Gratitude is the best medicine

Last Updated on 23rd September 2023 by Caroline Haye

Being thankful can promote health and beauty

Having vitiligo can sometimes be depressing. But this only tends to be true when you focus on what is wrong with your life instead of what is right with it. When was the last time you counted your blessings? If the answer to that is every day, then you are probably not often depressed. In fact, you are almost certainly a happy and healthy person. Because, in my opinion, gratitude is the best medicine on earth.

I know that comments like these can seem trite. In fact, they can seem irrelevant when all you really want is to feel comfortable in your own skin. During the decades before my recovery, I can remember thinking that I would be willing to trade every one of my many blessings in life for just a single one… To be able to look at myself in the mirror and see a whole human being. Not the vitiligo “jigsaw puzzle person” that I had become.

Vitiligo had turned me into a jigsaw puzzle version of myself

I didn’t constantly dwell on such thoughts, of course. Usually, I pushed them to the back of my mind and got on with life. That’s what most of us do when we are faced with no alternative. I have always been a fairly positive thinker. And I tried to maintain a cheerful attitude, reminding myself that there are very many worse afflictions in life than having vitiligo. This was just one of many strategies I used to avoid sinking into a pit of self-pity. (See Ten Ways to Cope with Vitiligo for more strategies.)

One of the most helpful and uplifting of these was to keep a “gratitude journal”. In this I wrote down 5 things every night before going to sleep for which I felt truly grateful. This helped a lot. And it’s a discipline I can recommend to everyone… Whether they are depressed or not, and whether they have vitiligo or not. It restores some much-needed perspective, feeds the spirit and, in the process, lets our inner beauty shine through. This, of course, is far more important than the colour of our skin, be it black, white, patchy or turquoise with yellow polka-dots.

How an attitude of gratitude changed my outlook

The lessons I learned from keeping my journal and counting my blessings were priceless. (So, of course, I dutifully added these to my journal too!) They improved my outlook on life. And, I believe, They made me a better and healthier person. But I still longed for a vitiligo cure. After all, it’s all very well to accept the adversities of life that we cannot change. But it’s only natural to want to change them if it is at all within our power. And, as it turned out, reversing vitiligo was within my power. (See The Vitiligo Therapy That Worked for details.) It just took me 50 years to find that out!

Despite the general mood of pessimism and hopelessness that so often seems to surround vitiligo, I always believed that an effective treatment would eventually come along. (Although I didn’t expect to find one myself.) And, until that day came, I sometimes fantasised that I would wake up one morning to find my skin restored to its original colour. I even literally dreamed this some nights.

Well, no absolute cure has emerged yet (although I am still convinced it is only a matter of time). But my fantasies did eventually come true. I didn’t wake up one morning to find my vitiligo patches gone. It took 18 months or so. But, strangely enough, seeing my pigment return gradually was probably even more exciting than if it had happened overnight.

I didn’t believe my freckles were real at first

​The first few freckles would have looked insignificant to anyone else but, to me, they were nothing short of miraculous. In fact, I didn’t believe they were real at first. I thought they must have been the remains of a self-tanning cream that I sometimes used to use for camouflage. So I applied an exfoliating scrub. (I don’t recommend this, by the way, as any kind of abrasion can aggravate vitiligo.) But my attempts at removing the little brown dots were fruitless. Then it dawned on me that the marks were, in fact, pigment!

That realisation is a moment I shall never forget. And the whole process of re-pigmentation that followed was a journey that thrilled and energised me in a way that no one else could possibly understand… Unless they also had vitiligo or maybe a comparable condition. The emotions I experienced during that time (and still feel) would fill a whole library of gratitude journals 🙂

You never know what new hope tomorrow will bring

Thinking back to when my vitiligo covered 80% of my body, I don’t remember how much of my time I spent feeling despondent. I don’t think I was seriously depressed. But my vitiligo was never far from my mind. And I never expected to recover to the extent that I have. So my recovery was a surprise that taught me something… You never know what new hope tomorrow will bring.

Precious lessons in gratitude and hope

I won’t bore you here by re-hashing my vitiligo recovery story because you probably already know it. But, what I particularly want to share with you in this post is two of the most precious lessons that life has so far taught me through my vitiligo – and for which I will always be immensely grateful. Firstly, that we don’t always get to choose the hand that life deals us but that finding and appreciating the many good aspects of that life is something that enriches us and those around us. And secondly, it is always too soon to give up hope that a skin condition like vitiligo can be reversed.
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I have noticed that nurturing a sense of gratitude brings with it a host of positive consequences beyond the obvious ones. These include a greater sense of calm and inner strength, and a reduction in stress levels. If you don’t fancy keeping a gratitude journal then why not try some gratitude meditation instead? (You can find plenty of these on YouTube, including this 5 minute one) I promise you that, if you decide to take some “gratitude medicine”, you won’t regret it.