In my work I focus on conditions of a chronic nature. Because these conditions are so incredibly complex, this work is always shifting, changing shape, and morphing into something slightly different. I love this image of a sort of morphing bubble, and I think it is a good representation. You start out knowing something, usually through your own body. You can see that there are other parts, or perhaps it is more like feeling them, and the walls of perception are transparent.....other bubbles float along here and there and observation takes place. Every once in a while a bubble that fits differently floats close enough to drift on an air current to join the original bubble....and eventually merges and the bubble becomes bigger.
I know chronic conditions very well because I have relationships with them through my own body. I have a very intimate relationship with EBV.....probably more than any other. I also know Lyme and some of the confections. And now I know Covid. All chronic conditions speak to us....all of these microbes, infections, or whatever you want to call them have some sort of intelligence and a drive to survive. They really aren't too different from humans in a way, and I think it can be of benefit to understanding them when we can view them from different perspectives. Covid speaks the loudest of all viral conditions that I have come across, and its messages echo, probably for a very long time.
It is often said that Covid, Lyme, EBV and all the other singers in the choir go to our weak spots. And the general feel is one of very western medicinally minded in that, these things are taking advantage of these weak spots...moving into areas where they. know they can proliferate. And while from one perspective this may be true, I am starting to see another perspective - and to explain it I am going to have to do a few tangents and tendrils.
We experience pain in the body, because our pain receptors are registering pain. The pain comes from the body healing itself. We experience fevers, as the body is working hard to fight an infection (which is why it is unwise to thwart that process by lowering a fever). We experience inflammation at the sight of an injury. We get belly pain when we have eaten something that is hard for our particular body to digest. And so on and so forth.
The discomfort, the pain, is our body healing.
We have spots that are weak most likely because we haven't been giving them the nourishment and awareness to their needs like we should. These are going to be areas when people have "chronic" type issues. An ankle that rolls too easily. Lower back pain that persists and gets worse when we bend over for too long. Migraine headaches of either digestive or stress nature. All of these woes are the body speaking to us....trying to get us to make a new choice, to invite change. Most of the time, we just buy a pair of sturdier boots so we won't roll our ankles, rather than address our posture that may be balance biased. We sit on a heating pad for our aching lower back, rather than strengthen our knees and thigh muscles so that we can squat instead of bend. We take a histamine blocker or an analgesic to address the migraine, rather than begin to look at our relationship to food, change our eating habits, or invite in something like breath work practices or meditation to address our stress. We want the quick and easy way and we have been heavily conditioned by our society and the American medical complex that these are the right things. I remember commercials as a child....indigestion? Peptobismal was the answer. We dont teach people to listen to their body and respond with support, we teach people to shut the messages of the body up by whatever the fastest and easiest means necessary is so that we can get on with our day (which probably means work and making the big grand machine keep going because we have bills to pay and mouths to feed and go Capitalism!).
What if..........
We didn't view these areas as "weak spots" but rather as areas that are asking for our attention, our nurturing, and our love. And I KNOW that sounds all too cliche and sappy.....and I think it is actually true.
Think about the child that doesn't get much attention or feels overlooked. It is very common that they will either shrink away (atrophy) or they will get attention in what we refer to as "negative behavior" simply because they don't know any other way to do it and they are desperate for any attention, even negative attention.
We often don't nurture our body parts when we are feeling good. We rarely stop and say thank you for pumping blood and breathing air and processing my food so well. But we sure as heck to scream at it when it is trying to get our attention.
See how similar it is?
Covid went right to my weak spots, which was actually surprising that it didn't go to my lungs because I have had lifelong asthma and consider my lungs to be compromised. Covid went to my nervous system and to my digestive system. I find myself dealing with many of the same things I was dealing with 25 years ago with EBV & MCAS. I initially was dismayed and was looking at these as my weak spots....and with it came a hefty amount of "poor me". And then I remembered the vision covid showed me when I was the sickest. This was what I wrote about in my previous post and in my newsletter this month. It showed me the essence of the life I have always wanted....the life I frantically and with great urgency have always tried so hard to attain. A life of slow, simplicity.
Running at that with urgency and franticness is like saying...oh we have to fight this war so that we can have peace........uhhhhhhh neither is going to work as they are completely contradictory. But I couldn't see that. Until I could.
So these weak spots.........it's not that Im being invaded and attacked there. It is that I am being shown, these are the areas that you need to nourish, pay attention to, and care for and love, because they have been neglected for a long time, and well....life is always working towards healing...its just how nature flows.
So my nervous system can't take much lately.......of course it's a shaky spot....I have run it ragged with work and busyness and go go going all of the time. It is grief filled for me to look back through all of the amazing things I have accomplished and achieved and to now REALLY feel the price I paid for them. My digestion is very finicky lately.......so I have radically changed the way that I eat and it is responding well as long as I honor that. It is also grief filled to think of how I didn't pay that much mind to my digestion because it seemed to work ok......and I did eat pretty well and balanced......but I also drank too much coffee creating acidic conditions and ate too much sugar which is never really healthy.
I don't believe these spots are weak. I dont even believe they are compromised, although I certainly can see them from that way. I believe that they are areas that have been asking for my attention for a long time, like a small child tugging on the sleeve of my sweater while I am on the phone or doing anything other than giving that child attention....or a beloved dog that paws at your feet as you walk by and dodges back and forth in front of you while you walk, desperately trying to get you to slow down and give it a bit of nurturing and love.
This is how I am now viewing these spots. And while I am tending to them like I would a small child or a beloved dog........I am also being mindful to bring in forgiveness.
And these are just some of the new perspectives that Covid has brought me. I am sure there will be more, as it has a keen eye and a wicked stealthy radar.
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