Healing Top Ten

Today marks the third week since my brain surgery. Today I swam for 45 minutes. There's nothing like water cradling a healing body. Also, I read three chapters in a book. And now I'm writing on my laptop. These were things I couldn't do not too long ago. 

I want to share a list of things I think are aiding in my healing. I know this list would look different for every person, but there may be something others can get out of it:

1. Movement and rest. I'm used to being able to move however and whenever I want, so I'm learning how to better listen to my body, and how to be patient with myself. And if I'm moving, I'm in my body, feeling it from the inside out. If I'm resting, I'm inhabiting the resting body. I do my best to be in the moment and to ask my body what it needs.

2. Sun. I can feel the sun's healing power whether I'm sitting in it or visualizing it pouring through me.

3. My favorite fun.  Okay, they may be having a shitty season, but Giants baseball--win or lose--puts me in my happy place. Even when I couldn't look at the TV because it made me dizzy, I'd listen to a game and fall into that blissful I-love-SF zone. Another pleasure: Word Trick (computerized Scrabble). As soon as I could focus, I starting playing it again. It gave me confidence in my mind's abilities, and it triggered two great healing mechanisms:  joy and relaxation.

4. Writing. It's a huge part of who I am. I was even taking a few notes with my temporarily crippled hand while in the hospital. Writing makes me feel like I'm fulfilling my purpose in the world.

5. Talking with the dead. I feel like I have easier access now to those who have crossed over: My parents, my mentor Gabriele, and several friends. It's great to just open myself up to a conversation with them. It's not as strange as it may sound; I ask a question, and they offer me their wisdom--often with a sense of humor. My friend Joe, who died in the early 1990s, played Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All" for me in my head. Joe introduced me to Houston's music back in the day. I laughed through tears as I listened because it was so corny and so perfect--just like Joe.

6. Guided meditation. Before I went into the hospital, I began listening to guided meditations that focus on healing and the body--and I've continued to do so once or twice a day since. I love the way they make me feel tingly all over. These meditations can also help me relax and fall asleep when I wake in the middle of the night.

7. Appreciation. As often as possible, I gently direct my thoughts toward what I'm grateful for: The blue of a stellar's jay, Dave's arm around me, a card I received from a friend, the soft swimming pool water on my skin, a sweet and savory peanut butter cookie dipped in tea, the hair on my scalp growing in and sticking up like a baby's.

8. Looking forward. Before my surgery, we bought tickets to a music festival at the end of October. I didn't doubt for a moment I'd be able to go. When I met with the surgeon for the first time, my focus was on the future: How long before I could put my head under water? (4-6 weeks; I'm almost ready!) Would we be able to go on a road trip to So Cal in October? (Yes!) What about Hong Kong, India and Sri Lanka in November-December? (Yes!)

9. Kitchen therapy. I've baked a couple of batches of zucchini-blueberry bread. It felt like such a nurturing thing to do. And it thrilled me when Dave and our friends went crazy over it.

10. My mantras:
* I'm a good healer.
* That sensation is the process of healing.
* Everything's okay.
* Nothing has gone wrong.
* I'm getting so much out of this experience.
* I have a choice: freak out or get curious.
* Choose love.

Healing Yourself

 

 

In my continuing  series, Books That Inspire, I spoke with Amy Scher, whose new book How To Heal Yourself When No One Else Can is coming out January 8.

What inspired you to write this book?

After healing myself from various physical and emotional challenges, I connected with so many wonderful people who were asking exactly how I did it. While I have a full-time private practice where I help clients one-on-one with this process, I just can’t reach everyone who needs this type of support. Most people understand that healing is possible, even when it doesn’t seem that way; but how to do it can be very overwhelming. I wrote this book so readers could see how I did it, and how they could apply that to their own lives.

"When life kicks your ass, kick back" is your mantra. Why is this idea important to you?
It’s funny because this started off as meaning “kicking back” as in kicking life’s ass right back when it gets tough. But over time, I interpret it more as kick-back as in “relax.” I’ve learned there is a certain balance between forging ahead with conviction to overcome something and letting go so it can unfold. They are both essential to overcoming any obstacle.

