WHEW. It’s crazy times out there, amirite?
Just when we were thinking it couldn’t be any worse (partisan here: remember the GW Bush years?) society, the economy, the planets, Nature, LIFE serve as reminders that, as Event Horizon, one of THE classic 90s horror films states, “Hell is only a word; The reality is much, much worse.” (If you enjoy a bit of rotfl gore, click through here for the clip. If not, definitely stay away!)
I’m being a bit glib, as I don’t really believe in Hell as such, and therefore have no post-mortem fear of it. But that aside, the hits just keep on coming.
Example: when I was dreaming about my future in an upstairs classroom of a building constructed in 1928 in pre-summer Pomona during the 1990s, it did not include a debilitating sciatica issue. Nor did I envision a future earning money via food and grocery delivery while I was racking up loans for grad school 10+ years ago. But here (the royal) We are.
I’d also never conceived that I might *really* enjoy hiking or have an inclination to keep plants alive. Which I do, and have.
Hiking was a thing that people with money or dads who lived at home did so I knew it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t until I was fired unceremoniously from a job I didn’t love last year that I discovered all the trails – specifically trails I *haven’t* seen posted on social media – near me. It was the first time I was able to “Yes, And…” being fired. I’d never been super active in my life because I hate competition and I don’t believe in “no pain, no gain.” The two are not correlative by any means. But once I’d been convinced that hiking was just walking in the woods and that I wouldn’t need to scale a mountain, I decided to try it out.
And it was the beginning of me. The beginning of a new era/phase/stage of development. I’d reached middle age and had been so focused on how far I hadn’t gotten and on the idea that what I *had* learned hadn’t done much for me. Hiking was much more of a mental and spiritual journey than it was a physical one, and it was a huge physical journey. I have been in therapy for most of my life and there were things in hiking I learned about myself that I don’t know I could have learned through talk therapy alone. The skills I learned negotiating my way across a tiny stream that my friend jumped across all gazelle-like were the skills I used to negotiate my way to the bathroom when my sciatica pain was so bad I could barely move.
Last year, I lost a job, then I lost mobility. I didn’t feel like I should have lost either. “I have a Master’s Degree – why don’t I have a job? Why can’t I keep a job?” And “I’m only 43, I should be able to move. I shouldn’t be in this much pain!” It really was a crazy amount of pain. Consistent pain for eight months which kept me literally grounded.
The week after I was set free from that job, I started taking a medicinal plant workshop. I may not have been the best student, but showing up was what I could manage at the time. And I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn those things while I was learning to hike. It was a hard shift away from the “outside” world with which I’ve had such a complicated relationship for as along as I’ve been in therapy/have been told I needed it.
I learned to make some preventative medicines for allergies, an amazing salve for muscle and nerve pain, and what it means to *really* pay attention. It turns out that the huge tree outside my bedroom window that I’ve been staring at for 11.5 years is a Eucalyptus tree. Eucalyptus, among its many amazing uses, is great for respiratory issues.
I have asthma, which is a chronic inflammatory issue based in the lungs. Some suggested causes are allergens and stress. I learned in my herbal medicine class that addiction and asthma are afflictions related to loneliness/abandonment. I also learned that the left lung is smaller than the right, as it has to share space with our heart. Sometimes when the heart is sick, it affects the lungs. I also learned that the lungs are the place in the body where we most hold onto grief.
The U.S. culture is not one that honors grief much less death as a part of life. It has dissociated itself from these basic life facts in an effort to delude itself into thinking it is godhead. But It. Is. Not. Some needed to be reminded; some have never forgotten. With all that is going on in this country, in this state, in this city, in this house, in this body, paying attention to the stage of development and nurturing it is key. We are not godhead; we are Life and Death and everything in between.