ON PAIN

                                   The Mask of Pain                     

UPDATE at the end of this post:

5/01/2019

Pay Attention Inward Now. So says Iyanla Van Zant.  It has worked very well with emotional pain. I have paid attention to my emotional pain for many years trying to heal trauma from childhood wounds, disordered eating. I have felt physical pain from scrapes, falls, childbirth, surgeries, scleroderma, shingles and toothaches. But never have I felt this pain. This take your breath away, can’t figure out where or how to be pain. This pain is harder to pay attention to yet it levels me. I can do nothing but be present in my body when the pain is present. This body,  from which I have spent much of my life disassociating and whose needs I’ve been working to transcend, has brought me smack dab into its holy presence. Totally, fully, unapologetically. Pay Attention Inward Now, indeed!

And because I am who I am as a Soul and as a human I can’t help but ask myself in between the spaces of pain; what are you trying to tell me? I am listening. You have my attention. I’m here now. Right now. And I wait and I ride out the waves of pain and I notice.

I notice the anxiety in my husband‘s eyes. I notice the concern in my mother’s. She asked if she could rub my head and shoulders. She often did this when I was a child when the pain of fists and feet hitting flesh was too often the order of the day. I didn’t know I craved that touch, that nurturing. She lays in bed and rubs my head and my back and for a moment all is well. I notice that I can’t distract myself from my pain by helping someone else because my body won’t allow that anymore.

I notice that I’m asking for what I need more clearly and more directly for I no longer have time to waste on people pleasing or insecurity or being fiercely independent to prove I don’t need anyone. Truth is I do. I notice that I am crying more easily now than I have in a long long time. I no longer produce tears due to Sjrogen’s but my eyes get wet and I have gut wrenching sobs that feel good and moves the pain along.

I notice I feel vulnerable. I notice I feel humbled by this process. I notice I feel raw and naked and want to hide. Isolate and hide is what I have done most of my life. So here I sit humbled by an emotional and physical pain so massive it has me on my knees.

I pull out all of my tools. I try meditation, reconnective healing, all the modalities I’ve ever learned. I try writing, repeating mantras and still the pain persists. I call my friends, I call my family. I ask for help. It is hard to ask for help. Did I mention that I am fiercely independent? I prefer to experience my pain in privacy. We ride the wave together. I am not alone.

I start to notice that people love me and care about me. I start to notice that I love me and care about me. I start to notice that my team, my Spirit  team, Jesus, the Divine Mother, Archangels Michael and Rafael, my beloved ones on the other side are all pulling for me. I start to notice that in my pain I am not alone. I notice I am still Love. I am still loved.

And eventually, the pain subsides for a bit and I notice that I want to live harder, love more, be more present with the ones I encounter. I notice how grateful I am to be pain free. I notice that I no longer take this body for granted. I notice that my soul and my human body are coexisting, making peace with each other. No longer at war. No longer feeling invaded. I am One with both my human body and my Soul, my God Self. Who knew that pain could produce peace, gratitude, love, grace?

Pain has no mercy. It consumes you. I am familiar with pain. It is been a friend, a constant companion. From emotional, physical, mental and spiritual pain of my own to witnessing my son deal with his challenges and the pain caused by 14 surgeries and dealing with the effects of his living with spina bifida, I have known pain. Not to mention all the loved ones I’ve been privileged and honored to hold space for as they endured their pain. Pain was always something to get rid of, from which to get away. It was to be avoided at all costs. And yet here I am.

The pain is so debilitating. I sometimes can’t function. And yet, I ask, what do I need to see, hear, feel? And I hear; just be. Just be here now. Love yourself to the best of your ability. Allow others to love you. And I know that this too shall pass. When the pain does pass I feel such gratitude to have less pain or no pain. I feel like I want to hurry up and do what I didn’t get done while I was down with the pain. I’m learning to pace myself, to slow down. Because if I don’t, I create more pain because I overdid. Balance. I’m learning to balance. For a woman who has spent her life trying to get back in her body and be present there is no escaping it these days. There is no disassociating (my self-help tools have worked too well for that to happen) there is only being present, in this moment, in this breath, knowing that all is well and all will be well.

