Harnessing the healing power of snark
“Oh, man!” I heard my husband complain. “You know what’s really not good?”
“Hm,” I said. “The fact that my replacement Kindle was broken? The fact that I seem to be losing my hair? The fact that the medicines I need to help manage my illnesses are breaking down my body?!”
“No,” he replied. “When you’re in a battle with the skeletons, and your batteries die.”
Because my Inner Nerd just isn’t happy unless I’m taking some kind of class, I’m currently enrolled in an online class by Ronna Detrick called “Soulstice“. In it, she guides you in working through various stories of women in the Bible, and the story I’m currently studying is the Old Testament story of Hannah, one of whose themes is that of Longing. Hannah desperately wants a child, but has spent years and years unable to conceive. And while I don’t long for children, I am quite familiar with this flavor of desperation-tinged wanting.
Because I am just so tired of being sick. I hate this fibromyalgia, and I desperately long to be free; free of pain, free of exhaustion, free of having to live my life through the filter of illness.
I long to wake up in the morning without being in pain from the moment I open my eyes ’til the moment I fall asleep at night. I long for a day that doesn’t involve pushing against the Sisyphean boulder of chronic pain and exhaustion, trying to get things done, but knowing that it’s only a matter of time before it overpowers me, and then steamrolls me flat on its way back down the mountain of my day.
I long for the energy and capacity of healthy people. I long for a time when picking out an outfit and getting dressed does not feel like having to climb Mt. Everest. I just want to feel better.
But I know that for right now, as well as for the foreseeable future, I can’t have any of this.
I want, and the answer is no. And I know I’m not the only one. I know you’ve been here too.
We want. And sometimes the answer is no. And That. SERIOUSLY. sucks.
I really wish I had some zippy punchline to end with, but I don’t. But I do think I can offer us at least a tiny bit of hope.
Because somehow, we do still get up every morning. We do find a way through our days. We do experience moments of relief, of happiness, of contentment, and we do survive the awful. And I think this could only happen if, as we’re rolling that stone up the mountain, we occasionally stumble into a pocket or two of grace.
So let me wish for us, my friends: may these oases of grace and comfort run deeper and wider, and occur more frequently that we ever could have dreamed possible.
And you know what? I’m pretty sure the answer to that wish is most definitely, “Yes!”
Yesterday after 5 years I finally got a new CPAP machine, and the difference between the one I’ve been using and the one I just got is like the difference between trying to communicate with someone by chiseling out your message on stone tablets, and communicating with them by telepathically poofing your thought directly into their brain.
1. This TED talk by Dyana Valentine on How You Are Doing Everything Right.
2. The story of how journalist Paul Salopek plans to “retrace the steps of humans’ migration from Africa until he gets to Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of Chile.” You can follow the story on the project’s official website, “Out of Eden“.
3. These first few, grey, weeks of January are really challenging to me, So this invocation of the light really speaks to me.
4. My friend, Sarah Marie Lacy, is attending a Paris art school this year, and to help fund her tuition and living expenses she is offering something called “Sketches From The Road“. For a donation of $20 (or more, if you are so inspired), “Every week(ish), you’ll receive an email from me containing a little love letter, a video of me being a goof and sharing stories about life in rural France & our travels and about the art I’m making, as well as photos of the places I visit and images of my work as it changes and improves from week to week.”. It’s a fun way to kind of go “behind the scenes” with an artist, to watch their creative process and see one example of living an art-full life.
5. This amazing artwork by David Hayword, aka,nakedpastor: Graffiti artist on the walls of religion. He’s done an entire series of prints featuring the female energy/presence of Sophia-“wisdom”. I haven’t yet been able to choose just one print to buy for my office.
Hope you enjoy!
“There’s something infinitely sad about little girls who grow up understanding (usually unconsciously) that if God is male, it’s because male is the most valuable thing to be. This belief resonates in a thousand hidden ways in their lives. It slowly cripples girl children, and it cripples female adults.”
-Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter
I’m hoping, in this new year, to post a bit more frequently here on the blog. It will be a nice push for me to become a bit more regular with my writing, and a push to give myself permission to try out different kinds of writing.
The writing that showed up today was sparked by a class offered by Ronna Detrick called “Inspired By Eve“, in which she guides you through a process of re-imagining the possibilities of Eve’s story, and then using that to re-imagine and retell parts of your own story. In today’s lesson she had us write about desire, and this is what showed up for me.
