am i chronically ill?

a season of hard questions and learning to cultivate curiosity

can i be curious about what i’m going through?

can i be curious about where it’s taking me?

can i let go of needing to know?

have i felt my feelings? have i felt my grief?

life has been stressful for a long time for both really great and really brutal reasons (positive change still = stress). have i let myself feel that?

it makes sense that it took as long as it did to put the pieces together (invitation to be gentle with myself)

these are the care-filled questions and acknowledgments my chiropractor imprinted on me while she treated me with acupressure yesterday. i want to say i don’t think she knew how much i needed to hear them…but something tells me she did.

as she started to place the acupuncture needles: do you feel like you’re enough?

ooooooof.

my knee-jerk reaction was too say yes. of coooourse i’m enough. i’ve spent three years cultivating enoughness philosophies and mindsets – so yes. and… that’s partly true, i guess. i think the whole truth is that i feel like enough in safe spaces and i’m lucky to spend most of my time in those spaces right now.

instead of responding from my knee-jerk reaction, i held tight for a minute and felt what was there to feel. saw what came up to be seen. i saw plentiful messages from the spirit world reminding me of my enoughness and my worthiness – that they maybe wouldn’t work so hard to bring to me so often if i really felt like i was enough. so i took a breath and remembered

the perfect version of me i hold up in my mind pretty often. the one before jake died. who could do all the things for all the people. who kept appointments. who raised a son and worked. who had friends and a social calendar. who could do simple tasks before collapsing into a state of total overwhelm.

so i told her that.

and then i said – but i know that’s not fair because that version of me is imagined. was never real. that version of me was constantly burnt out and stressed out and tired, she just hid it better.

so i’m pitting myself against this imagined perfect version. this impossible standard. this pretend me that i constantly hold up as the ‘enough’ bar – so maybe, no. i don’t feel like i’m enough.

at the end of our session i thanked her for taking the time to do all the little extras with me and she said, i feel like we’re supposed to take care of each other.

i agree. i feel like we’re supposed to take care of each other.

i’ve been wondering for the past year and a half what i’m supposed to be doing in the world (as in — how am i supposed to be showing up for others?), and i think for the past year, spirit has been telling me where to start. and i’ve had my inner ears turned off because i didn’t understand the message. and my body has been telling me. but i’ve had sensory blinders on because i didn’t want to feel what was there to be felt.

this is where i pause to breathe and cultivate gentleness towards myself.

i saw an instagram post last week, where the person was sharing a conversation they had with a nurse. they were saying, how could we not have known that it was time to move mom into an assisted-living facility? and proceeded to list all the reasons they should have known. and that sweet, generous nurse looked at her and said, how could you have known?

you just don’t know what you don't know. and you can’t know before you know. that’s all there is. there’s a million good reasons that the truth is too hard or too painful to see. but the thing about the truth is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

i’ve thought a lot about what that nurse said over the past week and a half. it’s helped me begin to cultivate gentleness with myself as i traversed the landscape of the question

am i chronically ill?

it started with a slow, gradual progression of symptoms. and then an all-at-once, debilitating spike. and then a question. and then a dawning. and then anger turned inward - not at my body for being sick - at myself for not knowing better, not doing better for my body. how could i not have known?

how could you have known?

breathe. then grief. so much grief. all the grief.

if i’m being honest, i wrote a post about my grief and anger before my chiropractor invited me to cultivate curiosity and gentleness. i’m glad i didn’t share it, it was pretty mean. it was pretty desperate. desperate for answers. desperate like the following picture. desperate to know the correct way forward. it read like a manifesto for what i don’t want to, but must do now (which is change my whole life – like yesterday).

about to to go into the store to buy the “perfect combination of ingredients” to feel better. face-brutalizing infection. migraine. in no shape to be out in the world. i’ll write more on this experience later.

but here’s the gentle truth. the curious truth. some things have answers and some things don’t. some things can be fixed and some things are meant to be endured. some seasons ask questions of us…and some seasons answer.

i don’t know what any of it means – if it means anything at all. i think i’m in a season that’s asking me some pretty hard questions. and it’s really, really hard to let go of needing to know. but i can give myself grace.

i can give myself grace to be wrong over and over. to fall down many times and get back up again. or maybe to fall down and stay there for a while, pouting.

but maybe that’s all letting go really is anyways — giving yourself unending grace.

some reflective questions i like for journaling or card pulling:

where could my life use a bit more curiosity?

what’s one step i can take to cultivate curiosity in this area?

what part of me could i be a little more gentle with?

what tools would help me be more gentle with myself?

songs i like when i need a little sef-love boost:

be slow (acoustic) by harrison storm

i love my body by poppy rose

shedding skins by fia