Cidabit: The Wellness Me Up Diary

Entry 001

I used to throw away my diaries.

Not because I didn't have things to say. Because I had too many. And the thought of someone finding them... reading them... knowing what was actually going on inside me... was more terrifying than just carrying it alone. I found one of my diaries in my biological sisters room once. I was mortified that she was reading my inner thoughts. So I tossed the journals. I started carrying my thoughts alone. For a really long time.

I grew up in a home where addiction was always present. My biological brother struggled for decades. In and out of the house. In and out of our lives. My parents would say "this is the last time"... and then let him back in every time. He stole from me more times than I can count. I never felt safe in my home.

I learned early that words didn't mean much. That follow-through wasn't something you could count on. That patterns just kept repeating no matter how many times someone promised they wouldn't. I learned that “sorry” was just a word that people say and don’t actually mean.

So I learned to scan the room instead. Read the mood. Keep the peace. Stay small enough to stay safe. Be performative with enthusiasm and humour to protect myself.

I listened to family members talk about each other behind their backs. I felt stuck in it... part of it... but also desperately wanting out.

And then I found my own ways to numb it.

Substances… drinking… drugs…

The people who were supposed to keep me safe… didn’t.

If my parents and the adults around me had followed through… if they had kept him out of the house… I might have had a real chance.

But they didn’t.

My brother introduced me to drugs.

I fell into social circles where partying was just what you did. These weren't bad people. They were just environments that reinforced the same patterns I already knew. Food became another way to cope. I was sitting around a lot. Eating a lot. My entire family focused on food. There was always way too much. My body changed significantly over time. Chronic lower back pain started creeping in and then took over. Limited mobility. Couldn't stand or walk properly for years. No clear answers for what was happening in my body.

Drinking, Marijuana, and excessive pain medication became the way I managed both the physical pain and the emotional weight of everything else.

Easier to numb than to feel. I knew that equation intimately.

Sex was always painful. I didn't understand why. I thought it was just something I had to deal with... something wrong with me that I needed to keep quiet about. I gaslit myself into believing I was fine. I didn’t have sex for more than a decade. I shut myself off to “romantic” connections entirely. I was embarrassed to talk about it. I convinced myself and others that I “just didn’t want to date” that “I was happy alone”. I was envious of my friends and family who met dated, had relationships, who started families. I felt like I was just watching life go by. I would put on this mask of being happy and joyful because I learned that put others at ease and… it was the only way I knew how to feel good…by helping others feel better.

I wasn't fine.

I experienced heartbreak in the years before my decade of celibacy. Multiple times. And somewhere in the accumulation of all of it a core belief formed that I couldn't shake no matter how hard I tried.

You will not be chosen.

You will not feel safe.

The decade I spent without having sex was rooted in avoidance, pain and shame and fear that I didn't have the language for yet.

Instead I lived in my head. High levels of limerence — this constant, consuming fantasy of being chosen. Being loved. Being wanted. I built elaborate scenarios in my mind... relationships, connection, safety... and escaped into those visions instead of actually living. I still have the ability to do this. I'm aware of it now in a way I wasn't then.

My periods were brutal. Increasingly painful. Worsening over time. I advocated for a hysterectomy for years. Asked doctors repeatedly. Was told no repeatedly. Was told I would change my mind. Was told I would want children.

My lived experience was dismissed. Over and over again.

Around this time I made a decision to stop smoking. It wasn't impulsive. It was deeply intentional. Because I had grown up watching people say they would change and then not follow through. I had developed this fierce internal rule somewhere along the way... if I say something I mean it. If I commit to something I follow through. Full stop.

Some people saw that as ego. As needing to be perfect. As thinking I was better than others.

It wasn't that. It was alignment. It was integrity. It was the only form of safety I knew how to create for myself in a world where nobody else's word meant anything.

At times it came from spite. I won't pretend otherwise. But it worked. And it became the foundation of who I am.

I was over 300 pounds when I was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 36.

I didn't tell anyone I had cancer for months.

I felt terrified. Paralyzed. Unable to ask for help. Asking for help felt more terrifying than the cancer. I knew how people would react and that fear kept me completely silent. And when I finally did tell people... my expectations of their reactions were confirmed.

Here's the truth I've never said out loud to most people.

I was ready to die.

