How many days of misery can you endure?
/
“The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.”
* Clarissa Pinkola Estés *
(Here is a recording of me reading the letter.)
Today was the end of ten days of liquid antibiotic (I can't swallow pills) to once again heal an infection in my intestines. Three weeks before the ten days began I knew it was there. I always know. I like to first pretend it away, then try eating beans, pretend it away again but better, then desperately try every natural remedy I can find.
By tuna melt night, as I watched everyone eat and I sipped chicken broth in pain, I decided to call the doctor. I have a misery calendar and I kept checking off the boxes. Three weeks with an infection in your intestines, is a long ass time.
I kept wondering why it was so hard for me to get anything done, to think even. I kept wondering why I wanted to just nap and cry. I kept wondering if something more was wrong with me because I had no energy.
Checked off the boxes. Day 18, Day 19, Day 20. I need a neon sign flashing-YOU HAVE AN INFECTION IN YOUR INTESTINES-to remind me that I'm somehow allowed to feel like crap.
Partly I don't want to deal with it or take antibiotics and partly I'm so annoyed that something seems to always be wrong with me. My constitution isn't one to get lots of colds or flues, I go big and get the really obscure weird stuff that people haven't heard of. If I can just endure the misery I won't have to be looked at as the one with all the issues. And yet...
And yet.
Ten days of antibiotics and I'm not healed and I will have to pick up the phone today and call the doctor again. Three weeks of enduring probably means I made it all worse.
So I've been thinking about all of this, and the understanding under the understanding. I know that I avoid antibiotics because they fix one thing (hopefully) to then cause chaos in the body; I end up with candida and upset belly and all the good stuff gets destroyed with the bad.
But under that? The misery calendar, just one more day, one more checked box. It seems a bit like suffering productivity doesn't it? Look at what I've endured (done, accomplished, produced) and love me for it. Look at the strength in my suffering as I silently fall apart, but look, look, look.
And under that, major Manipura (third) Chakra work happening behind the scenes. Learning to make boundaries around what are my feelings and needs and Dave's feelings and needs and not take on his stuff as mine or make things about me when he is working through his wounds. Feeling this pit in my gut around many aspects of social media and witnessing how this is the way people are(n't) seen and trying to find a way to reconcile my needs from it (which may end up being none) versus what it takes from me.
Trying to trust my intuition calling for even more simplicity and space to iterate even if (especially if) it isn't with the grain.
In healing the third chakra we must make space in order to fill up again. Digestion, fully, before we eat. Old patterns released before the new practices take their place. Everything needs space. Including my intestines. I've noticed that I am uncomfortable in feeling hungry, something I was quite practiced at when I used to drink.
In Magic Making Circle I've been writing about the connection of moon phases/our personal moon time cycle/female archetypes/seasonal energy and how we flow through these in each month (day and year also) and how that informs our energy, longings, creativity/productivity, sexuality and ultimately our magic. I've become archetype obsessed and the embodiment and guidance of the archetypes I'm working with is intense beautiful work.
When I ignore the pain in my gut I am thrown into the shadow work and reminded that my quiet misery heals nothing and no one. When I ignore making space for all the new thoughts and practices and becomings things get all clogged up.
I asked Dave to paint the kitchen in my favorite white color for Christmas. He decided that he would begin a renovation of how I've been wanting the kitchen: open shelving, butcher block island, no microwave, tile. This is phase one as he says: remove the cabinets, take off cabinet doors, take down the microwave.
I had to clear the cabinets out then pile all the things on the island and the tables. I went through and got rid of 4 boxes of things that weren't aligned to my sacred aesthetic (we are working on this in Magic Making too).
I kept getting so crabby that everything was out of place and I couldn't cook dinner for two nights. The kids loved take out night though! I had to keep reminding myself that what felt like chaos now was actually the process of making space for more simplicity, beauty and my kitchen magic. Making space for one of my dreams.
I moved all the donation boxes out of the way and began placing things on the shelves. Only things we love. Only things that are beautiful. Only things that offer ease and simplicity. Only things with a story to tell or a story still to write.
The best part of this gift from Dave is how much joy it brings him to help me get to my vision. I forget that. I don't make enough space for that truth because it means letting go of old old patterns. Kind of like suffering instead of calling the doctor for help.
Last night as Yule's darkness took hold I cleared all the surfaces of the kitchen and lit candles all over. We ate meatloaf, mashed potatoes and roasted squash by the candles and then decorated the tree Dave and the kids brought from the woods behind our house.
The Goddess has given birth to the sun and slowly we begin our journey back to light. We can make space for that light as we move through the shadows of our suffering, our old patterns and the stories that just don't fit us.
I can call the doctor and bring the boxes to the donation center and rest rest rest with mugs of chicken broth. You can do your things (you know the ones) and we can make some beautiful space.
We can burn the misery calendars in the sacred fire of winter and live into today as the magical, special day it has always been.
And so, it is.
xo
{Edited: This was written on Solstice and, I am feeling much better.}
{And an ask: I'll be putting out some small free offerings in 2021 and while I have a few ideas I'd love to know what would serve you? How can I offer and honor and support? Leave a comment and let me know.}