Nothing New Under The Sun

Blog # 2

Hello fellow life adventurers!

This is my second blog. which tickles me!

Perhaps I should warn you that I am going to talk about illness (maybe not your thing) and how transformation can take place through illness and the healing process.

Anyway, in case you wanted to skip this one, there will be many more to come on a cheerier note!! But for those who want to brave it, here I continue.

While doing some deep cleaning today, I realized how long it has been since I had the strength and ability to actually clean.

Many of you know that I have been having some serious health issues since my first Lyme episode in 2016. That Lyme (with its many co-infections) nearly ended my life ( I actually had the near death experience) and put me out of commission for 4 months.

2 years later I had a new case of Lyme with another "almost" off the planet experience, and was down for the count again for several months.

Some of the battles that I face ongoing are: crippling joint pain, severe vertigo & a multitude of neurological oddities, and a variety of other weird seemingly random things that happen. One example is that my thumbs will suddenly be in excruciating pain and I cannot use them at all, another is shooting pains in my legs, sometimes my arms have no strength at all when minutes before they were working. The main chronic issue has been complete exhaustion and I mean being incapacitated and having to get in a horizontal position when it suddenly comes upon me, which can be anytime and anywhere. I kept a bedroll at Elixir for those moments and often I would sleep there overnight if the fatigue was upon me.

Last year at this time, I woke with such intense vertigo that when I got up from my bed, everything was "spinning" so much that I vomited, and passed out. This episode played out to varying degrees for a month. As it was easing up, the joints in my knees became so inflamed that

I was unable to walk normally and hobbled with such struggle and pain that I spent the better part of 3 months crying.

During this time I closed Elixir because of my health and because 2 years of the world "situation" had taken its toll on my small business.

Some faithful friends and some movers got the job done, but I was left with piles and piles of restaurant "stuff" in my house and no strength to put it in order.

None of this was pretty.

Thankfully, I have a dear friend who is a physical therapist who made many house calls during this time and I was also going regularly to a master acupuncturist for treatments and Chinese herbs. I hobbled around to make my own healing foods, juices and herbal concoctions, so that after several months, the pain began to subside and I began to move with more ease. Time with my granddaughters also helped me in many ways.

Here is where it gets surreal, as if I am making it up.

Just as I was getting better, my housemate, my granddaughters, and I were hit on the highway by a drunk driver and I sustained a head injury. In addition to being thankful that we were all miraculously alive from the help of a host of angels, I was very thankful that although I had a concussion, nothing was broken (except perhaps my spirits).

So after 4 months of chronic pain, I was gifted with more pain in my neck & head.

My granddaughters, who can have that slightly dark teenage humor, had already been joking about the noises I would make when I would suddenly have pain and say "my leg!"

After a few giggles when this would happen, they finally showed me why they were laughing.

I have had an aversion to Sponge Bob and of course now, in spite of myself, Fred the fish from Sponge Bob would contribute to my healing process.

Humor, for me, is as important as all of the other modalities I mentioned above, for healing.

The support through that time was essential and yet, when faced with this much pain, one still feels alone. Sympathy, kindness, humor, along with treatments are external, but something else happens within the pain and the one experiencing it.

Pain forces one to go DEEP.

The pain itself is a part of the healing. Anyone who has endured pain for any length of time knows this. Somehow we enter into a relationship with the pain and it shows and tells us so much about ourselves if we are willing to see and to hear.

Women who give birth naturally will attest to this. During labor, with the proper breath and concentration, a woman moves into a different state of consciousness so that she can participate in this miraculous expansion of self in every way. I had this experience while birthing my 3 children naturally and will never forget the "otherworldliness" of that sacred portal that was opened during labor & birth ushering a heavenly being to the material plane through my body.

That pain of course can be looked at practically and rationally because it is pain with a "purpose".

Here, is where it gets good!

I was shown during some of the most excruciating pain, while I was praying and meditating, that all pain has a purpose and is also a birthing. We are birthed, transformed, through the pain & suffering, into a new state of consciousness! This is a beautiful gift of the divine design. Yes there is suffering but it leads to something MORE.

That "more" can be, more appreciation for the simplicity of every day life, more awareness of the eternal moment, by living in the present, more compassion for others, realizing that there is a story & more importantly a soul within each person we encounter, more patience with ourselves and our human frailty.

Yes we are confronted with our mortality when we are in pain, but at the same time given a window into our immortality.

Thornton Wilder says this in his play, Our Town:

“Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars… everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.”

― Thornton Wilder

So, to be able to fill the large jugs with water from the spring today, do some garden clean up, and then get some cleaning done without pain was an absolute JOY!

For over 40 years I have helped people with their healing process. I have learned so much through other peoples suffering, but have learned more about healing through my own suffering and have more to offer to others because of it.

I found this poem scratched out on a note pad when I was cleaning.

I wrote it in August, as I was slowly turning the corner with "my leg!" pain and my headaches from the concussion. I didn't write it when I was feeling better, I wrote it on a bad day when the pain was present and I was able to tap into that other consciousness.

Gratitude

Gratitude is

the only attitude

Because thankfulness

is a continuum

a shiny glass marble

on the longest run ever

making wheels spin

gears turn

winding whirring whizzing

whistling like the wind

a boiling tea kettle

high pitched and squealing

a fast moving train

speeding along

with so much excitement and joy

arms wide open

into the brightest of sunshine

on the beachiest of days

with the bluest of green waves

when it finally makes its way

straight into the most joyous of places

the middle

of our heart

NLT August 2021

Here I will end my reflections on pain & transformation.

I am in the midst of my prayer & fasting time so this is what came up for me to write about.

I promise that gardening, cooking, nature and many other cheerful topics will abound :)

I cannot promise that serious reflection will be absent from these blogs ...

Photographs in order:

Konkapot Cottage Parlor

Sitting in front of the cottage

A rose is a rose is a rose from Elixir days

Until soon,

MUCH LOVE!