Not because I wanted to. But because I didn't feel like I had really been living. Life felt stuck. Paused. Heavy. I spent most of my time on the couch. Eating. Watching TV and movies. Staying up until 3am binge watching anything that made me feel something. That couch was my whole world. Not because I chose it. Because physically I couldn't do much else. Sitting wasn't laziness. It was survival. If I stood for too long, my lower back would feel like it would collapse and somehow all my insides would fall through me somehow? So I sat. I ate. I smoked. I drank. I literally perfected the art of doing nothing.

I think about my Aunt Carrie a lot when I think about this period of my life.

She died at 44 from lung cancer. I was 20 when she died. She had this way of making everyone feel like they were her best friend. She had always wanted to open a coffee shop called Cidabit. Sit a bit. Come in. Stay awhile. She had this way of showing up for me that felt different from everyone else. Safe. Seen. Like I actually mattered.

I lost her too soon. My entire family did. And I think about her name for that coffee shop all the time now.

Cidabit.

Sit a bit.

I sat for years. On that couch. Watching life happen through a screen. Scanning cancer groups at whatever hour looking for one person who sounded real. Reading everything I could find. Searching for something that felt true instead of curated and polished and tied up in a bow.

I was that girl. Sitting behind the screen. Looking for answers. Terrified and alone and not knowing how to ask for help.

At 37 I had the hysterectomy. The surgery I had been asking for for years. The one I was finally approved for because of cancer.

During the surgery they discovered stage 4 endometriosis.

Years of pain. Years of being dismissed. Years of being told it was in my head or that I'd change my mind or that I didn't know my own body.

Validated. All of it. In one moment.

And then something shifted.

After surgery I realized I could stand. I could walk. I didn't say it out loud right away. I quietly tested it. Retrained my brain. Rebuilt trust in a body that had been in survival mode for so long it had forgotten what movement felt like.

Gradual. Quiet. Profound.

The version of me who lived on that couch... the one who had cancer... she feels like she died during that surgery. I am genuinely not the same person anymore. And I mean that in the most peaceful way possible.

A few years ago I walked away from my enmeshed family dynamics. Those relationships, that system, just didn't feel safe anymore. I chose distance from patterns that had been normalized for so long I hadn't even recognized them as patterns. I rewrote what family and connection mean to me.

Recently I had a conversation with my oldest niece. Her father (my brother) is an addict. And I sat with her the way my Aunt Carrie used to sit with me.

I told her... I know what it's like to have a brother who is an addict. I do not know what it's like to have a father who is an addict. Those are different experiences and I won't pretend otherwise.

I told her that everyone in a family holds a different version of the same story. That no single perspective is more right than another. That the way I make decisions now is based on what feels safe. What feels inspiring. What actually supports my wellness.

I didn't feel “well” in those family dynamics. I felt “unwell” in those family dynamics. So I chose differently.

And sitting with my niece in that moment... that was my Cidabit. My sit a bit. Showing up the way someone once showed up for me.

Maybe we all need that person. Someone who knows a thing or two. Someone who sits with us differently. Someone who doesn't try to fix us or rush us or make us feel like our mess is too much.

My Aunt Carrie was that for me. I want to be that for someone else. And I want Wellness Me Up to be that for you.

This podcast exists because of all of it.

The couch. The cancer. The pain that was dismissed for years. The substances. The silence. The diaries I threw away because my inner world felt too raw to leave lying around. The girl scanning cervical cancer groups at 2am looking for one person who sounded real instead of polished.

I say cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me.

I know how that sounds. Because nobody would ever wish for cancer. Nobody sits around hoping for that particular plot twist in their story. But here's what I know to be true...

If even one thing in my life had gone differently. If one moment had shifted. One decision had changed. One experience had been skipped. I wouldn't be standing here. Literally and figuratively. I wouldn't have thought of this. I wouldn't have been able to build this.

I am grateful for all of it. Every hard, painful, messy, dismissed, numbed out, couch-bound moment of it. Because all of it led here.

Wellness Me Up is my gift to the world. It’s starting as a podcast but my vision is for it to become a platform. One day it will be a space where anyone who is lost or stuck or searching can find a coach, a community, a path that actually feels like theirs. Not one right way. Not one method. A whole charcuterie board of support from real humans who have been through real things.

It's for the girl I used to be. Still out there somewhere. Still sitting. Still searching. Looking at the screen. Looking for answers. Looking for hope. Looking for a way out. Looking for a way through. Looking to feel “well”.

This is what I wish I had found.

Thank you for taking the time to read this Wellness Me Up diary entry… I’m really glad you’re here. I hope you have a meaningful day.

— Amanda