When I first happened to see tweets coming through from this new person who was following me named Pamela Sutherland, I wasn’t sure about the nature of her writing. Everyone has a particular tone, mission or modus operandi out here on Twitter. What could possibly be hers, I wondered. I found myself increasingly RT’ing so many of the thoughts she conveyed. Hmm. I thought. What is the story behind this woman who shares such sunny vibes, such uplifting quotes and so much love and optimism? So I started looking into this new intriguing tweep, who lives just over the pond from me in beautiful Scotland, and that was how I came to learn a little bit about PSMyWords. I’ll let Pamela, who first started blogging in December 2011, share her story, but you’ll want to check out her blog Two Rooms Plus Utilities as well as her special PSMyWords blog. And you may wish to stop by her Facebook page and connect there, too.
It soon became apparent in learning more about Pamela that she had found a way to take chronic health issues and use her personal fight to muster up strength, boldness and positivity that she could not only use to keep herself poised and ready to fight health battles but to share with others to help them persevere, too, and set out into the world with a smile on their face and joy in their heart. It’s an admirable job she does each day, if you ask me. So many times when I’m down, I’ll read a tweet or two come through from Pamela, and so much of that dreariness falls off of me as I get swept up in her poignant quotes that she mines out and passes along as well as her own finely chiselled words of advice for embracing life.
I really hoped that Pamela would share a little bit about the story behind her blog and why she does what she does here at Chris’s Corner, and I am so thrilled that she agreed to take part. So thank you, Pamela, for opening your warm heart every day and inviting us in to take in some of those brilliant rays of light.
You can follow Pamela on Twitter, and I absolutely suggest you do, at @Ltd_to_Two.
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We all have a range of reasons for the things we do, some clearer and to the point, others that develop and become more than we ever thought was possible at the start. When I started writing, I had been recently made redundant and although like everyone with chronic illness, I had skimmed the web searching for information about all my conditions, I now had the time to look further. I found much to my horror that all I could find were what I could only describe as either sugar sweet cover ups, or clinically cold facts. The reality of being housebound and what the range of illnesses I had really meant just weren’t there. There was nowhere that painted picture of how a symptom felt, or if what you were feeling was normal or if it was something new to worry about. My blog became a graphically accurate picture of the reality of how it feels to be housebound, what MS has done and is doing to me and people were actually reading it. When I joined twitter, I began to worry that the full picture really wasn’t there at all, the lighter brighter side of me could be easily hidden at times. My life is good and filled with happiness. Yes, it’s filled with horrors and pain as well, but it is still a good life, and I had to find a way of showing that. I already wrote about the humour of the things that happened, the good days as well as the bad, but at times when my health was bad, I worried that a new reader would see just bad side and nothing else.
I started to send out other people’s quotes on twitter, quotes that showed I had hope and that my love of life hadn’t gone, along with the tweets about my blog which increased the number of readers and subscribers. When sending out shout outs, I added in what I can only describe as personal quotes as the words belonged to me, but in a way that showed that side of my personality. People started asking who these quotes were by, to be honest I found it embarrassing to explain they were mine and I had to find another way, which is how #PSMyWords were born. Just as my blog grew in its meaning so did PSMyWords. I started to take more care and more thought about each one as I wrote them, I wanted to send out those things I knew were important in my life, things I had learned along the way and feelings that were dear to my heart. Each one had to be limited to around 80 characters, as I still wanted to use them in shout outs. It isn’t as easy as it sounds as just 80 characters isn’t very much at all. Try it yourself. It can at times be a hard task to show caring, support and love in so few words and it’s a challenge that not only I enjoy, but others do, too, as the re-tweets kept coming. I had already set up a blog site for the quotes, so adding in one for PSMyWords seemed the next logical step. And just like my blog, people also started reading it and some even subscribed as well.
Having started out worrying that people would find my constant tweets about what some may see as doom and gloom subjects, I have actually totally turned the table. On Twitter, I have somehow become an amusing and positively inspirational character, not my word but words I see on twitter daily in response to all I do. I continue to write the full truth of life with illnesses nobody wants, but I now know that the world can see that I have a great life still to live and I’m living it to the full.
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