I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in August 2017 when I was 21 years old after months of uncomfortable symptoms. Hearing that I had an autoimmune disease felt, crazily enough, just as relieving as it felt scary.
With Crohn's and colitis awareness week having been last week, my autoimmune disease was on my mind almost 24/7. Getting to connect with so many other IBD warriors and share their stories on my Instagram was so amazing and showed me how bada** dealing with IBD truly makes us.
If you're anything like me, you just want to feel normal once in awhile. You want to be able to do the fun things everyone else does without overthinking and planning ahead. But guess what? The first step to overcoming gut-induced social anxiety (trust me, it's a thing) is to stop wishing you didn't have to plan ahead, overthink or re-check the menu 100 times and start accepting and embracing that you do.