You are an energy therapist. What is "energy therapy"?
Energy therapy is a way to access the body’s energy system and its imbalances. Imbalances happen in our energy field long before they turn physical. By going back and working with the body’s subtle energies and correcting any imbalances, we can affect change in the physical and emotional body.

 

What advice would you give to your younger self?
Trust. Let go. Trying to control everything controls you right into being a totally freaked out, unhappy human.

What advice would you give to people about living the life you really want to live?
You have to be who-you-really-are. So many of us fear judgment and upsetting others that we live our lives according to who we think we should be. I have a great quote in my book by life coach Jordan Bach that I think speaks perfectly to this point: “Being yourself is hard. Living with the regret of having lived your life according to other people’s expectations is hard. Pick your hard.”

 

Do you find writing easy or hard? What words of wisdom can you offer to people who want to write a book?

It totally depends on the day. Ha. Sometimes, I sit down and it flows out of me and I can’t stop it. Other times, I find every other thing to do but write. The best wisdom I can offer to others is to write, write, write. Don’t filter or edit as you write. Just write whatever is inside of you. I’d never want anyone to read my first or second drafts because it’s all just brain spew. It takes awhile for some things to look like real "real writing." But it has to start somewhere.

 

In your book, you say instead of getting judgmental about our healing process, it's helpful to trust in the unfolding, to know that what is happening is "necessary for your path." Can you say more about that?
[Thinking this way] can really help us in all aspects of life. We add so much extra craziness to our craziness. If we can just experience what’s happening and not add our own “stuff” to it, we can then just move through it. It’s the judging and analyzing and beating ourselves up that makes mountains out of molehills.

Amy B. Scher, based in L.A., is a leading voice in the field of mind-body healing. She believes that our ultimate wellbeing is born not from self-help, but self-love. She was named one of Advocate's "40 Under 40" for 2013. Visit her website here.
 

Healing in Hawaii

Last night we were sitting on a lanai with more than a dozen other people who were singing and playing guitars, a bass, keyboards, harmonica, percussion, a banjo and the humble ukulele (me). It was a gentle, rainy Hawaii evening. Dave and I gave each other that look--you know, the one that says "wow, this is a great moment."

This moment is pretty special, too. I'm writing in the living room. Dave is reading a book, and the dog, Snickers, is snoozing. Out the window I see bright green lawn, trees shimmying in the breeze, and a gray-blue sea rimmed by a line of white foam.

View from our home for 4 months.

Each moment matters. I'm especially feeling that these days, having come out of a dark place in my mind. When I was told I don't have cancer--after having been told I did--I was ecstatic, of course. But dealing with the after-effects of thyroid surgery was rough. For weeks, it felt like someone was strangling me and rocks were lodged in my throat. I couldn't project my voice or sing. Strange numb and tingly sensations erupted in my feet and thighs.

I didn't know if my body was merely healing and adjusting to synthetic hormone replacement or if something was going wrong. My mind kept weaving stories: Your voice will never return. You might have to have another surgery if your scar is affixing. Your throat will never feel normal again.

I was also struggling with the idea that I'd have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. But soon I realized it was my ego that was pissed off. It didn't want to identify as a person reliant on a pharmaceutical. My identity as independent and free and not a pawn to Big Pharma was threatened.

I had to laugh. Okay, universe, another lesson about not freaking out about change, I get it. And that lesson was hammered home when we arrived in Hawaii for our four-month houessit. The homeowner, the woman who picked us up at the airport (and along with her husband, draped fragrant leis around our necks) had the telltale throat scar. So small she had to point it out. Her cancerous thyroid had been removed years ago. She is one among several people I know who've taken this tiny pill for decades.

The thyroid is shaped like a butterfly...

a friend gave me this gorgeous scarf before my surgery.

Also, I was able to connect with a number of women who've undergone this surgery and learned that my physical sensations were pretty normal. These conversations helped put things in perspective. I was lucky to avoid cancer treatments that sometimes resulted in an array of troubling side-effects.

My ego had let go of the pill thing but was now clinging to the idea that I was supposed to be a fast healer. When I really listened to my body, it was telling me to take long baths and naps, massage the scar lightly, breathe deeply, stretch a little, take gentle walks, read good books, and watch funny videos. And now two months out from surgery, my throat is slowly improving.

