Category Archives: Beloved

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Fear stands

For RonovanWrites Weekly Haiku Prompt #79, the words are crystal and hope….

fear stands strong don’t look
crystal water reveals rocks
open eyes give you hope

 

I took the photograph in 2012, when my sister was referred to hospice for breast cancer. I took three trips to see her before she died. She was still very engaged with everyone on the second trip. But when she was not talking to anyone, her face was different. She was looking at eternity. She knew that I could see her doing it, because we knew each other so well. She did not want to talk about it to me until my last visit with her in this life. I felt so blessed and honored when she did talk to me, and I hope that she feels loved.

 

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Go on

I must go on without you
the Beloved opens the path before me
let the past fall behind, the clear parts
and the murky, we alter each memory when we
pull the file in our brain and refile it,
I have duty you see, though I will miss you
terribly and keep inviting you along
as our paths diverge by millimeters
I wonder if you mind perhaps you are relieved
or perhaps you refuse to feel whether you mind
or not, we walk in parallel for now and can still
touch fingertips across the gap, more than
fingertips actually, but not for much longer.
I am still small compared to you yet when I said
to the Beloved that I don’t see how to
carry all of this, my back was infinitely broad and strong
for a period, as if a dream. Kiss me and leave, then,
if you must and I will love you always.

The picture is of early morning fog clearing 1/10/16.

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Armour Suit IV: Walk like a toddler

At each massage, one every two weeks, I have locked my hips back up in the Armour suit. This is really annoying.

My massage person says he wants to be able to lie face down like a baby: head, arms and legs all lifted and playing. That is core strength. Babies can do that… why can’t we? He says that when he does play therapy with kids, by a certain age they lose that. He picks them up and flies them around lying on his arms: by age 4 or 5, they fold up. They have lost touch with that core.

I think about that.

During a massage a few months ago he pokes my lower belly. “Tilt your hips using your abdominal muscles.” Feels weird, but I do. “You aren’t engaging your core.” I find it really annoying to have to relearn how to walk.

Engaging my core. Little children who have just learned to walk do lead with their bellies. And they can still lie on the floor on their bellies, all limbs up.

I am trying to picture an adult who walks with their belly. Who? The Buddha’s belly comes to mind. But I can’t see him walking. Who? Toshiro Mifune: the old samurai movies. He and the others walk like small children: from their core, from their bellies.

I try it for two weeks. I flatten the arch of my lower back by using my abdominal muscles, not my gluteus maximus. I walk with my feet apart a bit, my belly leading. I am trying not to walk with my toes gripping the ground. I walk with toes up. He says I have walked with my toes gripping the ground for years, and that is the only place that I have early arthritis.

It feels a bit silly to walk like a samurai. When I do it right, I can feel that engaged core and my legs and hips feel looser. It is not elegant, not a catwalk uptight shake your ass walk. It is more of a loose free walk, like a toddler, like a buddha. I don’t care. I have to concentrate to keep my abdominal muscles flattening the arch of my back, and so I walk slower.

After two weeks I am back: it’s worked. Partially. My hips are LESS locked. The metatarsal phalangeal joints, the big toes, are less sore then they’ve been for years. And I can feel that abdominal core.

Skiing I try to do the same thing. Engage the abdomen and keep it engaged, and ski with my toes up. I ski slowly and with great swooping turns, letting the skis do the work. Rentals. They give me 158s the first day, I talk them into 165s the second day and then I am on 172s. Finally feels stable. I am getting used to that core feeling. I quit when I get too tired, going in before my kids.

Walk like a toddler, walk like a samurai, walk with core engaged.

First published on everything2.com January 7, 2016. I needed the right picture: this is my sister and me about a month before she died of breast cancer. I miss her so.

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Wean yourself

SoFarSoStu has tagged me for the three days, three quotations and tag three other people. This is day three, only I am a day late.

“The rules are to post 3 quotes over 3 days and nominate 3 bloggers each time to carry on with the challenge.”

Today I choose Rumi’s phrase “Wean yourself” and post his poem. This is one of my two favorite Rumi poems.

Wean yourself
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.

Listen to the answer.

