low ebb

i'm at a low ebb.  

it's a rough time.  it's been like this the last five weeks.    i'm in bed all day.   largely zoning out, and trying to manage the pain in my hips, pelvis and back.   hospital-type paraphenalia surrounds me.   i don't know where this is all leading.  or how fast.  trying to be open to all possible outcomes, and that also means being very real about all of them.

i need help with the simplest of things. and to be cared for by people who are truly natural caretakers, who do it with genuine love.  god knows i need the real deal right now.

i need maximum joy and love in my life.  i'm doing everything i can to bring that in and pull it up out of myself and really live it.  but i most certainly need help in this regard from the people in my life, from anyone and everyone.  now is the time.  i need joy and love at full tilt to help me get over this hump.

much love to you all.


 

re-alignment

     well, apparently, my body is going through some major re-alignment.  i'm reminded to stay with the process, remember that it is a process, my body is a living process, life is a process.

     one part of my body pulls and strains.  i'm stopped in my tracks, flat on my back recovering from that for a couple of days.  and just as that is calming down and feeling closer to healed than hurt, another area along my spine flares up.  and i go through the same with that, and then another.  "house of cards," someone said to describe my body in this process.  not sure i like that metaphor.  sounds like the whole house is coming down.  but it certainly is functioning like a row of dominoes - one falls and the rest follow.  but my chiropractor tells me that once they've all made their adjustments, it will not start all over again.  that's a relief.

     there are so many variables in this scenario, not sure which one/s prompted this re-alignment.  could be the 1/8" lift i now wear inside my left shoe because a bit of length was shaved off my leg during the surgery.  could be that i'm staying at a friends' house while they're away in africa, and it's a home that quickly felt like mine too - it's warm and cozy and full of life and love and vibrancy and african drums.  because it feels so much like a kindred space, i can and do rest well here.  so maybe my body has released into what it knows is a safe place to do so.  and then there was the massage that i had just over a week ago.  it was the first time on the table when my leg and hip ached so much i couldn't lie still.   so that directed all of the work my fine massage therapist did that day - it included much cranio-sacral work, and also massaging the legs and hip, and a great deal of sensitivity and love on her part.  she was guided by my body and her intuition.  and i guided her too.  waves upon waves of emotion welled up and spilled out of me, loads of energy vibrated throughout my body, and a lot of old, stale stuff was shook off through my hands.  it went on and on and on..   at the end of it, i slowly got off the table, knowing that something had seriously shifted....
     or it could be that larger imbalance being felt.  yes, that one. 

     and it could be all of the above and more...

     anything's possible.

     life is a process, life is a process, life is a process....

     and healing and health are not only individual acts but community acts - it's the collaboration and the love that makes it possible.

a rough day

a rough day today.
moving very slowly.  spending most of the time in bed.
i did a gentle forward bend yesterday and i felt my right sacral area pull and roll, oh! ow.   so now, bending forward is out of the question.  any movement, i do gingerly.  and with both crutches.
this stuff takes my morale low.

please let me know you're there.   call, visit, email...   i need to hear from you.

xox

a moment of bliss

  last month, i had a moment, such a blissful moment.  i was driving home from a visit to the chiropractor.  i had seen a woman chiropractor who was working with the chiropractor that i normally see.  as i was driving away, i felt something shift in me.  unbid, this thought-feeling arose:  the cancer is gone.  and with that, a feeling of such lightness.   everything changed.  i could literally feel the world, my world, without cancer.  god, how sweet.  it was an extraordinary feeling.  i could feel the lovely ordinariness of the day.  and i could feel, by contrast, how even on my best days, this cancer deal is relentlessly preoccupying.  it’s just there and there and there, shaping every moment.  and that’s the problem, of course.  if even on my best days, it’s there, that means that even on my best days it’s there, it’s here, in me.  the thought of it, the work-play of making it go, of doing anything because of it, in some way reinforces its existence, no?  keeps it alive in a certain way.  regularly gives it a home in my mind, and so then in my body?   this thing called cancer needs to be faced directly, of course.   but there seems to be such a thing as too heavy an emphasis - on that word, or all of the frightening baggage that comes with it (that's for sure)...  a balance asks to be struck, as with everything...

    hmmm, this begs more contemplation...  how to do more in my day, and night, that is for some other reason, that is for the act or action itself, that is about that moment in time, experiencing that moment, all moments, as deeply spacious, and without a past, without the past that says i have or had cancer....  even that last qualification keeps cancer here.  so let me re-phrase, or edit that - what i’m looking for is this:  to do more in my day that is about that particular moment in time, feeling the spaciousness, the vast field of possibilities, of that, of this moment.... simply because, because it is a moment in time, because it is, and because i am.


****

i must add something here - there are some people in my life who are in deep denial about what i am experiencing.   likely due to fear, they cannot face it, cannot acknowledge my reality, cannot honor my needs.   so for these people, a rumination like the one above might suggest that continuing to effectively ignore the complexity and challenges of my current reality is the path to take, to act as if everything is just fine, or to not act at all.    clearly, this is not what i mean.   i'm looking for balance.  that means genuinely facing me in my entirety in each moment.  facing me with love, generous and unabiding love.  knowing that my reality is complex and sensitive and challenging, and i have moments of bliss.

bone and the skeletal structure

     today, lately, i'm thinking and ruminating a lot on bone, the nature of bone, the symbolic meaning of bone... and the skeletal structure.  namely, my skeletal structure.  it's meant to support me, of course.  so there's the question of support, support structure.  and support from where?  what kind of support - physical? emotional? spiritual?  clearly, all are in play.  but what area calls out for more, for deeper investigation?  what does full  support in and for each of these areas of my being really look like?   someone has suggested that bone represents one of the deepest layers of a being.  if so, then, what of my needs has perhaps been pushed under?  what trouble has gone into hiding?  and how do i go about uprooting it or speaking to it at that deepest level in order to transform it?  what burdens, old stories or old pain have become too heavy to carry any longer?  what needs to go?