Our bodies teach us a lot.

In the past year or two, my body has been telling me--shouting at me--to nourish it well. I wasn't listening. After finding a golf-ball sized mass on my thyroid, my doctor told me to stop eating dairy. I have always loved all things milky and cheesy--but the minute he said it, something clicked in me. My intuition told me he was right. When I got home, I pulled the half-and-half and cheese from the fridge and gave it to a neighbor.

Three months later, I have done a lot of research (like this book and this book and this book and this film and this film and this website).

It's fun to cook again! 

(Recipe for the curried Chickpea Rice Salad here.)

There is ample evidence that eating primarily plant-based whole food bolsters immunity--and helps us avoid (and sometimes cure) many chronic illnesses. And damn, it sure makes me feel great! In just a few months of eating this way (fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts, seeds, no oil, few processed foods) Dave and I have noticed some incredible things going on with our bodies:

* More cardiovascular endurance

* Weight loss

* Waking up feeling alert and well-rested

* Bowel regularity (and then some!)

* Significant reduction in heartburn/acid reflux 

* Fewer aches and pains/less joint stiffness

* Clearer skin

* Less plaque build-up on our teeth and better breath

* More evenness/emotional balance--less likely to be "hangry"

* Fewer food cravings

* Sharper sense of smell and taste

* Dave's sinuses are clearer, and his persistent toe fungus is healing

We had thought that getting weaker and gaining a few pounds was an inevitable part of growing older, and while that may be true to some degree, clearly nutrition is significant. We both breathe more easily while exercising--and on our recent walks we have been jogging a bit. I used to love running but assumed I just couldn't do it anymore in my fifties. I am already dreaming about doing 5Ks and 10Ks again. Even though I am still recovering from surgery, I feel stronger than I have in years.

blueberry torte: no oil, flour, processed sugar...pure delish

Another benefit is that I am enjoying cooking! At times it used to feel like a chore. I was stuck in a food rut, bored with my eating habits. Now we are enjoying more tasty variety. When I'm cooking I feel I'm channeling my inner curandera who heals through food, herbs, and spices. Food is supposed to make you feel good. And it's nice when the process of making it does, too.

Bananas galore

Just as we are focusing on eating primarily whole fresh fruits and vegetables, we are plopped into this housesit on a property where we can pick papayas, mangoes, pineapples and bananas and pull veggies from a thriving garden.

salad days

We are also exploring. While we've spent time on the big island of Hawaii in the past, we'd not seen much of this southern area. It's beautiful, peaceful, and isolated.

Volcano National Park

At the southernmost tip of the U.S. with Snickers, our roomie.

King Kamehameha festivities in Hilo

green sea turtle at the black sand beach

We are just one month into this four-month houessit. It's sweet to settle into the domestic rhythms of cooking, gardening and animal care--and to enjoy the musical neighbors. I'm grateful to have the time to focus on healing and writing. To soak in each moment I am given. Life has given me a lot of material. It's time to weave a book.

Upon Not Returning to School

With Candice (a former student who became
a friend and colleague) at her housewarming party.

My whole life I've been either a teacher or a student. As my friends fill their Facebook pages with pictures and stories of the return to school, I've become acutely aware that this is the first fall in more than forty years I'm not returning too.

Yes, at 50 it's an early retirement. I'm not retiring in the classic sense, though, which is reflected in the word's etymology: French for withdrawing into safety and seclusion.

In fact, my leap into retirement has been the opposite: relinquishing our home to live a traveling life. Not seclusion but reaching out into the world by immersing in experiences and writing about them.

And then the unexpected: seizure, brain tumor, surgery, healing. What timing. If I'd been going through all of this while having to think about what to do with my classes ... and to make sure my medical benefits stayed in tact ... and to plan to enter the semester partway through ... Well, that just would have been no fun for me or the students.

This timing has been amazing for other reasons. Instead of being in Hawaii this fall, we are in the Bay Area for my treatment and recovery. So I'm getting to spend time with some of my colleagues, who are also good friends. This is softening the transition of leaving the professorial tribe.