Desire
Desire is big, bold, and brassy. Desire sashays right up to you at the bar, voluptuous hips swinging, working every inch of her little red dress, and gives you the once-over while asking you for a light. But what she’s really asking is, “Are you ready? Can you step up? Are you willing to take the ride?”
Desire bats her mile-long lashes at you and beckons you with a flirty glance; a dare, and a promise.
Desire flips her silky blond hair over one shoulder, pretending disinterest, but you’re well aware that she’s watching your every move.
You lick your lips. Your body moves closer of its own accord, irresistibly enticed by what Desire seems to promise-no guaranteed outcomes, but a hell of a ride, and the adventure of a lifetime.
Returning her gaze head on, you lift your chin, strike a match, and set the world alight.
A week or so before the holidays we experienced a bit of a role reversal here at the Ryans as Mr. Cranky Fibro Girl was felled by a bad cold. He only gets sick once, maybe twice a year, but when he gets sick he gets really sick.
I enjoyed the opportunity to take care of him, since he does such a wonderful job taking care of me, and it got me to thinking about the part of our wedding vows where we promised to care for each other “in sickness and in health”. And it’s a good thing he meant his part of that vow, because it was no more than an hour or so after our ceremony when he was called to put it into practice.
But to properly tell this tale, I first need to give you a bit of back story; specifically, I need to tell you the story of my parents’ wedding.
My parents got married in July at a time when, as far as I can determine, man had not yet discovered air conditioning. So I can only imagine that, as bride, groom, and attendants stood on the altar, it was as if they were conducting the ceremony on the shifting, molten lava of the surface of the sun.
I’m not sure whether or not the heat was to blame for this, but apparently no one really ate anything before the ceremony, and so a few minutes in, as my mom described it, “people started dropping like flies”.
Mom’s brother went first and then, as my dad was leaning down to tell his brother-the best man, the one with the rings-not to lock his knees, down he went as well. At which time they had to pause the ceremony because, as the pastor said, “Man may come and man may go, but we have to have the ring,” and off he went in search of the fallen attendants.
As my own wedding grew closer and closer and took on a life of its own, dragging me on in the wake of its ever-increasing momentum, this story began to prey on my mind. Now, all these years later, I can see that things felt so big and so overwhelming, that I fixated on The Story Of The Fainting Groomsmen in hopes of finding something small that I thought I could control.
And I was not the only one using that particular coping strategy, either. Rather than think about the enormity of what was about to happen my mom fixated on finding the perfect shade of “bone” for her mother-of-the-bride shoes; my dad tried to convince us that we needed to hand-sketch all the maps from the ceremony to the reception; my future mother-in-law focused on perfecting the gift table; and my future father-in-law, after having spent the previous nine months refusing to wear a tuxedo suddenly changed his mind about five days before the wedding, and, I don’t even remember what happened with that.
But nothing, NOTHING, freaked people out more than the Unity Candle.
Mr. CFG and I thought it would be a nice addition to the ceremony to have my parents and his parents light one of the candles on each side of the Unity Candle. We meant it as a symbolic gesture of the bringing together of our two families, a symbol of the support that would carry us on as we began our life as a married couple. But somehow, something got lost in translation, because what they apparently heard was, “FLAME! DEATH! DESTRUCTION! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!” The four of them obsessed over that candle for weeks. Mr. CFG said he even found them up in the balcony minutes before the ceremony was to begin, frantically reviewing the Candle Lighting Procedure. I feel kind of bad about it now; we’d meant it as a gesture of love and gratitude, but instead it seemed to be a gesture of a potential aneurysm-inducing event.
I tell you all of this to give you a little taste of what the emotional/stress level was by the time we finally got to the day of the wedding. Between the six of us five of us are firstborns, and three of us have what you might generously refer to as Dynamic Personalities. And, so now that we’d arrived at the moment of truth, my mantra for the day became, “HEY-PEOPLE STANDING UP WITH ME AT THE ALTAR! MAKE SURE YOU EAT SOMETHING BECAUSE THERE SHALL BE NO FAINTING AT MY WEDDING, SO SAITH THE LORD, AMEN!”
But (as I’m sure you’ve guessed), in a case of, “Physician-heal thyself!”, I neglected to follow my own directive. Unless you count swigging down an entire bottle of Donagel to calm my nervous stomach. (Which you shouldn’t.)
Happily we all made it through the ceremony, and no one was harmed in the lighting of the candles, and now it was time to relax, which in my case meant developing an absolutely brain-shattering “Relief Headache”. So one of my aunts pulled a bottle of Excedrin out of her purse and handed me two tablets. “Aha-I am going to be smart,” I told myself. “I don’t know how this medicine will affect me, so I will only take one of these.”
