The year 2022 opened with hope and an inspiration to continue the challenging work of healing from the experience of a recent toxic relationship. Having sat in ceremony on the portal between 2021 and 2022, I could feel myself releasing the old and inviting in the new and was aware that there would be a universe of processes in between. There was a knowing that I’d be doing deep internal work and it was freeing in some ways. And then we all promptly came down with Covid.
In many ways, it was a relief to finally get infected with the virus that had left a wake of fear and division throughout the world. For my kids and me, the sickness itself wasn’t much. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 3. Maybe. We’d had much worse when the kids were little. And truly, as a mother, nearly nothing compares to catching puke from two little kids at 15-minute intervals all through the night while knowing the axe will fall and I’ll be succumbing to it next. So, really, covid for me was just an annoyance. But the whole programming around covid was a serious inconvenience. All the requirements my employer had in place meant phone calls and testing and post-illness medical release, and a whole slew of other reporting requirements that seemed appropriate at the beginning of the pandemic, but not nearly two years in for what was in many ways a mild cold.
During the early winter months of 2022, I felt mostly checked out. I had moments of clarity, especially when in service to others, where I knew that life would be okay; that I was surviving despite a great many challenges that had presented in my life. I often felt bookended between what was left behind and what was to come and was stuck in that liminal place of present. Without presence. While my intentions and desires were to shift myself out of habitual routines of sluggishness and depression, it was easier to maunder about in a dissociative state during my free time. I could muster up clarity and skill while working, but evenings and weekends were a blur of wanting to change and being unable to muster up the energy to do so.
Spring brought a touch of warmth to the daunting weeks of winter, and a promise of all that could unfold if I could just find the momentum. I felt myself dissolving even more deeply into a state of exasperation and entropy. It was like watching a film of myself with no way to alter the script. Having long been a person with infinite desire to do things, suddenly I found myself unable to do anything. Five years ago, I had a sense of a coming to this zero point, but had no way to know what it meant.
I used to glibly remark that I was going through a spiral of returning to a point where I had to begin everything all over again. I was generally referring to my physical fitness. I’d maintained a considerable level of fitness most of my adult life. All while struggling with the eternal inner dialogue that I was never fit enough, strong enough, or skilled enough despite that level. Talking about my weekly routines from my 30s and 40s exhausts me. Early morning hikes up the mountain with the dog nearly every day. Swimming two or three times a week. Tae Kwon Do three times a week. Strength training. Trail running, long mountain bike rides, road rides, snowboarding every powder day, rock climbing year-round. Year after year after year. And add to all that being the mama to young kids, chasing them around the park, swimming as much as possible, ice skating, teaching them to ski, taking them on explorations in the woods. Up and down all the stairs over and over again. I didn’t realize the level of base fitness I had until I watched it slowly disappear over the last three years. And with it my motivation for everything.
Quietly my heart started to ache for my mountain bike rides, and the access I once had to the trails. My inner dialogue changed from not being fit enough to what have I become? And I got back on my bike. And I started to feel free again. And I felt desire to regain my fitness, from a new level of understanding, begin to rise in my system. And then with Spring the fires came. And with the fires, the smoke. There was no reasonable way to enjoy being outside with the smoke settling over everything each and every day. So, once again, I just focused on work, which was easy for the first time in my entire career. Working, it turned out, was another way to dissociate from the ocean of feelings that I was keeping hidden in the depths of my being.
At times, I felt a desire to pull them all out and sort through them, until I didn’t, and then I’d tuck them all back into boxes and onto the shelves of the catacombs within. To look at my feelings meant acknowledging the parts where I’d betrayed myself and where I had facilitated the destruction of my self through the choice of “doing the right things,” while letting others walk all over me. Through the choice of remaining in “partnership” with an abusive human being. And through the choice of doing nothing when something should be done. And so back to work I went. Focusing on environmental cleanup plans and technical editing was a lot easier than cleaning up the toxic emotional waste sites within.
