Retha De Wet, who lives in Germany, was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis in 2013. She shares how she uses the Spoon Theory to give herself some grace in her daily life.

I refer to intravenous immunoglobulin as my gummy berry juice because it makes me go, go, go.

So the Spoon Theory — that just basically goes around the concept that everyone is handed a certain amount of spoons every day, and these spoons need to be traded in to complete a task.

But we all only have a limited number of spoons. But I don’t feel like healthy people have spoons. They have more than spoons, and we have very little spoons. I, like, when I think about the Spoon Theory, I’m one of those people that just kind of pushes herself into a flurry sometimes.

So I like thinking about the Spoon Theory and then realizing that the world was made for people with all the crockery and cutlery at their disposal, without as extreme limits, and that I just got like 10 spoons and were expected to do the same thing. So it’s OK if sometimes I just genuinely don’t have the spoons.