It was unfortunate for me that I hadn’t had that thought back at 2 in the morning when I started doing shots of stomach medicine, because by the time we were in the limo heading to the reception those two medicines and my empty stomach collided, and I became violently nauseated.
Panicked and close to tears I said, “I can’t go to the reception. I can’t make it through.”
And then, in the first of what would turn out to be many such moments my new husband calmly assessed the situation, said, “Well, I think we have to,” asked the limo driver to take us to a drug store so I could get some Emetrol for my nausea (because that‘s what I needed-more medicine!) (which the limo driver purchased for us, impressing the drugstore patrons with his completely kitted-out chauffeur uniform, including white gloves and cap), tucked the Emetrol along with some Rolaids into his jacket pocket, and, with his steady, calm, loving presence, carried me through the reception, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
Yeah-I got a good one 🙂
Today I am feeling very different-different from other people, I mean. Not that that’s an uncommon occurrence. But the contrast seems to be heightened on days like today, the beginning of something new, where the messages all around us seem to blare out, “Dream big! Think higher! Don’t settle!”
Well, I guess it’s not just New Year’s Day when we hear those things. It does seem as though every time we turn around there’s a commercial or a magazine article or a new pop culture guru telling us we need to change so we can Get Better, whatever that means. And personally speaking, if I hear one more person urging me to Live My Best Life or Discover My Passion, I will be hard pressed not to punch them in the face.
This stuff just feels so obnoxious to me because it seems like the people preaching it never stop to notice whether or not where we are right now is already passionate, and amazing, and huge-which it is. It’s like where we are just automatically gets discounted, and judged as “not good enough” without actually being noticed or acknowledged. I really hate that.
(It reminds me of the time right after I became certified as a life coach and went to a big conference about 6 or 7 years ago. The whole theme of the conference was, “Everyone in the world will have a coach by 2010. ” And my first thought was, “What if they don’t want a coach? You don’t know what’s best for everyone.”)
Because I have dreamed a very big dream-for me. It’s one I continue to choose each day, in that I have chosen to live my life as a Professional Free Spirit.
Between us, my husband and I have created an everyday life where we are both doing things that we really enjoy. He is pursuing a career path that is both satisfying and challenging, which allows me to be a stay-at-home wife and writer, and a tryer-outer of all the different experiences that catch my fancy. And because I am happy and satisfied, making our home, managing our household, and dreaming up goofy stories about That Time I Forgot My Underwear, that frees up time and energy for him which he can use to progress in his career.
But even though I’ve (we’ve) got this great life going on, it’s not all puppies and rainbows, which is another thing that the gurus never seem to mention. In the worldview that they propose, there doesn’t seem to be any room for what to do when life is hard. It’s one thing to deal with the normal fears that come up when you’re trying something new and stretching yourself to reach a goal that takes you out of your comfort zone. But in the books and programs I’ve purchased (and, I admit-I’ve purchased quite a few), there’s no chapter on “What To Do When You’ve Put Five Years Of Hard Work Into Your Tutoring Business And Written A First Draft Of A Book, But Then You’re Struck Down By A Debilitating Illness And Can No Longer Do Anything, Which Causes You To Lose Everything You’ve Worked For”.
So in this place, the place of living with chronic pain and illness, “dreaming big” looks very different. What we do here, day after day after day is HUGE, although not by the standards that “officially” signal success and accomplishment. If someone asks what you’ve been up to lately, or what you’ve done today, it kind of sucks when your answer is, “Well, I managed not to rip off all my clothes and run shrieking into the street, and then throw myself in front of a bus.” I mean, that’s not really something you can put in your annual Christmas letter.
In this place, “dreaming big” means choosing to look for the humor in this illness. “Discovering my passion” means dammit, I am going to figure out ways to keep writing even though I’m sick. “Living my best life” means showing up faithfully every single day and doing all the things I need to do to manage excruciating pain AND paralyzing fatigue AND exhausting bi-polar mood cycling with grace and strength, and still finding space to create and live a good life.
It’s realizing that I’m not trying to get anywhere, that I don’t need to strive to reach a place that is different than where I am right now. It’s sinking down into my life, spreading out, and filling in all the delicious nooks and crannies, feeling into all the space around me and feasting on the juiciness that is right here, and finding that I am full to overflowing.
Right here is BIG. Right here is HIGH. Right here is HUGE. But most of all, right here is enough.
And may it be so for you, as well.
Amen.