Come June, the rains came early. Torrents of rain that drowned the fires and cleared the smoke from the air. I felt my desire to be out in nature pushing at the walls of my heart, but motivation was still dormant, as though it, too, was extinguished by the rain. I thought about how quickly it would be to get back in shape if only I rode two or three times a week. But each week would go by with maybe an outdoor swim or two, and not enough courage to even identify what needed to shift for me to feel desire again. Any kind of desire.
Sort of by accident, I began receiving somatic bodywork late spring, early summer. This produced an unexpected reworking of my system, but not in a “positive” way. Suddenly I found myself face to face with the recognition that I was healing from something greater than what was simply a bad relationship. I was recovering from narcissistic abuse, and I was forced to look through all the places and people in my life where abuse had occurred. And I was shoved even deeper within the composition of my being. I found myself totally exposed, raw, wounded, and wrecked beyond what I had been previously able to admit to myself. I was damaged goods. And when a miracle reconnection occurred, that felt cosmically aligned, I couldn’t squelch the negative self-talk about who I was at that moment. Holy shit it was challenging. The body work felt like we’d opened pandora’s box, and I wasn’t sure there was another side to all the pernicious influences within.
I felt like a hopeless disaster untethered in the deep waters of emotion. In May, the too-soon death of one of my dearest friends and mentors, appeared at a time when I hadn’t been able to express any emotion. Feeling her as she made the transition out of this lifetime caused my emotional dam to crumble. I found myself so tender and unguarded that I began crying out of helplessness. Tears, it turns out, were just what I needed to express. Years of holding everything together until I couldn’t came flooding through. Even when my life had deteriorated into a mess of itself a couple years prior, I had maintained a semblance of holding things together, but finally in this undefended space I gave up and the torrents came pouring through.
It wasn’t long, however, before the walls were back in place, and I continued my habitual routines of dissociation and avoidance. I felt the pain of my stagnation eating away at what was left of my strength. I knew I had the capacity and all the tools necessary to pull myself up and start anew. But I didn’t care. Years of experience in appearing that I had everything handled allowed me to drift through the days, seemingly fine and strong and good, when inside a self-repugnance burned so hot that I would detach from myself ever more adeptly to avoid the hot flames. I knew what I needed to do to alter my patterns but didn’t give a fuck about doing so. It was a self-defeating nightmare.
At the same time as my self-immolation, my daughter’s health began to deteriorate. She was experiencing debilitating dizziness, exhaustion, and an inability to stay upright. We sought out doctors’ opinions and submitted to their medication recommendations, and she got sicker. She couldn’t get out of bed. She couldn’t stand up. She couldn’t keep food down. I feared that we were losing her to some unseen, unknown darkness. My bright, luminous, gentle, angel of a daughter was terribly unwell, and nothing seemed to be working. Amid an ever-expanding circle of people holding her in blessings and prayer, a diagnosis of long covid came surging through. Ahhh, long covid. The elusive, mysterious symptoms of the human ecosystem gone awry. In January, when we’d all been infected with the loathsome virus, she’d been the least sick of all of us. A headache and sore throat for 24 hours and she was back up and running on all cylinders. But as the months slowly and almost imperceptibly floated by, whatever was happening within the inner realms of her cells was being slowly and effectively broken.
Through the help of a specialized physician, she’s been taking many steps forward. Sometimes, there are a few steps backwards, and then more steps forward. While the mystery of this diagnosis is a starting point, we are still actively working towards a solution all the way back to wholeness. And as it turns out, it is not long covid, but something less mysterious, and definitely manageable. But one thing that occurred during the darkest moments of this time was feeling my fierce mama warrior come trembling back to life. I might not be able to care for myself right now, but for goddess’s sake, I’ll be taking care of her.
