Emily A. Filmore - The Marvelous Transformation: Living Well with Autoimmune Disease

SPECIAL PRAISE FOR

The Marvelous Transformation

The Marvelous Transformation is an engaging testament to the power of taking responsibility for your own well-being. Pain is unavoidable, but suffering is a choice. With unflinching honesty, Emily Filmore instructs and inspires by her own courageous example, showing readers how to transcend the pain and frustration of living with a chronic illness to live a life of joy, purpose, and deep personal satisfaction. I highly recommend this compassionate guide to anyone suffering from an autoimmune disease who is interested in dramatically increasing their quality of life.

Terry Wahls, MD

CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF INTERNAL MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

Author of The Wahls Protocol: A Radical New Way to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions Using Paleo Principles

The Marvelous Transformation is an honest, intimate, and entertaining read based on personal experience with autoimmunity. Emily engages her readers by incorporating activities throughout the book while guiding them through their exploration into a complex illness process that does not have to be a negative experience. Whether you are a patient, caregiver, healthcare professional, or interested in learning more about living with autoimmunity, you will find great knowledge, an array of resources, and helpful tips that you will want to share with your family and friends to help them better understand autoimmunity.

Jerry Williams

BOARD PRESIDENT Myositis Support and Understanding Association

A must-read for autoimmune patients. A delightful book that empowers you and those who love you to make the best out of a difficult relationship with autoimmune disease. This book will help you find your healthfulness.

Patricia Barber

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND PATIENT EDUCATOR

American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association

Emily Filmore writes about her struggle with autoimmune disease with honesty and compassion. She offers tips on how to thrive while living with physical limitations that come straight from her own experience. If you or someone you love suffers from an autoimmune disease, Emilys words will help you feel less alone in what often feels like a lonely grind.

Aisha Sultan

NATIONALLY SYNDICATED, AWARD-WINNING COLUMNIST

Home and Family Editor for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In the US alone, it is estimated that one in five or 20 percent of people suffer from autoimmune diseases. Emily Filmore lovingly and openly shares her journeyone of learning, spirituality, strength, love, and compassion. This book is bound to help others by inspiring them, and their family members, to know they too can handle anything that life might throw at them.

Karin Volo

Best-selling author of Engage! and the Bringing Joy series

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, we seek to contribute a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals and their families, and the general public.

For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.

2015 by Emily A. Filmore

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

3321 N. Buffalo Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89129

20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-937612-88-7 (e-book)

Photo of Emily A. Filmore by David Soto, Jr.

Publishers Note: This book contains general information about autoimmune disease and related chronic illnesses. The information is not medical advice, and should not be treated as such. Central Recovery Press makes no representations or warranties in relation to the information in this book. If you have any specific questions about any medical matter discussed in this book, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Our books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book may have been changed.

Cover and interior design by Marisa Jackson

Table of Contents

Y ou are about to read one of the most inspiring, practical, and helpful books you could ever hope to lay your hands on. It is a book about an autoimmune disease, yet it is not about a specific illness so much as it is about a specific kind of healthfulness.

Emilys story is a striking and encouraging example of how anyone can be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy, even as they are physically unhealthy. This is a powerful kind of healthfulness that can even minimize the effects of physical disease. That is, it can be the greatest healing device, the greatest medicine, of all.

Yes, weve heard this before, but here is a living, breathing example of it that makes real all that weve been told about the power of the mind and spirit. These pages demonstrate the strength of the human spirit in the face of enormous challenges, the capacity of humor to transform difficult circumstances, and the immense resource that a partnership with the soul can provide to the body and the mind in the most testing situations.

Youll find plenty of smiles and a few out-loud laughs here, along with a list of remarkably useful tools and strategies for dealing with a health condition that receives little attention by the national fundraising community, but which profoundly affects the day-to-day lives of millions of people.

My life has been deeply enriched by knowing Emily personally. She stands as a continual inspiration to me, and I am grateful to her for sharing her experience in such a personal way. It has given me strength as I meet the tests and trials of my own life. I know her story can affect you in the same way. On behalf of all of us, thank you, Emily Filmore, for your transformative transparency. We are blessed in you.