Tag: healing

Day 200 “Milestone”

I am travelling the country, stopping in towns where tragedies have occurred and visiting the local high schools where I recruit teens to start up volunteer work; doing good to right the wrongs their communities have suffered.

At some point in the dream, I wake up, and conscious of the theme of the dream, think about my own high school students and the community we live in. I think of a senior student, who suffers from ongoing depression and anxiety, yet gets involved with her peers and focuses on helping others. Recently, a piece of her writing was published and she was nominated for an award.

The topic of today’s reflection is milestones, and when I look at my granddaughters I see how each step in their progress is monumentous: a celebration. And yet at some point in our lives, the milestones become less about the miracle of growth and more about the passage of time – or in my case, a reminder of the end of time.

I was asked recently to speak at another School Board, several hours from home. Given my recent health status, it seemed logical to turn it down, but something inside me stubbornly refused to decline. The dream says it all. No matter what the catastrophe we have suffered, we need a purpose to keep going.

As a teacher, I strive to see the good in each and every one of my students, and focus on that, not ignoring their challenges, but offering a steady perspective of possibility.

At this stage of my life, I need to offer myself the same and mark this milestone in my life as a time ripe with potential and not an ending.

Day 199 “Doing and Being”

“We are human beings not humans doing” New Agers like to spout. I used to love that saying, thinking that it spoke to the busyness of our lives and our need to slow down and experience life.

Then I forgot about it, too caught up in the drive to be successful; to be somebody – legitimate.

“If you’re not giving 110%, you’re not giving enough!” was one of my father’s favourite sayings. He was a conqueror; a doer to the nth degree. Of course, part of that was because he was afraid of just being. Standing still would have meant being in the moment, and for him that was too big a risk to take – there was too much stuff to deal with – better to keep moving.

Being or doing takes on whole new meaning when chronic illness shows up. No longer able to keep pushing myself, I am confined to being more often than I’d like, yet it is still not easy to embrace. My mind, like a broken record, continually runs over the things I should be doing: the wash, marking, calling someone, writing a thank you, cooking dinner, and so on, circling back over the same list of must do’s with no response from my body. The more it circles, the more my guilt builds; or if not, guilt, worry. What will happen if I don’t feel better tomorrow? Who is going to change the bedding? Will my friends hate me; or worse, give up on me? Will I lose my job if I don’t some work done? All the while, my body, like a paralyzed slug, lies dormant, immoveable, indifferent.

I have cried to no avail. I have raged, and bargained and tried to ignore my reality. Yet, there is it. “A debilitating chronic illness” the doctor called it. “As debilitating as a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, or a patient in congenital heart failure – but not life threatening.” Depressing though, incredibly depressing.

I am reluctant to tell people what is happening to me. On my good days, I appear well, full of energy. I am embarrassed to admit that the moment I get home I will fall apart again, likely not getting off the couch all evening. No one sees me this way, so who believes it? Except my husband. My poor husband, whose own battle with cancer is still ongoing, and who needs a supportive, caring partner as much as I do. We laugh about our shared challenges, but underneath it all, he must feel as I do, that is somehow not fair – not the way we thought our life would be.

I have work to do to learn to “just be” when illness has worn me down, and “do” when the going is good. Now, more than ever in my life, finding and balance between doing and being is all important.

Day 197 “You Have To Be There”

Some people can walk into a group and immediately immerse themselves as if they have always belonged. I cannot. So when I arrived at the retreat late on Friday evening, and things were well under way, I decided to simply make myself a cup of tea and retire with a good book to my room.

The tea station was set up in the basement of the conference center, across the room from the stairway. I hesitated to cross as a group of women had gathered for a drumming circle and I would have to cut through their gathering.

“Go ahead.” The leader nodded at me. “Don’t mind us.”

Apologetically, I made my way, not daring to look at anyone, feeling like the intruder I was. I selected a nice chamomile and while waiting for the water to boil, I kept my back to the group. Their drumming had somehow synchronized and the intensity was building. I found myself becoming very sleepy. So sleepy that I never made it back across the room, having to stop instead to sit on a vacant chair.

“I’m so sorry,” I slurred. “I don’t know what is happening to me.”

“That’s alright. Just go with it. We are here to help.”

My eyes were suddenly so heavy that I struggled to keep them open, but I did manage to see the lead woman nod to the people beside me, encouraging them to take my hands.

“What is happening?” I managed.

“You tell me,” the woman coaxed. I knew this woman from other retreats. A Native American versed in rituals and ceremonies, she frequently offered to share her learning. Until now, I had stayed away – the eternal outsider.