There is no ‘other world’
I only know what I have experienced.
You must be hallucinating.

_____________

I love this poem. To me it’s about our human development and I love that we go from a searcher after wisdom to a hunter of more invisible game. Have you ever had the feeling that you have figured some part of your life out, that aha! moment? Smooth sailing now, you think…. only to find out that new challenges present.

I use this poem in clinic. When I am talking to a new patient I have to find out where they are, what some of their medical beliefs are, what their level of education is, what their prior experience with allopathic medicine is, do they see a naturopath, are they taking ANY pills? Prescription, over the counter, alternative, herbal, homemade? I read Rumi’s poem as a discussion about our levels of development: we come out of the dark to be an embryo. Where do we go from there? I have to understand at least some of my patient’s background in order to communicate with them: I have to meet them halfway. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes my doctors fail…. we experienced that when my mother was in hospice. We were not given instructions for how to take care of her nasogastric tube at home…. and it got blocked. I think that the inpatient nurses made assumptions and the hospice nurses may have too… or just didn’t know.

This poem also relates to how my thoughts about healing and health keep evolving. Currently I keep reading on the internet and hearing from patients that they want a stronger immune system. There are all sorts of “immune system boosters” being sold. I think this is interesting and I think it is a wrong approach. Why?

I have gotten seriously ill four times. Each was triggered by severe stress in my life: mononucleosis at age 19, influenza in 2003, systemic strep A in 2012 and systemic strep A in 2014. So… do I think that my immune system needs boosting? No. When I got symptoms in 2014, my thought was “I am so stupid.” My father had died in 2013. His will confused me, the house was full of his things, my mother’s things, my sister’s things, my grandparent’s things, all dead. I would work in clinic and then go out there and try to get things done and mostly sit and cry. I did deal with the estate, but what is wrong with this picture?

I ignored what I would tell a patient to do…. I did not take time off to rest and to grieve and to take care of myself. Rather than a failing immune system, I pictured my immune system marshaling troops. “She won’t rest. We are going to have to take her down AGAIN. Won’t she ever learn to listen to her body? When will she learn to REST? Let’s see, who do  we have to knock her down…. ah, strep A! Great! Here, the door is open, take her out.”

And boy howdy, did it. I was out for ten months and ten months later am still on half time work. And I could have kicked myself! How stupid I am! If there is a major emotional loss in your life, cut back and rest and take time to let yourself heal!

So when people say, “I need an immune booster,” I wonder. I wonder what is happening in their lives, what their level of stress is, are they taking care of themselves. I worry that our culture thinks that we just need the right combination of supplements and then we can keep going and drive our bodies into the ground, instead of stopping and saying: “Oh. I am really cumulatively tired. I really need to rest, and sit at the beach and stare at the waves, or lie on the couch and read a silly novel, or just have a cup of tea and do nothing.” I don’t really like pills. I think that pills are often a band aid on a deeper wound than we admit. If I had rested, I would not have needed high dose penicillin: though I am deeply grateful to have another try at healing and health.

And three people to tag to do the three days of quotations if they so choose… everyone may be too busy at this busy time of year:

hargunwai

mindlovemisery

ohmyglai

The pink edged cloud looks like a giant paramecium or other bacteria, up in the sky….

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Wind chimes

try to feel good
try not to feel bad
no anger, grief, negativity

no

I don’t try to control the wind
it blows hard or soft
gentle and warm
ice finger tickling
or roaring howling rain
or snow blown against my face

I let the wind blow
through me
I feel the wind
sometimes I curl up and batten the hatches
for a particularly hard blow
it’s best to ride it out

and the vast sea depths
change slowly

The picture is the Polar Plunge on Marrowstone Island yesterday: the temperature was 46 degrees. Happy New Year.

I dreamed of rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gslOWN5SJlw

 

 

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Armour Suit II

Yesterday I had the massage that I have once every two weeks.

We talk first about muscles and illness and emotions. He is thinking that if we forget how to use certain muscles and put them in the “armor suit” then that is where our body will store toxins. After all, we aren’t using those muscles. Good storage place. And then that in turn is where illness or cancer could pop up.

