LIVING WITH FIBROMYALGIA and CHRONIC ILLNESS. Is fighting it the right way?

images-1

Hello!

I haven’t posted for a while….all too often Life happens when all you want to do is sit with your own thoughts, in your own space, doing your own thing. So here I am, on the wings of the creative Muse, being called back to Me.

It’s a soggy day here in Snailwell and yes, I can confidently say that, should I venture into my garden, there will be a snail and slug patrol going on, looking for the next tasty treat to ravage! The skies are clearing now. For a while it felt like someone had scooped up my cottage and shoved it into a black hole. It’s pretty grim for the 26th of August; bring back the sun – please.

I was just thinking, as I sat down in my armchair here, I am living everyday with Fibromyalgia (FMS) and although I know there are people far worse off than me, in my life, the impact it has, is very difficult. I never contemplated getting to the age of 62 and feeling A) in constant pain or discomfort. B) Being unable to walk more than a few steps without being in almost immovable pain. C) Feeling completely thrown into the void of bewilderment about my life, what it’s been, where I am now and where I am going. D) struggling on a daily basis, not to DO my work as a Singing Teacher/ Therapist, but to actually cope with the logistics of the unknown; what will today bring when I step outside the door?

Still recovering from a little dance with cancer  four years ago and a couple of other pretty significant surgeries three and two years ago, the Fibro is now playing havoc with my body. Those of us with this chronic dis-ease in our systems know all too well how exhausting it can be to carry on….. people talk about ‘Fighting’ cancer or chronic illness….. I don’t ….. I believe we have to take a long, deep warm in-breath and just sit with what is, allowing the passage through to something else. Being kind to oneself is not always easy, especially if you have lived a life where you have complied with the done thing, of pushing yourself to overcome that which is getting you down.

My Life has changed significantly in the last five years and just now, I don’t know where I’m going, or really have much of a sense of who I am anymore, but I do know this: we are drip-fed a lot of illusions in our lives. ‘You can be anything you want to be’, ‘you can have anything you want to have’, ‘you are X’ etc etc. This is not true; these things are illusions. Actually, at the end of the day, when we begin to really look at our lives and accept the conditions we find ourselves in, we see that all we have left is our innate ability to Love and be Loved and out of that other things may grow, if we allow them to.

As for the pain? Toxins come in many forms….. it’s isn’t entirely one thing or the other. It is a combination of ‘poisons’ which inhabit our bodies, a lot of which are environmental, belief systems about ourselves and others and the more obvious things like foods and chemicals in medications and on the land. No doubt there are other things too but these I’ve listed are for me, the building blocks of dis-ease. For example, when someone is led to believe they are ‘stupid’, they will often take that on board if there isn’t anything to counter that abuse. With that belief deeply buried in their physical and energetic bodies, they will become ‘stupid’ and as such, they will experience pain on one or more levels. Changing those deeply embodied beliefs is not easy, it would seem. However, acceptance of how things have been and are, does release the strangle hold which has a big impact on the body and mind.

Something to try: Place your LEFT hand on the back of your RIGHT upper arm and your RIGHT hand on the back of your LEFT upper arm then gently squeeze or pat. This is grounding and consoling the wounded parts of you and dealing with trauma to your system. 

So, as I now go into my day, I am encouraging myself to be kind and loving to me and to all those I come into contact with. We are all battling something in life, if we think LOVE, we shall be LOVE….. pain or no pain.

Namaste.

Somatisation Unleashed

Image

Somatisation Unleashed

Somatisation Unleashed

Sometimes there is truth which is so packed with aching pain,
in a split moment we become frozen, silenced, traumatised….
Sometimes, for fifty five years, never realised.
Today, that which was held for all those years
was spoken out for the first time….. a sacred time.
1958, the news on our new telly,
horrific details of a small child abused by its parents.
In that moment, back then,
I stopped breathing,
I saw the presenter speaking on the square screen,
I saw my father, mother
and the blazing fire across our lounge.
The story of vile cruelty towards the child
and the sound of the words about roaring flames
I was truly lost…..

Five and frozen, breathless, internalised trauma..
A tragic photograph captured
in every cell of me, this young, empathic child.
Today,
I spoke of it,
I wept for it.
Today,
I began the release of it…..
fifty five years of holding it,
finally breaking up and
letting go, letting go, letting go,
letting be.

Fly On Faithful Night

Image
Fly on Faithful Night

The energies are strange tonight.
Percussive voice of winds bang loud
and the squeaky gate from nextdoor
adds eerie melodies in this dark night.
I cannot sleep again
again, again…….
Such disturbance night after night
gets the ghouls squeezing and pounding their
interferring feet all over my body
intruding on my energy,
and I’m in pain.
It is not ok.
I say this not for grand pity, no….
as the fight in me is rising up with the sun
who will dawn within two hours now
and once again I shall bring myself back,
back to the centre of my intrepid journey
to find the cure…….
Fly on faithful night…..
for I am the courageous investigator of my Soul.

Canal

Image

Canal

What shall I do with the rest of my little life?
It elludes me –
rattles me
frustrates the juices in my belly
and keeps me in the stench of struggle.
Am I STILL stuck in the birth canal?
Perhaps the creative seeds need a voice,
finally vibrating them out into the field of life.
Screaming is not very beautiful
but sometimes it is the only embodied voice available
when the fiscal appears more essential than the essence of soul.