“I feel like I am falling……as if the earth has opened up and I am dropping….down….down.”

“Let yourself go. You are safe. You will be able to tell us what you need.”

The drums continued and somehow trusting, I let myself go, deeper and deeper into the blackness, less and less conscious of the room around me, until I landed.

“Where are you?” Her voice sounded far away, at the other end of a tunnel. “Describe what you see.”

“The ground is cushiony, green, like moss. I am in a forest. It is quite dark, but there is some light in the distance. I follow it and come to an opening. It is beautiful here, and so serene.” I feel myself breath, and relax. In my mind, I am thinking that this is something out of a fairy tale: little girl lost deep in the woods, finds herself surrounded by flowers and friendly forest creatures. “This is crazy,” I try to open my eyes again, but the room is dark and filled with shadowy figures – animals, not people. I start to hyperventilate.

“You are okay,” she soothes me. “Tell me what is happening.” All the while the drums beat.

“I can’t see anyone…in the room… only…..animals. Not real animals….more like…spirits.”

“What do you see?”

“You are a Raven, and someone over here a Bear, and Helen….it doesn’t make sense.” Helen is an artist, gentle by nature and frail. “She is a Thunderbird.” Is there such a thing? My mind tries to make sense of what is happening. “Her animal is so strong!”

I lapse again into the darkness, falling back into the woods scene. “Someone is here,” I manage to whisper. “A woman. Ohhhh…..” I am struck with a profound feeling of well-being and harmony as the woman seemingly merges with me. I know her! My heart is racing. I have seen her before in dreams and visions. Ten years she has appeared, mysteriously, leaving an impression, but I have never understood. Now the pieces are falling together and I am one with the numinous being, and an ecstatic bliss fills my soul and I surrender.

“Yes!” the leader exclaims. “Yes.”

I remained in that suspended state of awe while the rest of the evening unfolded around me. Words emerged from my mouth, but I’m not sure that I spoke them. The drummers kept up the beat, and the women responded to the commands, and a healing energy moved amongst the gathering, the ecstasy spreading until I could hold the space no longer, and the leader called me back to consciousness.

“We will not speak of what has happened here further,” she said. “We have stood in the presence of the sacred, let us keep it that way.” But as I opened my eyes I turned to the woman beside me and realized for the first time who it was – a Judas – and I knew that our beautiful moment would be spilled, and that others would not understand.

“You had to be there,” I would respond when the questions came the next day.

Day 196 “The Nature of Nature”

The snakes are back! This time I am at a conference of women, and the presenters are going on and on without a break. I push back, insisting that we have lunch – my blood sugar needs it. So, the session breaks up and I sit alone with my prepared meal, having assumed that there would be nothing for me to eat. The conference is being housed in the country, in a private dwelling surrounded by dry, almost desert-like conditions. While everyone is lined up for lunch, one of the home owners is looking for snakes, opening cupboards, shaking out mats. And she is finding them! Huge brown, menacing snakes, and ghostly grey translucent snakes. I follow her about and watch with repulsed fascination, as she tackles each one, conquering it with expertise. “You have to,” she tells me, “Otherwise, they get you.”

I awake with a startle. Damn snakes. They have been showing up in my dreams for the past year, each one a herald of sudden change. I have come to loathe them.

But these snakes are different from the brightly coloured snakes of the past. I decide to investigate further. One image that stays with me is of a wooden box, full of fallen leaves, into which the woman pushes a pitchfork, revealing a next of snakes. Fritz Perls, father of Gestalt, suggests that all aspects of a dream represent the self. I dive in.

I am a large wooden box, made to withstand the weather: an outdoors box, buried in the ground, like a casket waiting to be closed? My body swells with the rains and contracts with the cold, and creaks and splinters, but carries on, containing whatever elements are thrown its way.

I am fallen leaves, each one a page from my own book, scattered, moldy remnants of a life well lived, past prime now, dying efforts, gone. And I am the tree, still standing proud, despite being stripped of its essence; waiting, waiting for another chance – a new beginning.

I am the woman, fighting against the elements; striving to keep her house and home safe from intrusions; fighting against Nature.

And I am the pitchfork, wielded with intent, an instrument really, with no mind of my own, plunging into the fallen bits of myself with the intent of vetting out the intruders.

And I am the nest of snakes; wriggling, writhing, full of life, despite all attempts to annihilate me. I am the force of Nature: earthy, fiery, alive. I am transformation and rebirth, healing and passion. I am life! Feared by some, reviled by others, awed by all. I will survive!

