as critical thinking is the starting point of any life change.
That mental shift creates personal freedom. It helps you design your path, act on it, and move upward to ride the waves of the tsunamis, overcome and live abundantly.
We will have fun and learn a lot along the way.
Sign up now so you can transition to this way of life sooner.
Why invest in premium LIDs LIFE?
If you wish to become a paid subscriber, the annual subscription is the best value.
For an investment of $60 a year, I will change your psychology and thoughts about your challenges and irrevocable differences. The return on investment (ROI) will exceed the cost, equating to less than a cup of coffee daily for a month.
If you are obsessed with the LIDs LIFE mission, join the founding member tier with the most benefits. I will add more benefits in the future, so your ROI will increase.
But Wait!
Whether you are testing us out or ready to commit to an annual subscription, you can get a free 60-day trial today through August 15, 2024.
Invest Now
Michelle, thank you for sharing your story so openly and vulnerably. I am so excited and happy for you.
Look forward to riding the tsunami waves with you my friend ❤️
Hi Michelle. I am so happy to see you here. I love how you included WHY we should pay for your newsletter. As soon as I am able to afford it, I will absolutely subscribe for a year to get your valuable and wise information. Until then, I will be a loyal follower. I have not promoted others paying for my newsletter yet because of my low self-esteem, but you have given me the confidence to go ahead and publish one story and place it behind the paywall. I will let you know how it goes :)