The other thing that has happened is this: As news has spread about my health, former students have been inspired to contact me, flooding me with appreciation. Many didn't even know I'd planned to retire. This conversion of forces is a thing of beauty. I'm feeling the love. Big time. I've received many special messages.  Here's one that especially touched my heart:

Dear Kate,

I don't get on Facebook much, so please forgive me for being behind, but I now understand you've been through quite an experience. I'm glad you are healing well and hope you continue to do so.

You might not remember me, as you've probably had hundreds of students since we were last in touch, but to this day I cherish having had you in my life. To borrow from The Artist's Way, you were a champion of my creative self-worth, and to borrow from a credit card commercial, that's priceless! All the while, you were always a model on how to soak up life, even in hard times, of which you've had more than your fair share. I don't understand life, but because of you I better understand how to love it.

If I inspired one person to love life, I'd say my days of teaching have been well spent.

What I Learned This Epic Year

Swimmable water in Cerritos Beach, Baja California Sur

Breathe in the precious moments and love fiercely.

This has become my mantra during an epic year--a year in which I stared down life and death.

It was a year that reminded me how way leads onto way. How everything is a catalyst. How what we focus on blossoms. How it's not about what happens--but what we think about (and do with) what happens.

Funny how I thought retiring after spending my whole life in schools would be 2013's "big event." But then my mentor, friend and "other mother" died. I was blessed to witness her profoundly graceful transition.

And then months later--when I myself was perched on the edge of dying during my seizure--she visited me. She told me that the veil between this world and the next is thinner than we think. She said if we look closely, we can penetrate the mystery's deepest beauty. She said never to be afraid of death. There's nothing to fear. Even from the next realm, she continued to teach me.

Even though I've been witness to the death of many beloveds--including my parents--the thought of my own death seemed theoretical. But 2013 brought me this gift: a deep, bodily knowledge that I'm transitory in this form. That everything changes. That I will die.

So what to do with this gift? Breathe in the precious moments and love fiercely! I was already on this path in August when my brain tumor was discovered. Months before, Dave and I had packed up everything we owned and traveled to Australia, Southern California, Boston, Cape Cod.

And then the experience of brain surgery and healing--enveloped in vast love and support from family and friends--intensified my desire to live my most authentic life. I launched Operation: Seize the Day!

Living your truth is not for wimps. It involves taking risks: emotionally, physically, financially. It involves being comfortable with spontaneity, with unknowing.

It requires loosing the moorings. When I let go of my job, my house, my neighborhood, my town--indeed, my identity as a Santa Cruzian writing professor--I plunged into a free-float.

I decided to embrace the fertile void.

I decided to reside in a rich space of unknowing.

In this space, I watched my monkey mind. It scrambled around like a kid desperate for a parent's attention: Hey! What are you doing? You're no longer a teacher, you're not a parent, you're not anything! What are you contributing? Aren't you being aimless and irresponsible?

When that happened, I'd gently turn toward my larger self, the sky mind, the god-voice in me who is always deeply present when I open my heart. It always says:  No need to worry, no need to fear. You're valuable, just like everyone else, because you exist. And the more you're YOU, living your truth, the more you inspire. Don't set out to have an effect--just be it. Trust that the fertile void will reveal your answers.

Because we no longer had a house, I was curious what my experience with "home" would be. My deepest realization so far: my home for this lifetime is my body. If I want to be truly alive, I must unconditionally love this marvelous, self-healing spacesuit.

Especially after having my skull cracked open and resealed with glue and staples, I can feel myself reaching new levels of bodily appreciation. While I don't have this love-thy-body-thing totally in the bag, I find it easier and easier to release criticism of my body. To relax into myself and feel life from the inside out. As a result, I'm experiencing new levels of sensory bliss (as well as relief from my occasional claustrophobia).

And wow was that infinite intelligence right-on when it said to trust that answers will appear. In late August, a thought popped into my head:

I want to live within walking distance of swimmable water.

That thought wasn't a conscious creation of my construction. It was a fully formed object like a stone, a heartbeat, a breath.

I have always loved water. I'm a spiritual mermaid, a former synchronized swimmer, a snorkeler, a lover of boats and kayaks and plunging into seas and lakes.