Day 194 “Buddha Nature”

The bus I am riding on is actually a small house. The bus driver sits at the front door and collects fares. The front door opens into a dining room, where riders are playing cards. I move back further, into the adjacent sitting area. My friend Sandy is here and she has a young child; a girl. The girl remembers me although I am sure I have not seen her in ages. The bus stops, and panicked I rush to get off, only to discover this is not my stop, so I rush back on the bus. I feel frazzled, but laugh at my error and return to my seat trying to relax. Then I realize I am missing my purse. Thinking I’d left it at the last stop, I holler to the driver to go back, but then see that I’d left it on a table in the front hall. I pick it up and notice that it is lighter than it was. In fact, it is the purse, emptied of its contents. I am outraged, and accuse all the occupants of the bus. As it turns out, I know many of them, and I rifle through their belongings looking to recover mine. Worst of all, my passport was in the purse and losing that is a nightmare. I know the culprit is on board.

Coming to terms with the diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is difficult, not unlike being robbed of one’s identification. In the dream, it is my passport I am worried about. My passport, in particular, is the only document that bears my full legal name. More importantly, it allows me to travel.

Replacing a passport is possible, but difficult. Metaphorically, I have lost my passport to come and go freely. Life now needs to be measured or paced, and I do not have credit to draw on. My purse has been emptied.

The bus that I travel on is me: the driver, the same robotic ego that takes me mindlessly through my daily route. The passengers are me also. Sandy is my over-analytical, uptight self, which is balanced by- or, perhaps (if I am more honest) protective of- my little girl innocence. The card players, and readers on board are me too. So is the thief.

Why is my bus a small house? My husband and I bought a small house over a year ago to retire in. We haven’t moved in yet, but it continues to be our promise for the future. Is this a premonition dream then? That the greatest struggle, or lost, will come when we move to our little house? Time alone will tell.

Derek Lin says that we each have a Buddha Self – an enlightened, loving self that lies at our inner core. As in the dream, I am struggling to find my bearings, conscious of the need to register my progress, and be on alert. I have long since moved away from a time when I trusted the process, and I am feeling disconnected from my Buddha Nature.

I can only hope that those who surround me don’t lose sight of it also. Reconnection will be my saving grace.

Day 193 “Character Counts”

I knew something was wrong the week before my granddaughter’s first birthday.  Despite the increase in asthma medication, I was not able to get my breathing under control.  On the day of her celebration, I was in Emergency, then back home with Prednisone: the wonder drug.

This summer was more active thanks to a new home with a pool and within walking distance of a park.  Our new lifestyle felt promising, especially the fact that we were entertaining more, and enjoying the great outdoors.  Thor was still recovering from a spring full of surgeries, so his movement was limited, but he too felt more positive.

By July, the pain in my body had increased, but I told myself:  No pain, no gain, and pushed harder.  Isn’t that how the body works?  When record high temperatures hit mid July, I decided that was to blame for my troubled breathing.

The Prednisone didn’t work, so I continued to up my meds and rationalized that once the frost came, everything would be better.

Soon school was back in and with it the onslaught of germs.  I constantly felt like I was fighting something, and then one day, standing talking to a peer, I felt faint, unable to breath, and was sweating profusely.  I called the doctor.  An xray showed pneumonia.  A bout of antibiotics and I would be good as new.

Except, I wasn’t, and my breathing became more and more laboured and the dizzy spells continued, and the sweats, and I found myself back in Emergency and on the wonder drug again.  Twice, with no effect.

By December, the doctor decided that maybe this wasn’t asthma, and began to treat me for COPD, and arranged lung tests.  Nothing.  So, I went for heart tests.  Nothing still.

No, it’s asthma!  declared the lung specialist and he upped my medication, stating he would see me in two weeks.

In the meantime, I felt more and more like I was swimming against the tide, through thick, debilitating muddy waters.

I just want to be able to breath again!  I told him on my next visit.  To be honest, none of these meds are making any difference, and I am fed up!

Now I like this doctor just fine, but he has a undeniable sense of self-importance and on any given occasion is prone to answer his own questions before hearing my response, but this day he stopped and looked at my file.  Really looked at my file.  He went on-line and looked back over all the tests, and former tests and diagnosis, and sat back and looked at me with renewed interest.

You have Fibromyalgia, he said, as if realizing it for the first time.  This is not asthma.  This is Chronic Fatigue. 