    and what of true support versus false support?  what does true support really look like, feel like?  and how has false support played a role in my life?  where have i, for example, too often leaned into false support and feel it crumble beneath even mild pressure?  how have i leaned in in this way because i had yet to accept, or fully accept, that it was false, a mirage, a myth?  how had i needed, or still need, that support to be what it said it was/is, what they said it was? and how dangerous to continue to lean into false support in the most precarious of times when i so very much need true support...  and how to continue to build trust in what is truly true support, knowing that it will hold me as i lean in?  so that i will, as needed, lean in? 

    exploring these questions, and feeling the answers, has become a matter of increasing importance.  at times, a too intense gravity insists and suggests that it is the path... a gravity shot through with fear.  and a notion that it's a serious head-oriented approach that is the responsible path.  and yet, i know, i know, that play must be a part of this process too.  it's the play, the improvisation, that suggests and crafts new ways, new paths.   that's what i need to find my way to the hidden trouble.  and it's from the place and way of play that i know best, can see most clearly what is true support.   the thinking mind is so small in the light of brightly shining intuition.  go there, wendy.  go there.  live there.  the head can take a backseat.  it will serve when it needs to - but only serve.  the intuition is my fearless and awesome leader.

******

     so often, i find, these thoughts and feelings expressed here are really messages to myself.  i return to them again and again and find solace and important remembering.

******

    oh my, this is not an easy path.  and yet, that's precisely what i practice.  Ease.  ease in the most challenging of moments.  ease - the unburdened antithesis of disease or dis-ease.   dis be gone.

a healer, and my body asks for time

   on this cold winter's day, i'm thinking of Mexico, again.  here's a juicy tale from my recent visit there:

    last august, i was lucky enough to get a scholarship to go to an herbal conference in NH.  one of the big draws for me was that an herbalist and healer from Oaxaca was going to be one of the special guests.  at the last moment, she could not attend.  so, i inquired about where she lives in Oaxaca and planned to see if i could find her once there.  once i'd landed in Mexico City, my friend there travelled with me to Oaxaca, and then to a town where her friends, who would become my friends, live - a town where i'd never been before on the outskirts of Oaxaca City.  after a week settling into their home and the rhythm of the town, i asked if they knew of the town where this healer lives.  their response:  it’s the next town over, Wendy...   how very interesting.  how truly not-just-coincidentally convenient.  and, so, i went.  as did Lulu, one of my new friends there.

    the experience was powerful and i came away with valuable information, herbs and tinctures too.  Dona Enriqueta Contrera is an older woman steeped in the healing traditions of her culture.   she spoke with me, quickly sussed out that some old childhood fear had been harbored in my body since that time, and that my kidneys had been taxed in the process.  her able and long-time assistant performed a powerful “limpia” (cleansing) on/with me.   all sorts of intense energy pooled in my hands begging to be shaken off and released.  afterwards, i was so cold - a clear indication that much old “heat” had left my body.   Enriqueta’s words, the limpia, and the tinctures and teas she prescribed stirred much in me.  in the days following, all sorts of emotions washed through me.  words and drawings spilled out of me in familiar and not-so-familiar, but very liberating, ways.  i’m sure the benefits of that healing were multiplied by experiencing them in Mexico, and in Lulu and Sol’s home, and feeling that greater opening to relaxation that i felt in that culture and country...

******

    as for my health at the moment, i feel well, my system is functioning well.  at the same time, i'm feeling the need for much rest.  and generally, i'm able to rest the way i need to.  that's a change that's come around in the last few months.  some level of anxiety has left me, and i'm also finding and staying in places where i feel calm, and with that, i have the space i need to relax into real rest.

    i'm still back on the crutches, regaining strength in the hip.  religiously doing my yoga/exercises daily.    feeling frustrated at times, like today, with the length of time i've had to use some means of support to move my body to and fro.  trying to find patience in these moments.   but, at least now, i can feel how the sensations and pain i was experiencing a few weeks ago were really muscle and tendon-related, and not bone-related.  the latter would have been troubling given my larger diagnosis.  i likely have some form of tendonitis in the hip area.  also, a chiropractor told me recently that muscle can have difficulty adapting when new bone is coming in, and this could be part of what's happening in my body.   not that it won't adapt, but that it's a process and the muscles and tendons need time.  so time it is, dear body.   anything for you.

a parable

There is a Hasidic parable:  A man is shown a vision of the afterlife.  He is first shown a great hall with a long banquet table filled with ambrosial delights.   Each diner is equipped with a three-foot-long spoon, but no matter how much they contort their arms, thrusting their elbows into their neighbors' faces, their utensils are too long to maneuver even a single morsel into their gaping mouths.  They sit together, opposite and side by side, in mutual misery.

"This," says the man's otherworldly guide, "is Hell."

The visitor is then taken to another place and sees an identical banquet table set with the same sumptuous viands and the same impossible silverware.  Only here the denizens are well fed, utterly joyous, glowing with health and well-being.

"This," pronounces his host, "is Heaven."

The man is baffled.  "What's the difference?"

"In Heaven,"  says the guide, pointing delightedly as a person lifts his long-handled spoon across the table to the parted lips of a neighbor, "they feed each other."

*******

i have been the recipient of such fine and generous sharing during this last year.   i feel deeply nourished and i am eternally grateful.   thank you to those generous beings, you know who you are - if i haven't already lifted the long-handled spoon to your lips, i certainly will!

may we all be well nourished in mind, body and spirit in the new year.