When I pondered my "swimmable water" revelation, I found myself wrangling with it: Did this mean when we decide to settle down again that I'd want a swimming pool? Did I need to join a gym with a pool? Was it a call to buy a place in our beloved Hawaii? But we'd have to win the lottery to afford a Hawaii pad within walking distance of the beach!

I decided to let it go. To trust. To allow the answer to appear as easily as the desire did.

All I have to say is this: releasing to the universe is magic!

Organically, the perfect opportunity arose: to buy an outrageously affordable casita in El Pescadero Mexico (near Todos Santos in Baja California Sur). Yes, it's walking distance to a lovely, swimmable beach. And it's in a small resort that has a swimming pool and a jacuzzi. Water, water everywhere!

The icing on the cake is that some close friends have bought the place next to ours. Built-in community.

We don't know if this will be our temporary or permanent residence. We don't have the details nailed down. We are trusting our guts. We want to ride the wave of the unfolding.

As 2013 comes to a close, we are back in California after a trip to Hong Kong, India and Sri Lanka. I'm looking forward to processing that transformative adventure while I focus on writing in the new year.

It looks like we will be headed to Mexico in May. Before that--for the first four months of 2014--we will live in Tahoe. We are thrilled we can host family and friends there who have opened their homes and lives to us.

In a cozy house sheltered from the Sierra cold, I intend to write the first draft of my memoir about transformation. During that time, this blog will be on hiatus, and I will be less of a presence on Facebook.

I will also improve my skiing and yoga, practice my Spanish, work online with my writing clients, judge a book contest, and allow whatever else rolls my way to perfectly unfold.

Happy New Year to all of you. May you breathe in your precious moments and love fiercely.

Gifts

Walking the beach with the dogs, we see people combing through the sand for sea glass. When a glimmer catches my eye, I'm tempted to pick up a piece. A lover of the water and a former synchronized swimmer on the Auburn Mermaids, I feel especially drawn to these mermaid tears. I also love that garbage has transformed to jewels.

I used to have a collection of sea glass. I gave it away a few months ago during our second round of getting rid of our things. So what's the point of collecting more? Collections do not jive with nomadic ways.

But I couldn't help myself. An especially beautiful amber piece winked at me from the sand. I bent down to pick it up. I turned it over in my hand, enjoying its smooth texture and honey hue.

When I passed a young woman digging in the sand and dropping pieces into her bag, I bent down and said, "Would you like this one?"

Her face lit up as though I'd offered her a yellow diamond.

"Wow, thanks!" she said. That's when I noticed one of her hands was shrunken like a delicate bird claw. She held out her other hand, and I dropped it in.

So for the past couple of weeks, I've been doing that: Picking up pieces and giving them to the collectors sitting in the sand. I love giving stuff away. It feels so good. (I recently read about a woman who does it for a living.)

Yesterday on our beach walk, Dave and I held hands and stared at the shimmering Strait of Juan de Fuca. We sent out beams of love and healing energy to a good friend who at that moment was undergoing cancer surgery. Last August, I had brain surgery--and I wished the same phenomenal healing for her. The day before, I sent her an email, a compilation of what I had focused on during my medical experience. She printed it out to take with her to the hospital:

I know tomorrow is the day you are pushing the reset button to get rid of the old and bring on the new, totally healthy you.

May you see the bright white light of all your health practitioners.

May you appreciate their expertise and everything that brought them into your sphere.

May you appreciate all the conventional and alternative resources that have come together in your life.

May you see the truth of yourself healed and whole.

May you feel the powerful stillness of your spirit, which is fully connected to all that is.

May you feel the love of everyone who surrounds you and thinks of you.

May you know that all is well.

"There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

I thought about all of this as we turned to walk down the beach, the dogs flying.

We came across a stretch of sand peppered with more sea glass than I'd seen in one spot. Dave bent down to pick up a blue piece. I picked up a white one. We held out our palms. We ooohed and ahhed.

We gathered piece after piece. We dropped them into a plastic bag and kept going. I wondered for a moment if we were going to keep these. Could we not help ourselves?