I move from my bed, to the sofa, to the guestroom bed looking to find relief from the pain. I call my soul sisters, my healing sisters, my family. They surround me like elephants do for a birthing mother, trumpeting their love for me, their healing prayers and thoughts for me, protecting me from my own negativity and tendency towards isolation. I find comfort in their presence. I find comfort in the touch of my mother’s hand on my head and back. I find comfort in knowing that this too shall pass. And it does, in between doses of medication it passes or eases and I am able to function again. I am filled with gratitude for the mercy and grace shown me first and foremost by my Creator, by my Spirit team, and all my loved ones. I am held in Light until I again am reminded that even with the pain I Am the Light. I am a child of the Divine. I am still here. I am still present. I am dancing with the Divine as I ride the waves of pain.

Oh such blessed relief when it eases or disappears. Such mercy. Such grace. And I know in my heart all is well. All will be well for I am Love. I am bathed in Love. I exude Love. I radiate Love. It is my essence. It is my core. I came here not to transcend my physical body but to embrace it, to embody it, to choose Love no matter the circumstances.

My condition is teaching me that I can no longer say yes when I mean no. I can no longer people please. I started saying yes to that which scares me. I can no longer chase people and beg them to love me. I can no longer hide or operate in the shadows. I can no longer worry about what people might think. Brene Brown writes so eloquently in her book on vulnerability, Daring Greatly, about Theodore Roosevelt and his Man in the Arena speech and I am reminded of those words. I have entered the arena. I am no longer the critic sitting in the stands judging my efforts as less than. I am in the arena! I Am daring greatly!

I must risk being vulnerable. I must risk being seen and heard. I must break down the walls of separation I erected to protect myself from pain. There is no protection from pain. There is only Love. I can only be in this moment, in this breath, in this body with this Spirit, with this spark of the Divine that I Am. I choose Love. I will always and in all ways choose Love.

UPDATE 05/01/2020: I wrote and posted to Facebook this piece entitled, On Pain, one year ago today. I was newly diagnosed with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. The diagnosis and prognosis were scary. The medications were debilitating which prompted me to write this piece. I am reprising it today first to update you on where I am today on my journey with pain. Second, to put it on my blog as I did not have a blog last year. That is one of the things that has grown out of that moment in my life. I now say yes to scary things. I have finally titrated the medicines and feel much stronger and healthier than I felt a year ago. I still need oxygen for exertion but I take walks, I ride my stationary bike 45 minutes several times a week. And until this Quarantine slowed my roll, I traveled a lot. I needed a Sherpa to help cart all my gear but I did not let my diagnosis stop me. I have made new friends in my support groups and I have strengthened all my relationships. I have a team of doctors with which I am happy, comfortable and that I trust. I feel so blessed. So filled with gratitude. I still have pain. I still have days when I need to rest and slow down but nothing like what I wrote about last year.

I am living with this diagnosis. Truly living. Not just existing. Not just surviving. I am thriving. I thank each and everyone of you for encouraging my writing, my artwork, my self expression in all it’s forms.

I chose the Mask of Pain to accompany this reprise. I created it about 30 years ago. It hangs with 5 other masks I created during the years I first started dealing with the physical, emotional and sexual abuse that was a part of my history. The masks in the series have individual names but I have not come up with a name for the grouping. Masks of Shame comes up for that’s what I was masking but it feels so negative almost 30 years later. For while they masked shame, pain, anger, grief, sadness and the clown it also masked Love. So much Love buried underneath all those masks.

I had no art training, had never painted or picked up a paintbrush. Spirit told me I could transform my pain into something beautiful. I consider these pieces much as an artist looks at line drawings. Very simple. Very basic. Primitive. They convey an idea, an emotion. To me, they were my wounded child speaking in the only way she could at that time. Since then I have studied art (I returned to college in my fifties), learned new techniques, got super confused by rules and what I was doing with art. I finally found a way to integrate what was inherently needing to be expressed with the new information I was gathering in my classes and in my inner work.

This diagnosis has given me the freedom to go public with my experience. The pain freed me to live my truth regardless of how it looked to me or to anyone else. Between the autoimmune diseases and the PAH, I don’t know that I will ever be pain free, but I know that I am free. I am free to be loving and compassionate first and foremost to myself. I am free to be forgiving of those who hurt me when I was a child. I now know they were doing the best they could in that moment. I now know my Soul and my human worked together to choose Love in unlovable circumstances. I now know I am not a victim. I never was. I’m just a Soul having a human experience. And sometimes it’s painful.