Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities.
She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges.
In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines.
Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.
Something inspirational: “Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.” DORIS LESSING Thinking for yourself means more than having your own opinions. It means owning your words, your choices, and ...
Something inspirational: "We are not what happened to us. We are what we choose to become.” JAMES HOLLIS "I am drawn to James Hollis's words: 'We are not what happened to us. We are what we choose ...
Something inspirational: "Healing begins when we can hold our own experience with compassion." TARA BRACH Brach's quote reminds us that healing begins when we meet our pain with kindness instead of judgement ...
Pain is something that I'm all too familiar with, but I haven't felt much of anything in a long time. I learned how to detach from my feelings when I was a small child, which helped me survive but never allowed me to enjoy living, which is the point.
It can be a great thing, but not when you end up not feeling much of anything at all. I have come to understand what it must be like to be an android like 'Data' where he wishes he could experience human emotions.
There's a song line that says they would rather feel pain than nothing at all, when there are times I can relate, but most of the time I would rather feel nothing at all, since I have felt so much pain.
Thanks Randy. Yes, physical pain is hard, emotional pain even harder because unless you know how to deal with it, it follows you like a faithful friend.
Physical pain ends, but emotional pain doesn't, or doesn't easily. I can resonate Randy. Feeling nothing isn't the same as feeling numb.
In some respects it is easier feeling something than feeling nothing, but feeling nothing although in the short term can bring us more peace, in the long term it can also bring unease and uncertainty.
It is important we can feel something, because something we can change. Feel angry, disappointed, sad, those are things we can work on and change.
Thanks Tim. You're right, but perhaps part of the problem is we don't know how to deal with the pain that we feel.
A life free from physical and emotional pain is simply not achievable. If it were, we would have all signed up to it, but I do think we can learn a lot from us understanding why we have pain.
It is not enough to know we have pain, we must also understand why, particularly emotional pain.
Pain is something that I'm all too familiar with, but I haven't felt much of anything in a long time. I learned how to detach from my feelings when I was a small child, which helped me survive but never allowed me to enjoy living, which is the point.
It can be a great thing, but not when you end up not feeling much of anything at all. I have come to understand what it must be like to be an android like 'Data' where he wishes he could experience human emotions.
There's a song line that says they would rather feel pain than nothing at all, when there are times I can relate, but most of the time I would rather feel nothing at all, since I have felt so much pain.
Thanks Randy. Yes, physical pain is hard, emotional pain even harder because unless you know how to deal with it, it follows you like a faithful friend.
Physical pain ends, but emotional pain doesn't, or doesn't easily. I can resonate Randy. Feeling nothing isn't the same as feeling numb.
In some respects it is easier feeling something than feeling nothing, but feeling nothing although in the short term can bring us more peace, in the long term it can also bring unease and uncertainty.
It is important we can feel something, because something we can change. Feel angry, disappointed, sad, those are things we can work on and change.
Pain reminds us that we are alive, but no one wants too much attachment to it.
But without pain we will never know that something in us needs our immediate attention. Relieving pain can be very satisfying though.
Thanks Tim. You're right, but perhaps part of the problem is we don't know how to deal with the pain that we feel.
A life free from physical and emotional pain is simply not achievable. If it were, we would have all signed up to it, but I do think we can learn a lot from us understanding why we have pain.
It is not enough to know we have pain, we must also understand why, particularly emotional pain.