And then I realized we were doing it for our friend. We will find the perfect vessel for these gems. We will give them to her when we see her in October. We will tell her about the gifts washed up from the sea, just for her.

More Than Our Bodies

Sunset in Baja (photo by Dave)

Next to "It's benign" and "the margins are clear," hearing "it's not broken" is the freaking greatest news.

Two weeks ago I took a bad spill and messed up my ankle. Initial x-rays were inconclusive. I had no idea that sometimes a break won't show up for a week or two after a trauma. So...today I went back for another x-ray.

I was trying not to catastrophize. But we are supposed to take the long drive up Baja in two weeks to get to a housesit in California and I was wondering how that would work with a broken ankle...much less one that might need surgery.

Bizarrely, in the past days, THREE friends have fallen off their bikes and suffered compound arm fractures that required surgery.

I just keep reminding myself that a) the body knows how to heal, and b) we've faced a lot of surprises and unknowns in this nomadic life we live, and we're always able to figure things out.

My mantra has been LOVE on the in-breath and HEALING on the out-breath. One of my arm-healing friends said this helped her a lot, too. It's so soothing that I think I will continue to use it, especially to help me get to sleep. 

So today I went back for the second x-ray...and, yay, it's a bad sprain, not a break. Doc told me to start walking with the boot. I did immediately when I got home. It's like being half non-automated robot. But I'll take it.

My 50s have been quite a ride for my body, what with brain surgery (for a benign tumor), thyroid surgery (for a benign tumor that had initially been diagnosed as cancer), surgery on my leg to remove a squamous cell growth (clear margins), and now this.

In Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying, Ram Dass talks about how if we live long enough, all of us face physical changes. This is an opportunity to learn we are "more than our bodies and our minds."

This decade has been teaching me this, it seems. 

California Fall

Dave and Craig

While Dave and I played Frisbee yesterday with our friend Craig and his son Dylan, I was struck by the fact that three months ago I was days away from surgery for a brain tumor.

During that time and after the surgery, Dave and I had visualized me as healthy, doing things I love--yoga, swimming, dancing, writing. We meditated on the fact that the body is a healing machine. Whenever worry crept in, I'd focus on these things.

And a couple of short months later, there I was on a sun-splashed field tossing a Frisbee. I had written for hours that morning. And that afternoon we were headed to the second day of a three-day music festival.

Festival ready!

This has been the hallmark of the last few months: continued healing in the loving company of family and friends throughout California. It's such a pleasure and a privilege to be part of people's lives in this way.

We spent a month in Southern California, and it began to feel like home. Before we left, we went to Tony and Shannon's house for a birthday celebration. We were lucky to be able to meet the newest member of the clan, three-week-old Jordan.

Jordan with happy new parents Chris and Robin.

Two days before our departure, our friends up the street celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving. What a beautiful sight, a dinner table for twelve, candle-lit, out in the lavender field.

Everyone brought something delicious. Talk about giving thanks.

We were able to catch a last sunset over the ocean.

On our drive north, we stopped in Newbury Park for a weekend of family fun with Paul and Christi and their three boys. A highlight was a night around the fire pit, playing and singing.

Dad on the mandolin and Frankie on the recorder.

When we landed back in San Jose to spend a few days with our pal Mark, he surprised us: He'd installed a hot tub in his newly tricked-out backyard! It was a special treat after I completed my head-in-a-cage-body-injected-with-dye MRI at Stanford.

Tah dah!

A couple of days later, we drove further north, stopping in Elk Grove to visit my cousins John and Carolyn, and my aunt Ruby. Twice a week, John and Carolyn watch their granddaughter Madison. Ruby, who is 90, has never taken a music lesson in her life, but she can coax the honky tonk out of the piano like you wouldn't believe. It was the sweetest thing to watch Madison boogie to her great-grandmother's music.

90, 50 and 1.

We have about a week and a half left in California to take care of some medical things and travel prep details. Then on November 5, we fly to Hong Kong, then India, then Sri Lanka.

Because we haven't been to these places before, I was about to say it'll be a new adventure. But with my new lease on life, I feel like each and every day is a new adventure.