I am talking about emotions: that the US culture seems to see certain emotions as “negative”. Anger, fear, grief. I asked my son what he thinks emotion is. His reply: “Chemicals?” I think emotions are neurological information. Information just as much as what our eyes see, our ears hear. If we label some emotions as “bad”, how can a child protect herself from a predator, from abuse, from a charming addict? If girls are supposed to be “nice” all the time, they have to suppress any “bad” emotions. Why would we suppress neurological information? And both my massage person and I think that stuffed emotions go into the armor suit. So toxins from the outside and toxins from the inside…. no wonder we get sick.

In the massage I am paying attention to each muscle, asking them to relax, rather then focusing on my breathing. I am also thinking that I am not sure my back is broad enough to carry what I want to carry, between work and family. I am asking the Beloved about that, sort of…. and then I have the sensation that my back is very broad. Enormous. Very very strong. I have small hips and an enormously strong back. I am 5’4″ and 130 pounds. Yet in this sensate dream, my back is as wide and strong as my friend who is 6’4″ and 220 pounds.

It’s not momentary. It goes on for thirty minutes or more. My latissimus dorsi are tight and sore, punching muscles. We talk about how we would both like to see grade school children taught to activate the slow twitch muscles, to loosen and drop the armor suit. Most of the physical education and sports are fast twitch. “Not synchronized swimming,” I say. The first formal move they are taught is to float on their back, legs straight. Hands controlling position. They slowly bend one knee and then straighten that leg up, and equally slowly lower and straighten it. This is called the ballet leg. My daughter started synchro at age 7 and had to do that at the meet. They were scored on the Olympic scoring from the start: the beginners scored in the 3 range.

“No,” he says, “synchronized swimming must use slow twitch. But that and Tai Chi are the only ones I can think of, and maybe some dance.” He says that I need to learn to release that energy: the wanting to punch, wanting to kick, instead of storing it in my muscles…. I have a heavy bag. I will make time.

I am silent, exploring the map of my back, strong and broad enough to carry much more than I thought….

This is our synchronized swimming team at our small local pool, doing the yearly show, in 2010. The five girls are in a routine and just starting a ballet leg in time to the music….

 

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Leaver III

I have subsided back to where I was

before I fell for you

before I fell

you said, thoughtful, meticulous and shy

I am quiet, thoughtful, meticulous with patient charts
I am not shy so much as lonely
and mistrustful

I don’t trust many people

my small child self still loves you
but it’s a child love
and she knows you’re leaving
everyone has left her before
so she is very sad
everyone but me and the Beloved
so not everyone
but you are the first not me
that she opened up to

so yes, shy
she is terribly shy
she hid for years under rock
bedrock
in my soul

now she and I and Beloved
are walking hand in hand
in the gardens of my mind

thoughtful, meticulous and

shy

 

the photo is me, my grandmother and my father

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Look longing

This is for Ronovanwrites weekly haiku challenge #75: the words are charm and look. The prompt includes that the first two lines should make a sentence with the opposite meaning of the sentence made by the second two lines…..

you gift a young girl
I see your charm, look longing
see you lie to me

I took the photo across the street from my clinic just a few days ago.

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Last bonsai

This year both my children are 18 or over and they wanted this small tree for the Christmas tree. “Don’t kill a tree, mom.” they said.

This tree is the last bonsai from my parents. My mother died in 2000 from ovarian cancer. She was at home in hospice for nearly seven weeks and we had over thirty visitors. My sister and my father and I all ignored the plants: and most of the bonsais died with her.

My father cared for the remaining ones even as his health deteriorated. He died at home as he would have wished, in 2013, alone and a sudden death. Two of the three remaining trees died. So this ficus came home with me. I water it faithfully and brought out the small ornaments to decorate for the holidays. I don’t know how old it is. After we lose our parents, we wonder about things: where is this from, how old is it, was it important to you, was it a random gift? Did you buy it, did you love it, was it not something that you cared about?

This holiday ask a family member to tell you a story about something in their house. Ask about something that you like, or is unique, or that really doesn’t fit in. Ask about a piece of art or a piece of furniture or jewelry. And write the stories down for the next generation…. while you can.