Elina on MEDIUM.COM: ‘Healing from Crohns disease & breaking generational curses inspired my new single ‘HEAL’’

It was October 2019 -middle of the night, when I was rushed to one of the best hospitals in Germany because we thought I was having a heart attack or some super severe panic attack or whatever.

They loaded me onto some machinery and found that my heart was actually OK. They said they believed I had acid reflux. I knew something more was going on because I could feel my whole system shutting down. Still, I was discharged from the hospital and was sent home with recommendations to go have an endoscopy to rule out that I had Helicobacter Pillori or whatever it is called.

Four months later and countless medical examinations and tests both in Germany and Greece in public and private clinics of all ranges or pricing I was still bedridden. I had a diagnosis for ‘’chronic gastritis’’ but let’s be honest, no one had a clue what was wrong with me. People with gastritis are not so weakened they cannot get out of the bed, go to work or even eat, function.

I was instructed to continue to take anti-acid medication even though it did nothing to the symptoms I was experiencing. Doctors would just pat me on the back and say ‘’I know it is torture, just be patient and keep taking your meds’’. Four months, a previously healthy 27 year-old was now withering away in her bed unable to hold down anything I ate. My heart felt like it would give up on me and my mind was shutting down from multiple panic attacks per day. I thought about ending my life if it would turn out I could not live my life anymore in peace. My mental health was failing. I started having flashbacks of all sorts of trauma I had endured in my life. I seriously was thinking about exiting.

One day and while in tears I picked up my phone and started Googling for alternative solutions since conventional medicine seemed so out of touch with what was happening. I bumped on the website of a naturopathic healer who would turn out to be the person to save my life.

All the insight conventional medicine could not gain with their elaborate examinations I was able to get within minutes sitting in the office of that healer. He looked at my skin and examined my face and said ‘’I believe you have Crohns disease -your lips have a purple line underneath them’’.

I was like ‘’excuse me?’’

We went on and did tests my doctors had seemed uninformed about (nobody prescribed me these examinations while these would have given us all the answers from the start). Indeed, some days later, I got a call and I was asked to sit down and have a glass of water. I was diagnosed with Crohns disease and as result of it having gone undiagnosed for so long I suffered from such severe malnurishment that I was super close to either having a heart attack or a stroke. I was like ‘’it totally makes sense’’.

I knew from a friend of my sister that this disease is not cool. I knew of people bedridden with destroyed immune systems from all the medication and I knew of surgeries to remove parts of your colon. I knew of compromised life quality.

What I did not know because it is not advertised as much as stoma bags is that Crohns disease (and every other chronic illness) is actually curable. In fact I did not believe it was possible when my naturopath said ‘’We are going to get it to go away, do you trust me?’’

I said ‘’Are you sure this is possible?’’ He emptied a tone of files on his office and said ‘’See these? All people like you. All healed’’.

For the next months I would go three times every week to my naturopath and we would do protocols to get the situation under control. Colon cleanse, food allergies testing and elimination of foods that made my body go into alarm (it was other than that healthy foods such as tomatoes, salads, aubergine and other stuff that I had been eating since I was a baby growing up in Greece). Ozon therapy and IV infusions, heavy duty supplementation and refilling of my body’s storages with nutrient, minerals, good bacteria and vitamins that had gone empty with my gut unable to absorb anything due to inflammation.

Just as a reference, my body was 300% Vitamine D3 deficient and whole families of gut bacteria where missing from my system. My system was filled with toxins having escaped through the broken lining of my gut and into my bloodstream.

With shifting my nutrition I saw results almost the same day. Seriously.

What took a few months was flushing out all the histamine and other stress hormones accumulated in my body from the food allergies. These were the cause of my panic attacks — along with my extreme vitamine deficiencies.

The panic attacks, the nausea, weakness and abdominal pains debilitated me for a long time but it was getting better gradually. I was grateful that I started stirring back to life. Three months later I was finishing my therapy and I was a new woman. Oh and 10 kilos down as I was no longer bloated from the toxins and the inflammation.

The amazing healer I worked with (whom I consult with for everything still today) helped me through the massive healing crisis that occurs often when you get into healing chronic illnesses of this scale.

Soon, I was looking into the emotional baggage that shifted my energetical frequency through the years enough to create illness within my body. I realised that it was more than food waste that I was holding in my gut. There was a lot from my past I had not been ready to let go of and that was poisoning me.

There was a lot of fear, worry, feelings of inadequacy and therefore a subconscious need to work myself to the ground in a perfectionistic bid to prove my worthiness to emotionally unavailable people. Making them choose me. There was hurt and resentment I had not been ready to forgive. There was shock and trauma for all the times life had collapsed on me (or so I had perceived at the time) with no warning or explanation. There were big questions about everytime people had betrayed me and why would they choose to act this way to someone who gave them their all. There was a lot I had not even acknowledged until that moment. I had convinced myself that I was a fighter and that non of the horrendous experiences I’ve had had touched me. My Saturn Return came around to say ‘’we gotta clear this shit’’. Literally.