Comfort in the Face of Change

Dave with our niece Hailey and nephew Evan:
Spending more time than expected in the Bay Area
has meant more fun with loved ones.

Dave reminded me that we’ve been living without a house for three months. The idea was to live a traveling life: a combination of visiting friends, staying in Airbnb lodgings, leasing places, and house-sitting.

We started with a few days in L.A. followed by a little over a month in Australia. In July, we went to Boston and Cape Cod. The month of August was supposed to look like this:

Swimming in turquoise waters, dalliance-ing with dolphins, snorkeling with turtles and technicolor fish, eating papaya with lime on the lanai, reading and writing in the warm evening, and hiking across moonscape lava.

But this is the thing about life:

You gotta be flexible. Because everything changes. Sometimes change is deceptively slow. And sometimes it happens in the blink of an eye.

For instance:  You make plans to spend a month and a half in Hawaii after your Cape Cod adventure. One day on the Cape, you go for a swim. The water is delectably refreshing in the hot, humid day. You swim out far, alone. You think about how you’re now swimming in the Atlantic, and in a week you’ll be swimming in the Pacific. You think about how being cradled in the sea is like nestling into the belly of the world. Far off, your friends play Frisbee on the sand, the plastic disc like a little green bead tossed against the blue sky.

That night, your body is at peace because of its day-long immersion in sun and sea, because of all that buoyant movement with gravity suspended. Not to mention all that fresh lobster and wine and laughter.

In spite of how great I felt, in spite of the timelessness of the summer days, the next morning did not bring what I expected: more of the same. Instead, that night, something in my brain reached a tipping point, and I woke at 6 a.m. having a seizure. And instead of Hawaii, August brought us back to California for my medical treatment.

I can’t say how many times I’ve thought about that day of dreamy swimming in Cape Cod. If I’d had that seizure 12 hours earlier, I would have drowned. It wouldn’t have been the worst way to go, transitioning while doing something I love so much. Preferable to dying of a heart attack in rush hour traffic.

In fact, when I was having the seizure and thought I was dying, incredibly something that passed through my mind was this: It’s okay if I’m going because I’ve been living my authentic life.

But apparently it wan’t my time. As a result, I have a new depth of appreciation for the preciousness of now.

I cried the other morning when Dave was holding me. Then I realized why. What I was thinking was: I don’t want to lose his body or have him lose mine.

Those Buddhists are right-on when they say human suffering stems from attachment, from desiring permanence in the face of the natural course of change, from wanting things to be different than they are. There I was, PRE-suffering: imagining inevitable change and living it too soon, when I didn’t need to!

I reminded myself that the past and the future are just thoughts. Where it’s all at is NOW. So I gently guided my mind back to the sacred moment, back to my senses, feeling Dave’s arms around me, noting our heart beats. I sensed the tenderness and tenacity of the healing in my skull that just weeks before had been cut open by a surgeon. I reminded myself to thank the surgeon, to embrace the white light of her expertise, to appreciate that I was here, now, experiencing another lovely moment of life.

We humans have amazing minds. We can make ourselves miserable. We can make ourselves joyous. Just acknowledging that I can make myself feel bad is good. It softens suffering a bit. Perhaps that’s why I’ve loved reading literature all these years: because looking at the human condition reminds me that yes, this is the way it is.

I can look at my feelings from another vantage point. Sadness and clinging don’t own me. They can pass by like clouds in the sky. And in fact, they are kind of interesting to watch because, like everything, they change. I don’t need to deny them or impulsively act out against them. I can just relax and breathe and gently think a better-feeling thought like: Sadness is kind of sweet. It says I’m a loving human being. I dig that humanity is capable of love. This life sure has a lot of beauty in it. And the next thing I know, I’m letting go of what I was clinging to. Then maybe I’m smiling. And maybe I’m feeling more and more ready to take on the day.

Living without a house intensifies the letting-go experience. When I’m living in “my” house, I can be seduced by a feeling of permanence. I like that feeling of comfort. But what I’m discovering is I can create comfort wherever I am, even in the midst of embracing impermanence. With no house, it’s very clear to me that wherever we are, we aren’t there forever. 

A house doesn’t bring comfort. We do. By coming back to this moment, again and again.