Throughout this healing journey, I have lost half of my hair. My teeth are weak and ache most days. I have to heat up yogurt in order to eat it without it hurting. The foods I can tolerate are limited to about 8 different ones and the daily supplements needed to function and breathe are a belly full. I am unable to work consistently or predict how I will feel each day. Outside of caring for my family, self-health-maintenance has become the focus of my daily life.
It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions. Removal of past patterning. Learning to communicate with the critical voice in my head. It's loud and deeply rooted. Truly understanding and appreciating what it means to be healthy. As a young person I was drawn to helping others and to natural medicine. This year has required that I turn my focus inward and learn how to love and heal myself. It's been more challenging than I had imagined and at the same time, a miraculous gift. One I would never have understood without experiencing my healing crisis-journey.
I find myself in the middle of a spiritual experience. One of becoming real.
It reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit story from my childhood.
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
- THE VELVETEEN RABBIT
Gratitude for the lessons in self-acceptance and self-love. For the ongoing removal of guilt and shame. For the healthy days and the hard days. For the breaking away of the old ways and the introduction and incorporation of new ways of being.
I'm coming to realize that I have been set free.
A better human. Kinder, more compassionate, more thoughtful and present. Our time is limited and I am now, more than ever, aware of my mortality. It has been a fight for my life. And I know this: I want to be here. To raise my children, love my husband, grow plants in my garden, make new friends and have adventures in the wild. To pursue my dreams of someday having a little farm with horses, bunnies and a big tree I can climb up into and sit for hours, listening to the wind and feeling the sway of the branches. Honeybees, a variety of herbs and medicinal plants, a vegetable garden and a pantry filled with the colorful canned foods from our land.
And a little spot to have healing workshops about natural things.
Soak in the sunrises, sunsets and snowflakes. The highs and lows.
Accept that it is messy, unpredictable and beautiful all at once.
It is an honor to be alive.
Comments