Almost losing my life to Crohns disease (due to medical neglect -I ought to say- and inability to properly diagnose me early on) taught me to put the focus back onto myself. It did not matter what these people did, what had happened — I had always been at the right place at the right time and what matters is that I have always come from a space of love and purity in all my interactions. If they chose to act out of their own darkness then this has nothing to do with me nor does it say anything about my worth, value and divine birthright to be loved and honored. It did not matter what they chose to do, how they chose to act. It mattered that I learned to discern who and what is healthy for me (or not) and it matters that I chose to find and do better for myself.

Alone taking my own physical and emotional healing into my own hands, choosing to honor myself and staying commited to what is healthy and nurishing for me showed me that Crohns disease had come to teach me of my own power and ability to hold space for myself even if no one else would do it (especially then). Soon enough people who felt grateful to be able to hold space for me started showing up. Even people who had not been able to do that in the past started showing up differently for me. Because I set different boundaries. I said ‘’this is where I am going and whoever wants to can follow under these non-negotiables’’.

This illness had come to show me how strong I can be -not for anybody else as I had been until that moment but this time for me and me only. It came to teach me to speak lovingly to myself, to feed this little girl with love and to wash her, dress her, entertain her, make time and space for her to rest, not to punish her for her needs but to parent her into leading from the heart, allowing anyone and anything that does not resonate with that fall away from her life.

People, connections, jobs -I would hold onto these things, too even though they were making me sick. The last two years and with the pandemic in Divine Timing to allow me to put everything on halt, I exited from everything I was up to. I spent the next two years by a river, doing spiritual work (I am a trained energy healer — it was time to heal myself!), talking to Spirit and healing from the inside out on many levels. Anything and anyone that just wanted to take and had no intention to contribute to my experience vanished. Some people showed their true faces. Some people laughed at me for choosing my new slow-paced, healing-oriented lifestyle. But overall, I didn’t really have to cut anyone out or do something drastic. I just became my true self (and still continue to work on it as I don’t think this quest ever reaches completion while we’re alive) and the rest fell into place through resonance.

Taking my own healing into my own hands and purging everything that did not resonate with love out of my life taught me a lot about generational curses and baggage moving within family lines. I saw how a lot of what I was being called to heal for myself was also a gift that I was making to my ancestors and those who came before me but also I was setting a new, healthy precedent for those who shall come after me.

There is a lot of campaigning currently on normalizing pain and while this is good on the one hand because it helps some people feel seen, I feel like there is a fine line between acknowledgement and complacency/not taking charge to create change in ones life.

In the same way, I feel like a lot of us have just been conditioned to accept without questioning the norms and precedents of the history of our families and the behavioral patterns found within them. We are crying and venting about these things but do nothing to implement positive change. We continue the patterns of our ancestors without ever questioning: ‘’does this really work for me? is this even mine to carry? is this even what I believe about life, people, relationships, my purpose?’’

What is my truth? This is what I had to sit with for the first time in my life. Up until that point I was getting my permission to be from others. And they would say ‘’oh no, you can’t share your truth, people will get offended or misunderstand and you got to stay safe -keep it all in’’.

People ignore that not speaking your truth does not only save you from possible embarassment but it also makes you unaware of what that truth is after a while. Your truth along with so many parts of you start going underground. So you start taking on people, relationships, jobs that you would have never even looked at twice had you been in touch with your truth. Almost losing your life to an illness makes you come back and look at life through the eyes of a human being who wishes to cherish every bit of time and free will they still have left on this planet. You cannot ask them to stay in a job they hate. You cannot ask them to tolerate abusive people. You cannot ask them to not speak their truth so as not to upset anyone.

Healing my body, spirit, mind and heart required a true soul retrieval on my behalf -one that I performed myself upon myself. Not in some fancy shamanic retreat in Costa Rica but by a humble river in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. This goes to say, that if it is healing you wish to commit to start right where you are. All the magic and tools you need for your biggest breakthrough are usually right there were you are at the moment. It is part of your story. It is part of you.

I went on to write about my healing and my new life in my upcoming album ‘REVIVAL’ coming out on all digital platforms September 30th 2022. For the time being, you can find a song that captures greatly my journey to health available on YouTube. It is called (obviously) ‘HEAL’ and I am grateful I have been alive to write and record it. I hope it gives you hope and stirrs in you the knowing of your own power to take action and a step at a time move towards your own healing, wherever it is needed in your life.

I love you all.

Elina Laivera (elinalaivera.com (Opens in a new window))