Long COVID a 'love letter from the world' to change my life

My tale of healing begins about a year ago, when I was in an Acting Program in New York. Last time this year, I was in good health and strong, and was doing quite well in a physically and mentally intensive curriculum. I had the energy to stay up late working on scenes and memorizing lines. And then the next day get up early and participate in dance and lecture classes and then proceed to five hours of acting classes. To the world, I was enjoying all of it. Ah, or so it seemed. There was something lurking in the shadows, something that would tap my shoulder when I was completely alone. A single yet horrific thought. I wasn't happy. And moreover, all of the achievements racking up under my belt just seemed to perturb me even more.

Then on Valentine's day I got the most wonderful love letter from the world, COVID-19. It was a bad virus and lasted about a week. I got better, and then a week later I got sick again, the same virus, trouble breathing, and major fatigue. The only thing was, this time I didn't get better. One month went by, and still I showed no sign of recovery. Two months, the same thing. And, before I knew, it seven months had flown by and there was no sign of recovery. I dropped out of Acting School and resigned myself to the belief that I probably never would get better. No amount of sleep gave me energy, my heart was always pounding so that when going to sleep it would pulse in my head and chest (making it impossible to rest), my breathing would tighten and I would fall into a void of paranoia. And I started shedding more hair than my long-haired cat in spring. I must confide in the reader that food and Avatar the Last Airbender were what kept me from going completely under at that point.

Shortly into this experience I heard that other people who had had COVID (the "long haulers") were having the same experience I was. So I felt a rush of hope that there might be a cure out there if it was getting national attention, some sort of medicine or pill I could take. There wasn't.

At this point I could not help but spill my depression onto others. My mom, who I had come to live with, took the brunt of this. One day we were sitting on the back porch and I voiced to her, "I am never going to get better." She got rather snappy and said, "You definitely will never get better if you believe that." She then went on to talk about how thoughts affect our reality and so on. This only made me angry. The next day however, she showed me something on her computer. It was something called the Lightning Process. I began to look for myself. The LP was the only hope I had found in those seven months. Although I classified what I had—Long COVID— as different from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), the two illnesses seemed very similar, so I figured if the LP could help people with CFS, it might be able to help me as well.

So I ventured forward and soon found myself having a very inspiring conversation with a British woman named Amanda Ashley. After that I signed up for the first possible seminar and those three days have made all the difference.

Here is a snippet of my life before and after the Lightning Process. Before: Out of breath climbing up the stairs, sleeping 2 to 3 hours a night, going on a five-minute walk landing me in bed for the next day, my mother cooking all of my meals. After: Horseback riding for 4 hours last week, playing soccer with my friend weekly, taking hour-long hikes, yoga every day, intensive calisthenics a couple of times a week, cooking every day for my family, and social distance square dancing (that one was quite interesting!).

It’s hard to explain exactly what the LP is to someone before they take the training, but I think the best summary would be that it is a tool that gives you a choice. It was the first time I realized I had a massive influence over my health and well-being. I said at the beginning of this story that I received a love letter from the world, and this was not a joke. Before I got COVID everything I achieved was through pushing and telling myself I wasn't enough, staying up late in my acting studies telling myself that the work I was doing wasn't terrible. When I got sick I didn't have the energy to keep pushing myself in such a negative way. I had to change, or else I would just stay the same. The LP taught me how to do that and how to regain my health at the same time. That was the greatest gift because it’s changed my whole life. I hope that my telling of my success can inspire you and help you to achieve health and well-being too.

Pascal Di Betta
North Carolina