Over the next 6+ years….
I saw countless specialists and experts who had never seen an allergic reaction to an ear piercing turn into a burning inflammatory illness on someone’s ear and face.
I was placed on a high dose of Prednisone, an anti-inflammatory drug with serious side effects. After exhausting local resources I traveled across the country to Seattle and Boston to find doctors with specific expertise.
I was finally diagnosed with Erythromelalgia, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and a slew of secondary conditions caused by the condition and by 6+ years of prednisone.
The doctors could not (or would not)
prescribe the right medication
As time went on, the more doctors I saw, the more medications I was prescribed, but none of them were the right one. My frustration grew as the longer we couldn’t find the right medication, the more the prednisone began to wear down my body.
Prednisone causes 50+ pounds of weight gain, can contribute to the appearance of a round face and neck, raises blood sugar putting you at risk of diabetes, raises blood pressure, impacts the liver, causes cataracts, weakens bones….the list goes on, but I began to suffer from all of that.
Reducing the prednisone caused such severe pain that it wasn’t an option. I had been asking doctors for a class of medication called ‘biologics’ from the beginning but they were unwilling or unable to prescribe what I asked for.
The sad part is that years went by before I found a doctor who would honor my request. The amazing part is what happened next…
Within a year of starting the medication
I was able to slowly taper off of the prednisone, something doctors had begun to doubt I would be able to do. The last few milligrams were the hardest, I was so exhausted I could barely get out of bed, but after about a year I had made a drastic recovery. (I’m not going to name this medication, this is not a promo for any medication),
I remembered hobbies and learned new skills and talents I was not able to do when I was in so much disabling pain. I learned to play guitar and composed my own songs (pardon the fan that can be heard in the background in the samples), I learned to knit and crochet and I picked up drawing and painting again (seen below).
Amazingly
the medication also
began to heal my other
unresolved health conditions
Three times (or more) in my life I had experienced this same pattern: an allergic reaction lead to an infection that sparked a chronic inflammatory illness. The 2018 ear piercing was the event that lifted the lid on more than a decade of chronic pain.
In 2008, 10 years earlier, I had an allergic reaction to a medication called Bactrim. Unbeknownst to me I had a genetic history of allergy to Sulfa-medications like Bactrim. It caused a extremely painful chronic illness called Interstitial Cystitis that was left untreated for 10+ years until the same medication that began to heal the Erythromelalgia also began to heal the Interstitial Cystitis.
we live in a society where pain is always something to be avoided. We either blame ourselves or blame others for the pain we experience and so other people become objects upon which we have placed that blame.
When we objectify ourselves and others, we are dehumanized, leading to violence against each other and sexual violence against the ones we place blame upon the most: women.
But there is another way forward. I learned from my experiences with chronic illness that pain is not meant to blame anyone - pain functions as an eraser - erasing us back behind our thoughts, feelings and bodies - back behind our own eyesight where we are aware of even the rise and fall of consciousness. From here we are able to transform ourselves and society as a whole.
A world without blame is a world without objectification - a radically feminist world, free of violence against women and therefore violence against all of humanity.
I realized that
The Hidden Value of Not Knowing
is Sruti’s memoir of transformation through chronic illness—first with Interstitial Cystitis—offering a radical reframe of pain not as punishment, but as a sacred eraser. Through her lived experience, she reveals how pain strips away illusions of control, ego, and false identity, returning us to the source of ultimate consciousness within.
As a result of this work Sruti formulated her groundbreaking message: that we can rewire our relationship to pain and, in doing so, dismantle the systems of blame that define much of modern life.
Though rooted in personal experience, Sruti’s writing holds implications that reach far beyond individual healing. It challenges the collective foundations of “blame society”—from how we handle illness to how we perpetuate rape culture.
The feminist and spiritual revelations in The Hidden Value of Not Knowing are explored further in Sruti’s blog.
Sruti’s Blog from Her Perspective
What if Spirituality and Feminism aren’t different categories of thought? What if they are actually the same thing? What if we can’t have a real spiritual awakening without feminism, and what if feminism doesn’t make sense without spiritual truth?
The Extraordinary Dance of Time - Reflections on my time at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert
Sophie’s Miraculous Aging in Reverse - The Metaphor of Illness Behind Howl’s Moving Castle
How my Stepmom’s Recent Passing Changed my Life- Angels, Afterlife and Nondual Reflections on Death and Dying
