The first step in befiriending lupus is accepting it.  Your immune system is not your enemy, it is trying to help you, it just gets confused with what is you and what is not.  We don’t know why certain immune systems have this malfunction, so we just have to accept that they do.  We can search for reasons as to why this happens, and especially why it happened to us, we can feel victimized, treated unjustly, we can even get angry at our Destiny, at God, at genetics.  None of these approaches will make us have a normal immune system, so they are pretty useless.  The only useful approach to the condition of lupus that I have found is simply accepting that I have it, getting to know my own body and working with it, not against it.  The decition is yours, but the approach you take will make your life easier or harder.

My approach to lupus is acceptance, I can’t change what I have, but I can work with it.  My immune system will attack different organs and parts of my body intermittently, when I do things that stress it out.  I have to be on the lookout for these outbursts, the beginning of flares, and try to nip the attack in the bud.  Then I have to think what I may be doing that is causing the attack and stop doing it.  Work with my body and its condition, not thinking about it as the enemy, just as a hypersensitive system that tends to malfunction when stressed.  It is not a divine injustice, it is not a punishment for my misdeeds, it is not something I brought on myself because I am angry at me or because I can’t express feelings.  It is just the way it is, and it is part of me, of who I am, and therefore I must accept it and accept me, just the way I am.