The Day I Found My Coat Again Through Illness

How one unexpected moment helped me rediscover my purpose and a way forward amid debilitating illness

Real talk: it’s been a year for me personally. Unresolved trauma from my recent past came back in June 2024 to haunt me – this time in the form of vertigo and endless panic attacks about everything except the trauma. I had to move back in with my parents for a few weeks.

Eventually, I realised why I was breaking down. It took a while before I was ready to return to my own home, the place where the trauma had occured.

EMDR helped me lose the flashbacks and process the memories of it. I also talked, every two weeks with my therapist, and constantly with my amazing mum, and a couple of close friends who knew what I had gone through. I talked so much and it helped so much. In the spring of this year, I could finally say I had processed the trauma.

Emptiness

What was left though, was an empty life. The panic attacks left me without work, without a purpose and without a social life, but with several new physical symptoms and flaring illnesses – and those damn ongoing panic attacks coming from intrusive thoughts. These were a consequence of all my medical and social trauma over the past 2,5 decades that not even therapy managed to put a dent into.

Every damn day the sense of utter doom would wash over me, for a life unlived, for a life that instead was now completely empty.

I knew I needed to find a new purpose. So amid the panic attacks, I quietly tried on various new coats. I tried being a historian (but it’s better as a hobby), a VA (but I like being my own boss), a fulltime writer (but I missed my colleagues and clients too much), an AI expert (but Chat GPT told me ethicists are not listened to so much #irony), a content writer (but again, better at being my own boss) and focus away from serving a specific niche (I am more than my illness after all).

But… the panic stayed. None of these coats suited me, and none of the work I did on them got me back on track.

Until one day I added my submission to an ME/CFS Awareness Instagram challenge, focusing on what we lost in life due to the disease. My post gained some traction and I received meaningful messages from fellow patients.

A Coat That Fits

The feeling I got that day was the feeling I had been missing. It was the feeling I had been after for all this time. The coat fitted. This feeling told me all I needed to know. It was fulfilment and purpose in its finest form. Fulfilment through helping, through seeing and through being seen.

I now know what I want to do, need to do: continue helping those like me who get sick and will likely remain sick for the rest of their lives. Help those facing adversity of any kind through no fault of their own. See them, guide them, make them laugh and help their loved ones understand.

By…

✧ Holding space for people grieving the life they thought they’d have.

✧ Sharing tools to help move them forward in life gently and slowly.

✧ Reminding people that they’re not broken; they’re grieving.

✧ Helping people rebuild amid the physical and emotional pain.

And of course writing will be my tool for that! I hope you will join me on this journey and let me in on yours too.

Sandra Postma
Posted on 12 August 2025 on Substack

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