Hey there, it's Susan Peirce Thompson, and welcome to the Weekly Vlog. Yesterday I was coaching someone on the Bright Lifers? accountability call who was going to Italy, and it reminded me that there's something I wanted to tell you about from a trip that I took this summer to Italy. It was my first time going. What happened was, I was in Italy, and I did something that I have not done for a long time. I posted in the Bright Line Eating? Community. This is a Facebook group that people get access to when they're in the Bright Line Eating Boot Camp 2.0, or they are a Bright Lifer, there are thousands of people in it. I'm not sure, five, 6,000 people in it. There's a lot of people in it, and it's an incredibly supportive, loving community, and I've used that community myself for support in the past, but not for a while.
I want to read you the post that I made, and I want to tell you what happened because it ended up being a bit of a miracle, and I kind of flagged it as, ?Oh, I should talk about this in the vlog. ?I think this is a tool that is underutilized, to be honest. Here's what I posted. It was morning time in Italy. We were on a cruise ship and we'd docked in Florence and we'd been touring around Italy and we were about to go out for another long day of tours, and I posted this in the community, ?My beloved Bright Lifers. I haven't done this in a long time, but I'm posting because I need some support. I'm in Italy with David. We're on our 25th wedding anniversary trip. It's been going well, totally lovely, but it's the last day of tours, long days in the hot sun, powerless over when we stop for lunch. Lots of watching everyone eat NMF and drink NMD (if you're watching the vlog and you don't remember, NMF stands for not my food, and NMD is not my drink). Lots of watching everyone eat and drink stuff. I don't eat and drink and my right knee hurts and I'm just feeling run down. I have one more 10-hour day of seeing sites. We're in Florence today, and then tomorrow is a day at sea with time to journal, make phone calls, and recharge. I told David this morning that I'm depleted. I cried and I feel better knowing I'm just going to nurture myself deep inside and limp through the day as best as I can. I've posted stuff like this in the past and I've been buoyed up by the flood of support that comes in. I am aware that I'm six hours ahead of Eastern time, so most of you are still sleeping, but hello to everyone in Europe and Asia and Africa and Australia. I'm breathing and praying, trusting that I can make it through this day, and it feels so good to be Bright no matter what. Thank you in advance for your love and support.?
I posted that about half an hour after I was crying and literally thinking that I might not go out on the town for the day, literally thinking I might stay on the ship and just rest and recharge. I was considering just skipping out on the day in Florence altogether. We'd had a day in Sicily, which was amazing. We'd had a day on the Amalfi Coast and in Pompeii, we'd had a day in Rome. I think the day before in Rome had just killed me. It was so hard. It was a long day. It was probably a hundred, 105 degrees in the hot sun, and our tour guide had been disastrous, just really, really negative. Like someone who hated Rome, I don't know what they were doing being a tour guide for Rome. They just kept bashing the city like, oh, it's just saying negative things. Then just very chaotic. We didn't stop for lunch till two in the afternoon. I was so exhausted. I wasn't sure I had it in me for another day of tours, but I posted that and then I walked down the gangway with David, and we got onto the tour bus and there was this shuffling process where there were five tour buses and five tour guides. There was this random kind of moment where our tour guide got selected for our bus, and I could feel a miracle happening there. This woman came onto our tour bus and she was brilliant. She was organized, she was positive, she was calm, she was clear in her articulation. She laid out the day so beautifully for us. She knew so much about so many things, and I felt fine, and I kept checking my phone. These comments of love and support were flowing in by the dozens and dozens and dozens. You can do this, Susan. We're praying for you. We've got you We're holding you. Sounds so hard. Just keep your chin up girl. We're with you. We're with you. Just hang in there one more day and you can just be on the sea journaling and wearing your bunny slippers. You've got this, you've got this, we've got you. I just kept reading these comments, flood in, and it was the easiest day I had. I had so much reserve in my tank. Somehow putting that post out there into the world and then letting the love and support flood in invisibly, but perceptibly, spiritually, tangibly, I felt the support.
