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Celebrating 10 Years
Dear Friends,
Take what you have learned from the past and apply those lessons to the future to ensure a better tomorrow.
 There was a time in my life when I was obsessed with the clock on my bedroom wall. As I spent day after day lying in bed, feeling completely defeated by fibromyalgia, I looked at the clock and imagined the hands spinning forward as fast as they could, like some cartoon demonstrating the passage of time. Ten years ago, time was my enemy. It dragged forward slowly, ever so slowly, making each moment in pain seem like an eternity. Every day I felt like I had accomplished an incredible feat just by surviving the constant, time-altering pain of fibromyalgia.
I think surviving the challenging times in our lives is a show of personal strength and should be recognized as a major accomplishment. Even more rewarding is to not be defeated by the obstacles that stand in our way, but rather to turn those challenging times into the inspiration that motivates us to move forward and make our dreams and aspirations come true. Ten years ago, when I finally stopped waiting for “time” to fix my “miserable predicament,” and started to find ways that I could make the most of each moment, time once again became a precious thing to me.
I am often asked how I went from lying in bed for two years to running the national organization for fibromyalgia. I believe that finding a purpose for my life, using my time constructively, and focusing on what I could do instead of what I couldn’t do, helped me to once again appreciate the value of time and use it wisely. Once that happened, things changed and I was able to enjoy each moment of the journey I was taking: the journey of creating an organization that would give purpose and hope to thousands of others who had, at some point, also felt defeated by this illness. Of course, over the past 10 years, there have been times when fibromyalgia has demanded my attention and my efforts have had to be on my health, but what moves me through those times is the knowledge that nothing can keep me from making the most of time and the most of my life—not even fibromyalgia!
As we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the National Fibromyalgia Association, we hope that the times of your life will be filled with precious moments, and that our efforts will guarantee that the future will be filled with better times for all!
Congratulations and thank you to all who have worked so hard over the past 10 years to make the NFA the organization it is today!
Best wishes to all---
Lynne Matallana
President & Founder
National Fibromyalgia Association
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