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  My family doctor had mumbled it questioningly months before, then dismissed it in favour of further testing.  I can treat your lungs, he said, but it’s back to your family doctor for the rest.  

So, there it is.  A diagnosis.  Eight months of struggle, exhaustion, self-doubt, and frustration, and here is where I land.

There is relief in knowing what I am up against, but there is also an enormous sense of disappointment and a bracing myself for what is to come next.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, like Fibromyalgia, is an unknown that draws at best blank stares, but mostly, misinformed advice.  I brace myself for what lies ahead.

As the criticism, and ‘you shoulds’ rolls in, I realize that I will need clear boundaries, and the ability to deflect the controversy.  Now more than ever, I will need to walk with my head held high, choosing the path that supports me best.

Now is the time that character counts.

Day 191: The Fear Response

I am little and hiding behind the green-brocade, swivel chair in our family’s living room.  My mother is sitting on the chair, but she doesn’t see me.  The room is full of adults talking, smoking, and laughing, but I am afraid.  My father has pulled out a gun and is pointing it at another man.  I want to scream out to him to stop, but I cannot.  My voice is frozen.  I am paralyzed and helpless. 

I wake up.

And remember.

My parents loved to party when I was a child, and I wanted to be part of it.  In later years, I would perch on the staircase and listen to the exploits, but the dream takes place in the early years, when we lived in a bungalow, and I would wander out of my bedroom and hide behind the living room chair, wanting to be close to my mother and hoping I wouldn’t be found out.

My father never actually owned a gun that I know of, but he did have a violent temper, and on more than one occasion ended the evening by beating up on one of the male guests.

I learned fear in my father’s home.  I learned that to step out of line was to invite violence.

What I didn’t learn is how to define that line, so I lived most of my childhood in irrational, and sometimes paralyzing fear.  Survival, unharmed, became a goal and focus.  I spent countless hours and years upon years trying to figure out how to avoid my father’s wrath.

And in the meantime, I failed to learn about a healthy fear response.

I didn’t flinch when my older sister took me to a biker bar when I was only twelve.

I didn’t think anything was amiss when I was allowed to stay out to all hours of the night, and no one asked where I’d been.

It never occurred to me to question a strange man giving me a ride home.

When home is a scary place, everything else seems tame.

Simplicity: A Noble Quest

At thirty-one, I had to learn to change my approach to life, because the old way wasn’t working.

th-2The old way put me at the center of the family (even though I was fifth born), listening to and attempting to resolve every family issue:   Do you think your younger sister is okay living out there in isolation?  Your older sisters are not talking to each other.  I can’t talk to Mom, will you?  Why do men always leave me?  Your brother thinks I abandoned him as a child.  I can’t talk to Dad; he’ll listen to you. Your brother is coming to stay, and well, you know about his wife.   I can’t live with your Father.  And on and on.

The old way was me constantly trying to run from my problems, striving to be better, to do better, and to get ahead.  I was invested in the belief that if I could just do the right thing, my life would be perfect.  I beat myself up trying to reach some magical destination where peace would prevail, and all would be well with the world.

Attachments, chaos, interference, and desires were destroying me.  I lived in a perpetual state of strife and discontentment.

And then the blessing came:  my mind snapped.

As I picked up the pieces of my life, I had to learn to simplify.

th-3I was gifted with new objectivity.  I realized that even though my own life had come to a screaming stop,  everyone else’s went on without me.  The chaos and drama of my family continued, and for the first time in my life, I recognized that I had no ability to control it.  Never had.  My need to feel important and responsible in the midst of that whirlwind was my own sick way of coping.  Nothing I said, did, or sweat over was going to change the outcomes.  I learned to detach and stop interfering.

Mom and Dad are trying to run my life.

“You are strong and have supports.  I trust that you can deal with this.”

Find out what’s wrong with your sister.

“I have my own relationship with my sister, and would prefer that you do the same.  Let’s not get them confused.”

It was the first step to learning to breathe again.

Losing my mind also put a stop to all that rushing around.  I was forced to stand still, which meant everything I had been running from caught up to me.  Egads!  I went into therapy.

th-4My family, I came to understand, dealt with dilemma’s by creating more distractions: new problems.  Our momentum came from the next crisis and there was never any shortage of those.  The problem with this way of living is that the underlying message is that there is something so wrong, so unmentionable, that it is not safe to relax, and so we hang on until the next cliff hanger.  The only control I had in all of this was to no longer choose to be part of it.  Peace, I discovered, was an inner journey and not an outer destination.  Boy, had I been on the wrong track!

