There are some definitions of Lupus as an attack on ourselves from the emotional, as if we hated ourselves and wanted to commit “suicide” from the inside.  I do not agree.  While emotions are important and we have to be aware of them, we are as capable of loving ourselves as any other person, maybe more for we have had to survive more things than the normal person.  We have had to to make adjustments to our lives that other people don’t even imagine.  We have learned resilience, patience and self-forgiveness.

We have learned that others can be insensitive and cruel, and we love them and forgive them anyway, for we know they do it out of ignorance.

These adjustments, this capacity to survive the constant pain, the real and daily threat to our health, is a tribute to our self-love. So I disagree with the definitions that say that we are depressive and we want to escape life.  If someone has to wake up every day and embrace and love life to be able to overcome one more day of pain and the paralyzing symptoms, it is us.  Escape? I don’t think so. No self-love? Surely not.  So I propose this new definition of Lupus: Our immune system is confused, it doesn’t want to attack us, it is hypersensitive and thinks that emotional threats are the same as the real pathological ones.  This I can accept: The hypersensitivity of my personality, that makes me empathic and sensitive.  Only that.