As the warmth of summer began to fade, and the colors of fall brightened the landscape, I again felt a hunger to pull myself out of the well of despondence that I’d been drowning in for months. I invested in a short program designed to help reorganize my neural and nervous systems. This is it, I thought prior to the start of the course, this is exactly the thing I need to pull myself out of these ruts I’ve been bouncing around in all year. I could feel the anticipation a week before the program started. I could feel my molecules rearranging and reforming themselves. But work was hectic. And my daughter was still unwell. And while I stirred my intentions into my morning cacao every day, and journaled, and meditated, and moved myself outside in the woods, I still felt lost in the sorrow of all that I’d lost and all that I’d chosen. And why, I thought, did I think there would be just one thing to save me?
As the days turned shorter and then the snow began to fall, I was blessed to hold space for another gentle angel-being seeking healing and respite from the ceaseless toil that has accompanied the past several pandemic years. This, too, I thought, will assist in reworking the foundation of my life. And it was lovely, being wholly present and in service to another without the intensity and effort of supporting large group events. There was a subtle flow that reminded me of the beauty of my gifts and strengths. And upon returning to the routine of my daily workflow, that flow vaporized again, just out of reach and tangibility.
As the holidays neared, a part of me let go of the need to navigate my life into a different direction. Let’s just eat, drink, and be merry, I thought. Strangely, I had recently reconnected to my love of preparing food after several years of total cooking burnout, and my daughters and I started planning our Thanksgiving menu. For the first time in a long while I felt a yearning to prepare an amazing holiday meal from a place of deep love for my children and their sweethearts. Beating the holiday madness, we shopped for all the things and were stocked and ready to go. And early on Thanksgiving morning, I woke up with the flu.
It had started teasing me the evening before…a little scratch in my throat, and a sharp painful cough. I brushed it off until I woke at 2am with a sharp painful cough and a fever. Somehow, I managed to cook the turkey and my kids’ favorite paleo stuffing before calling it quits and going to bed. They took over all other responsibilities and had a great time, while I resigned myself to sleep. The next day, with fever and body aches all over, I found myself in a place I’d never been, relishing the experience of suffering.
Since my kids had been born, and even before, illness was a massive inconvenience. Something I needed to get over and get over fast. As a mama, illness doesn’t care. The kids are still hungry and need to be fed. All the things must be done. But for the first time ever I simply surrendered. I felt every goosebump with every wave of chills. I shivered under the covers, unable to warm up despite dogs and blankets piled high, and I thought, this is glorious. Truly. I’d never really allowed myself to feel the rhapsody of sickness. With no desire to eat, I fasted for 5 days. Over Thanksgiving weekend, no less. I drank tea, water, and lemon water. I slept for an eternity. I shivered, sweated, coughed, and slept more.
When I finally came through, I felt reborn. I had been rebirthed through this flu. And for a person who supports others’ rebirth on occasion, I was shocked. Shocked that a simple, normal, winter-season flu could reorganize me in such a profound way. Glorious indeed. On day three of the flu I became aware that I hadn’t thought of or been reminded of my ex for over 24 hours, despite the constant reminders of his destruction that surround me. I laughed. A hearty belly-full laugh. And as the days went on, I found myself preparing dinner at sundown, and eating differently, more mindfully and with presence. I exchanged tea for the nightly beer. I was present to my emotions rather than packing them away. I felt a deep longing to write, to create, and express myself again. God, it has been so long. So, so long. It’s almost unfathomable how much time has passed since I’ve written a blog post, or a poem, or allowed some stream of consciousness to flow through.
And with the arrival of December, through the magic and the mystery of life and community, I saw that I was looking at life through different lenses. I was at home in my being. The medicine of love infused my entire being. The way of Love. Peace. Fulfillment. Wholeness. Integrity. Beauty. And more love. So much love. I feel brand new. Alive. Joyful. Rapturous. And I haven’t felt this way in a very long time.
The year 2022 was a year of learning things about myself I’d never looked at before. Acknowledging aspects of events I’d never been willing to see. Admitting things I’d been too proud, or too in control of to speak. Ultimately, 2022 was a year of honoring the humanity of myself.