“What is it that you really desire?”  the therapist asked me one day.

“I don’t know,” came the response, and it was true.  I had been driving myself so hard, I had forgotten what it was that I was aiming for in the first place.

Life, I concluded, is not a game in which the person with the best ideas, and the most responsibility wins.  It is a journey of moments, and discoveries, and connections, which if we’re not careful, we will miss.  Simplicity, my heart’s actual desire, is being able to minimize the attachments, resist the need to interfere, and be the calm at the center of the storm.

I’m still working on it, but at least now, I am more aware.

Day 187 “The Thorns”

I grew my thorns at a tender age before my flower was even in bloom.

I grew them with clenched fists, in a fetal position, sobbing into my pillow while the rest of the household ignored me.

“Take that mood to your bedroom and don’t come out till you are over it,” my father would say.

“I don’t need anyone!” I would tell myself, over and over again, and chastise myself for forgetting in between.  If I didn’t need anyone, I reasoned, I could never be hurt like this again.

I reinforced those thorns throughout my second marriage, changing my mantra to “I don’t need anything.”  Married to a man who either made me pay for everything I got or deprived me of my wants, I decided that the answer was to just not want for anything.

No matter how strong I thought my defense system was, it didn’t work.   I still suffered.

In retrospect, maybe I suffered more because of the thorns.

My flower is long past bloomed, and I no longer have need of the protection, but it is not easy to let down one’s defenses.

Maybe by writing, I can one by one, strip the thorns.

Day 185 “The Desire to Control”

In the bedroom, my mother is trying to settle the baby.  I am in the kitchen trying to clean up when a gust of wind, followed by a wall of water hits me.  The floor around me is quickly filling up with this flood of elements and I push my way through to find the source:  the sliding glass window on my third story balcony is bent and off the track, unwilling to close. 

“Grab me duct tape,” I yell, but no one hears me, so I rush to find it, trying desperately to minimize the damage. 

Duct tape is no match for the storm brewing outside.  There is no way to fix this problem.

This dream has unsettled me.  I can’t shake the image and the feeling of hopelessness.  Too many responsibilities.  Too many things in need of repair.  How did everything get so out of control?

I know it is a dream, but the need for my inhaler coming out of it is real.  I have been struggling for weeks, no months, to get my breathing stabilized, and it is weighing on me.  I am the same age my father was when he was diagnosed with emphysema; is this to be my fate also?

I try to go back to sleep, but can’t shake the image and the feeling that there is no solution.  This is the end, my dream self realizes.  When I do slide back, the images are no different:  my baby daughter drowning in a pool and no one reacting but me, and I am too late; trying to take a shortcut home through the woods, only to find it is a dead end, blocked by police who turn me around, then realizing I have lost everyone, including myself. 

Deep despair.

The dream is flooded with images from my life.

The setting is reminiscent of the apartment I rented after my first divorce.  Marriage was to have been my salvation, but instead, here I was, more broken than before thrown back into the turmoil.  Just released from the hospital, my sister Mai came to live with me.  She was too fragile to live with my other sister, but the two were often present, adding to the chaos in my home.

The kitchen was how I defined myself at the time.  I could cook – had cooked at home for the family – and I became the mother figure for all lost and single souls looking for a home cooked meal and a warm place to land.  No one seemed to mind that my schizophrenic sister sat rocking endlessly in a chair in the corner, nor that my ailing (mentally as well as physically) older sister would drop in unexpectedly, bringing with her a constant storm of drama.   Maybe it was dinner theater for those whose lives were comparatively tame.

The baby is my middle daughter, who traumatized by illness during pregnancy, struggled in the first years of her life, unable to sleep and constantly screaming in pain.  For three years we dragged her from one specialist to the next desperately looking for an answer and eventually found one, but I remember the daily heart wrenching  feeling of inadequacy as a mother who couldn’t meet her child’s needs.

The path into the woods was the one I took so many days as a child to find solace.  Deep in the shelter of trees, there was peace and tranquility and it filled my soul many days and gave me the courage to carry on. The path is long gone and many have been lost in my life, myself included.

All my life, I have fought to overcome.  Overcome failure, dis-ease, dis-order, and in-sanity.

Bottom line, as the dream so eloquently points out, is that there never is a way to fix all that.  There is no sudden solution or ending.  The storms of life rage on, ready to unleash their power at any time, and the only hope – the only answer – is to hold ground through it and humbly pick up the pieces afterwards, knowing that this is the best anyone can do; the best anyone can be.

Control is an illusion.