Would you still dance with me if I lost my legs?

In 2019, what first looked like simple insect bites on my legs turned into something much worse: open, oozing wounds that wouldn't heal. Weeks passed. Then months. More holes opened up slowly. Doctor after doctor, but no answers.

Only terrible options ahead. Cancer? Autoimmune? AIDS? I wondered what painful path I was already on without even knowing it.

That month, craving a deeper way to master my mind, I stumbled on an Internal Family Systems (IFS) book, a method for working with "Parts."

IFS helps uncover the mental drives (Parts) that shape our emotions and behaviors (like inner characters), and equips us with tools to realign them to our deepest intentions. Instead of pushing Parts away, we learn to welcome, listen, and build a compassionate connection.

I was skeptical, talking to "Parts" seemed odd. But we already talk to ourselves all the time, no?

As my body fell apart, I reached inward: talking to afraid, numb, and catastrophic Parts. I didn't know how useful IFS would be...

Then the phone call came.

The doctor's voice was urgent: "You need to come to the hospital immediately. Pack for a long stay."

When the doctor explained it was a rare, antibiotic-resistant flesh-eating bacteria, my mind spun. My first thought: "But I've just fallen in love with someone. It's a terrible time to die! If I lose my legs... will she still dance with me?"

Within days, I was admitted to the hospital.

The doctor sat me down to explain the journey ahead. As she explained it, I kept it together. The moment she left, I broke down in tears.

The side effects list was brutal: kidney damage, nerve damage, permanent hearing loss, spontaneous tendon rupture.

Setting up the treatment took weeks, they had to insert a long tube from my arm deep into my chest, because the chemo drugs were too powerful for a normal vein.

The predictions kept shifting: six months of treatment? Maybe twelve? Ah crap... the scans showed it got into the bone... it might take over a year and a half.

There was no guarantee the drugs would save me, or that they wouldn't destroy me first. My legs, my strength, even my mind felt like they were slipping away.

Yet somehow, in all of this, something had shifted inside.

After two weeks in the hospital, the first time I came home, I walked out to the night air. I looked up at the moon.

And I didn't feel despair. I wasn't crushed. I felt aliveness.

Not a fake positivity. A full, raw presence.

I could hold it all at the same time: the Parts that felt terror, numbness, escapism... and made space even for the Parts that saw it as a wild adventure: the playful parts, the determined parts.

Most of all, for the first time in my life, all these parts felt fully connected to me. They were scared, but they weren't abandoned. I was there, with them, holding them.

IFS had given me that gift.

Months of practice had prepared me for this moment. Not to eliminate fear, but to walk through it without losing myself.

The chemo went on for seven months (miraculously less than was feared). Twice a day, I had to hook myself up to IVs, carefully, knowing one mistake could cause a blood infection. I lost 10 kilos. I lived with constant nausea, brain fog, weakness.

And yet a quiet part inside whispered: "Good. You were half-asleep. You're finally coming alive now."

Today, I'm healed. But the deeper healing wasn't just physical.

The deeper healing was knowing I didn't have to face death alone. "I" was a compassionate container that could hold it all. I had my Self. I had my Parts. I was finally truly connected to all of me.

I wouldn't wish my path on anyone else.

But I do know there is a way for everyone to notice the incredible strength of compassion that is already within.

Anyone else found that pain or fear can open the door to deeper self-connection?

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This is why I built Greater Human. If you want to understand the method that carried me through this, read What is IFS?