It reminded me of this other time in my life when I put out a call for support and I found myself living, walking, floating on people's prayers and well wishes for months and months. That was the time when our twins were born weighing one pound. Bright Line Eating didn't exist then. This was 16 years ago. But I was a member of multiple communities that were heavily praying communities, like really engaged, interconnected, spiritually active communities, the whole 12-step world and the whole Bahai world. Our babies got born, if you think in kilos, weighing 610 and 670 grams. They were five-and-a-half months of gestation when they were born. I was so disoriented after the C-section because they just started to come early. I was so disoriented after that. I remember talking to a nurse practitioner who was in the NICU. They were in intensive care for four months, and it was just a few days after they were born. I said, I'm having a hard time processing what's happening here, and I really want you to give it to me straight. I'd gotten a sense from the statistics on this graph that I'd been shown that there was a 4% chance that my babies would both survive and be healthy. I asked this nurse for some perspective, and he said, okay. He said, you want me to just lay it out for you? I said, please, I think it would be helpful to ground me in some reality here. What are we dealing with? He said, this is a neonatal intensive care unit with 54 beds in it, and it's full. There's 54 babies here, and your two are the sickest and the most frail and fragile. He said, that doesn't mean that they can't make it or won't make it. It just is a reality. Your two are the sickest and the most frail and the most fragile. It was helpful. It grounded me in that reality. But all through those months, I stayed Bright. I weighed and measured my food. I didn't eat sugar and flour. I showed up at the hospital with David every day. It's such a strange thing to visit your babies and they're in a little box and you just stare at them and try to pray through the cracks and talk at them. It's just such a strange way to have a baby. My heart, of course, was breaking that they weren't getting held for their first months of life. Robbie was able to come out of the isolette a lot and cuddle on our chest, Zoe. She was so sick. But the substance, I want to say of the prayers that we were receiving was so palpable.
Last night, I went for a walk with a dear friend. It had been a bright, hot summer, late summer day, and we walked into the evening and as we turned a corner around a bend, have you seen a sky ever where the sun is going down? Maybe it's down already. And the sky has turned all precious pastels, the most gentle powder blue with pink and peach, just the most precious light, honey-toned colors. There was this moon, not quite full, but almost full yellowy in tone hanging there on the horizon. Just this scene that was so sweet and perfect and yeah, gentle. That's what the air felt like, the existence that I was walking through with all of these prayers.
That's what happened to me in Italy. I put out this call for support and suddenly the day changed, the quality of it, the tone, the tenor of the day turned strong and positive and gentle and supported and buoyed up. All of the run raggedness that I had experienced wasn't there. It had just been lifted. It was gone. David and I had the best day in Florence ever. I'll never forget the moment that I came around a bend in the marketplace in Florence, and suddenly there was the Duomo in front of me, the Santa Maria del Fiore, the most exquisite cathedral I've ever seen. The beauty of it on the outside just caught me. I started to weep. I became overcome with the emotion of the beauty of this thing that I was seeing. It just went up and up and up, and it was all marble. This white and peach and green marble carved into the most exquisite, exquisite detail. I have never seen something so beautiful. The tears came and I was caught in my throat with the gorgeousness of it, and I just cried and cried. It was so beautiful. Never before have I cried from beholding beauty. I was so glad I didn't miss that day. We learned so much about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and their relationship and so much amazing history. We stood in the Basilica of Santa Croce where, oh my gosh, lemme see if I can get this right. There's Leonardo da Vinci buried, and there's Michelangelo buried and there's Galileo buried and there's Machiavelli buried, and there were a couple more right in the same place. They're all buried there within 20 feet of each other. It was absolutely overwhelming. So incredible.
I bring this to you because I think the SOS post, the ?I need help? post in our Online Support Community tends to get more responses, more traction, and the results of it are not maybe what you would expect. It's not that you get advice that helps. It's not that you feel better from posting. It's that it activates mysterious forces that completely change the tone and tenor of what you're facing that melts difficulties and buttress your strength. Because the reality is that sometimes we face this world living Bright and we're content to watch people eat stuff. We don't eat and drink stuff we don't eat, and it doesn't bother us. Sometimes it wears us down. Sometimes it's just too much to sit there with a cup of tea or some sparkling water and try to focus on the people and everyone's just indulging in eating and it's just too much. Sometimes it's hard. The SOS post? now, if you're not in our Online Support Community, you could send a post like this out to a friend or two, but it will not have the same effect. I'm talking about a post that goes out to thousands and activates a flood of response that generates energies that my scientific brain is convinced, has spiritual substance to it, or even physical substance to it that we don't know how to measure yet but that is very, very real and tangible. Forces get activated and molecules rearrange, and something happens to make it possible to get through gracefully and Bright. The next morning, I didn't need emergency resuscitation. I enjoyed my day off so grateful to be Bright, but I was mostly just buzzing from what a great day I'd had in Florence. I'm so glad I didn't miss that day.
If you're one of the 400 and some odd people that posted a comment on my post, thank you so, so much. If you said a prayer for me, thank you so much. If you sent strength and good juju my way, thank you so much. If you do that for someone else who posts in our community, thank you so much. If you post an SOS post, thank you so much for allowing us to show up for you and to rearrange the molecules of your scenario, whatever it may be. Because we're there for you. We are there for you. I just wanted to give you another arrow in your quiver, another tool in your tool belt, another option for something to try when you're feeling worn down, when it's feeling like too much, ask us for help. We're there for you. We've got your back always. T hat's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
