This post is from the Rest Ministries Invisible Illness Week website (http://invisibleillnessweek.com/)

What is your invisible fight?

Invisible Illness Awareness Week is September 28 – October 4 and we are creating a big buzz in social media, spurring on awareness, understanding, and dispelling myths and misconceptions about living with illness.

We live in a culture that understands acute sickness. Tell a friend you have strep throat and your friend has an idea about what your next three days will entail. Friends grasp your need to rest, to eat a certain way, that you may or may not be online, the amount of medication you may take, and that you likely won’t be getting together for an event or working.

Chronic illness, however, is confusing to most people.

Illnesses that are indefinite (chronic) have a growing list of symptoms that differ between those with the same illness–and overlap with those who have different illnesses. There are no rules or guidelines about what you can and can’t do or should or shouldn’t do.

How can a person with illness barely be able to get out of bed one day and running errands for two hours the next day? If the medications are working, why haven’t you returned to your favorite activities? Are you depressed, and that is why you keep going back to the doctors over and over?

All of these are common assumptions from one who has not experienced a chronic illness.

Invisible Illness Awareness Week is trying to change that with a 2015 “My Invisible Fight Photo Campaign”

What are the photos of?

This is the fun part! Take photos of anything that is an #invisiblefight for you.

What is a fight for you that few people would even notice or understand?

Some ideas of invisible fight?

A staircase (or even one stair!)
A restaurant menu
The shower
The scale
A jar of spaghetti sauce (cannot open it!)
A pair of shoes
Your bed
A certain outfit or item of clothing
A blow dryer (that is heavy to lift)
A heavy door
A car’s steering wheel
Your purse (too heavy to carry?)

It doesn’t have to signify something you cannot do. It can represent something that is just an extra challenge for you, something that makes you sigh with frustration, or perhaps hold your breath with a bit of anxiety.

You can take as many photos as you want and share them all over the place between now and October 4th.

If you can, add #MyInvisibleFight to the actual photo.