Illness and Healing — Finding Joy in the Journey
Finding joy in the journey when illness takes over the calendar — a personal, encouraging reflection.
Life With Neurologic Lyme
Welcome to Reflections with Terry — personal stories, health journeys and daily reflections from Terry Mayfield, including her series on neurologic Lyme disease and living with non-epileptic seizures.
A reflection looking back on a September that changed so many lives, and on the long shadow it still casts. Terry writes it in her usual open-hearted way, mixing remembrance with the search for meaning and gratitude.
Reflections with Terry is a quiet corner of the internet where a personal blog turns lived experience into gentle, readable prose. Terry Mayfield writes about illness, healing, and faith with an open hand, sharing the texture of life with neurologic Lyme disease and living with non-epileptic seizures. It is not clinical writing and not inspirational poster-making; it is the honest middle ground, where hard days are named plainly and small mercies are still counted.
Much of the writing here is a reflection on the invisible. Seizures, chronic pain, and deep depression rarely announce themselves in ways the outside world understands, so the blog makes space for that gap between what a body is doing and what it looks like from the outside. Readers who live with invisible illness often recognize themselves in these pages, and readers who do not may gain a little more patience for the people around them.
There is also a strong thread of memory and remembrance running through the archive. Reflections on September, on seasons changing, on holidays arriving whether or not one feels ready for them, all point to a mind trained to look backward without getting stuck there. Terry writes about gratitude without pretending gratitude erases difficulty, which is perhaps why the tone feels believable rather than saccharine.
Faith appears not as doctrine but as a companion, something practiced in ordinary hours. The writing holds together hope, acceptance, and gratefulness without needing a single tidy resolution. There is humor woven through it too, a bit of sarcasm and a playful streak, because a blog about chronic illness that never laughs would be exhausting to keep. The humor is what keeps the heavier pieces from becoming heavy at all.
Alongside the personal story there are series and categories that make browsing easy: poetry, opinion, short reads, deep reflection, and personal essays sit beside the longer health journeys. Some entries are brief, a handful of sentences, and some unfold over several pages. That range matters, because it mirrors how attention actually works on difficult days, when a person might have energy for a long post or want something small enough to read in one sitting.
The design of the site matches its tone. Soft blush pinks and cream backgrounds, near-black text, and a clean sans-serif typeface create something airy and calm rather than clinical or loud. Cards are close to square, dividers are thin, buttons are flat rectangles in muted rose, and the whole thing reads like a well-kept journal. Space around the content is generous in the hero areas and tighter in the article grid, which keeps the focus where it belongs, on the words.
Terry's story is also, in part, a story of a woman in the middle of her life, moving through it at her own pace. There are references to motherhood, to family, to running and dancing and time passing, to windows and trees and branches, to the strange sounds the mind makes. These details are small on purpose. They are the ordinary things that hold a life together when illness keeps rearranging the calendar, and they are why the blog sustains attention across so many years of writing.
If you are new here, the archive is a good place to begin, and there is a story page, a set of resources, and a contact route for anyone who wants to reach out. The feed and newsletter options make it easy to follow along, while the categories, search, and random-article features suit readers who like to wander. What stays consistent throughout is the invitation: read slowly, be gentle with yourself, and keep looking for the small and meaningful.
Finding joy in the journey when illness takes over the calendar — a personal, encouraging reflection.
On choosing positivity, acceptance and gratefulness while living with an invisible illness.
An honest look at living with non-epileptic seizures and staying fully oneself.
Some days healing stays hard. A vulnerable reflection on slow progress and setbacks.
Posted February 21, 2023 — a piece about middle age, identity and the invisible confines of chronic illness.
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Apparel and items curated by Terry, available through Terry's Tees 'n Things.