How Late Discovery Shaped My Understanding of Purpose

My journey is mine, just as your journey is yours. The path I’m on feels like the one I was always meant to take. But destiny is rarely simple. Not everything is clearly written or fully formed. Sometimes, the journey we were meant for only becomes clear through challenges and new understanding.

Sometimes we have to carve out that understanding ourselves, making sense of what happened and fitting it into our own view of those experiences.

For me, discovering later in life that I had cerebral palsy gave new context to experiences I had lived with for years but had never fully understood or truly engaged with. It didn't define my journey, but it helped illuminate it, offering a clearer understanding of myself, the challenges I had faced, and the perspective those experiences had shaped.

A late diagnosis led me to writing and The CP Diary. Over the years, writing has become more than a form of expression; it has become a way for me to process, to understand. Fate may be fixed, but clarity doesn't always come easily, even when our path is already set.

Sometimes that clarity only emerges through what we uncover about ourselves.

I understand that my journey may not be fully understood by everyone, and I’ve come to accept that. It doesn't need to be – its meaning is personal to me and part of my journey, fated from when I was a little girl. I just didn't know it.

What matters is that I understand it.

My journey isn't about fitting into someone else’s life or expectations. It is about recognising my own path, understanding my experiences and how they have shaped me, and continuing in the direction that lead me to this path.

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.

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