On cures and healing

There was this thrilling moment: After about ten months of daily hours long focused inner work for the first time in 35 years a month passed without me experiencing a major headache event. And then another. And one more! And then I had some headaches start, and I was able to stop them in their tracks simply using some of the mental and emotional processes I was developing and teaching myself. And then I had another month, completely pain free. Not a drop.

 At last. 

 I have been on a thirty five year quest of learning how to live with debilitating migraines and other chronic pain. I found a way to live a full and happy life with my health issues, but had never come close to resolving them. Over the past years I got strong enough for some hope. I studied the new science that is emerging around pain, trauma and neuroplasticity and actually dared to believe I could do better then living well with my conditions. I started to believe in a cure.

 And it was working.

 I was beyond excited. I was proud. I was mapping out what exactly I had done. Recording which of the hundreds of books and courses and healing modalities and other shit I have studied over the years had actually worked to bring me to such a miraculous place. I was bursting with the desire to share this hopeful story with others who are suffering. I felt like I had finally made it out of the maze. I thought I had found my holy grail and was ready to share it with the masses.

 Then I had another migraine. A really bad one. The kind that leaves me wracked in so much pain I can’t even keep down water. And after that, a month later, another one.  And one more. Each one closer together and more violent. And then they started blending into each other again, for days upon days as old familiar pain started to flare up all over my body.

 S**T.

S**T.

S**T.

 And yet, I still believe in the processes I am using. And while I am not happy about the pain experience, I know in the deepest way that I am healing and getting better in every way.

 Because whether my headaches are a part of it or not, the work I have been doing has forced me to look at myself and my life in a way I would not have, if not forced to by the intensity of my physical symptoms.

 As things seem to go, I was reading a book the evening after my latest episode that made a simple, but for me useful distinction. 

 I think this distinction may be useful for anyone in the swirl of disease, especially a chronic or “untreatable” condition. These conditions often fall through the cracks of conventional medicine, but for many they are also not cured by the expensive and overwhelmingly broad world of “alternative” healing.

 When you are really suffering, it is easy to get caught up in a hamster wheel of looking for the next new thing to give you some relief and there is an eager industry there happy to provide you with hope and take your cash.

 When the processes you try don’t work, you are often told that you are experiencing a “healing crisis”, not doing things properly or some other story that blames you for your lack of improvement. Rarely are you told the truth that perhaps this specific treatment is just not a good fit for your specific situation.

 In her book “Anatomy of a Calling”, Dr. Lissa Rankin writes: “If you look it up in the dictionary, to be cured is to be free of disease, but to heal means to become whole.”

 To me, to become whole is a “whole” other prospect. It involves our hearts and minds and soul. It addresses our emotional life, our spiritual life. How we see ourselves, how we love ourselves, how we treat ourselves. It includes our relationships to our loved ones, our communities and the natural world.

 And yet, when we are sick and in pain, all any human ever wants is a cure. And that is normal. 

 As I am faced with the continuation of my own symptoms, I am so much more gentle with that part of me that just wants to be fixed. The part that just wants the pain to go away. Because that is so real and normal and beautiful. That is part of being human.

 But becoming whole is also a part of being human. 

 In my life, I see how the experience of such extreme physical pain has forced me to move more and more towards an integrity with my past. How it has forced me to become more and more accepting of the stark reality of the traumas I have experienced. I have learned how to let myself face them and feel them in this strong adult body I now inhabit.

 Healing can lead to a cure. Sometimes. 

 But sometimes we do not recover, we do not get well and let’s face it, we all eventually die. 

 There are many conditions and disabilities people suffer that have no “cure”. Some conditions are tragically degenerative with no available intervention to slow their devastating trajectory.

 Life can be unbearable. And yet, on our knees we can make the choice that in it all we will become more whole.

 I do not believe this search for wholeness to be some grand truth that lifts us to a moral high ground. It is just a way I have found to make meaning and learn from my own experience. 

 The biggest pitfall in the greater world of healing, in a world where we start to look at the relationships between our body, our mind and our emotions is this awful, judgmental, and shaming attitude that if we are not experiencing a cure, we are somehow failing.

 And in the worst case, there is an underlying judgment that this is proof that we do not want to be better.

 I have yet to meet anyone who is suffering who wants to be suffering. Humans are incredibly wondrous, complex creatures and sometimes we just don’t have the answers we seek about how to be well, how to recover, how to move on from tragedy and trauma. 

 The devastating truth might be that sometimes, there are no answers. That despite all the courses, therapies, processes and research promising a new breakthrough in the human condition, sometimes there are no answers.

 Opening our heart to that reality, for me too, is a part of healing. A way to become more whole.

 So many of us are so broken at this time in history. So many of us are just doing our very best to get through the day. Human hearts do not blossom in the soil many of us grew in. For those of us whose minds or bodies do not function well in this toxic soup “healing” may never look like a cure.

Sometimes I wonder if the gift of healing lives in our attitudes and approaches to the interventions we choose. I wonder if healing lives in how we choose to approach the details of our life. We can approach all things in a healing way. With presence, love, gratitude and respect. 

 This way we can make any intervention or experience healing. Anything, from persistent symptoms, miraculous surgery or daily meditation, can serve as a vehicle for our journey to being more whole.

 It is deeply healing and nourishing for me to take care of my fragility, my emotions and respect my path and my struggles.

 I am finishing this piece a couple of months after I started writing it and again find myself in a long, pain free stretch. Again, I am able to positively influence my pain experience with my methodology. I am so grateful for this experience of wellness and comfort, but I am also aware that part of what got me here is trusting in the process of healing. 

 I am open to the possibility of a cure but part of my healing process is to hold that possibility with detachment and accept my journey as it unfolds. 

 While my recent pain experience was disappointing, my god, I am so grateful it happened. I think about how much harm I could have done to others if I arrogantly held my experience aloft in public as some holy grail, packaged as a solution. 

 I am not surprised that was my first inclination. We are bombarded with a healing industry that tells us “if you just do this special thing I have discovered/developed you too will be fixed and wonderful, just like me!”

 My pain brought me back to the humility of my human experience and the value of leaning into a healing attitude to life. 

 I still want to share all the ways I have been able to help myself. I really have learned and created some magnificent ideas and processes. But I always keep in mind that relief can come in many, many forms.

 Healing may involve surgery, drugs, or any array of alternative processes.

Healing may be the moment your partner is so gentle and kind to you when you yet again need to cancel some long anticipated event. There is healing in the way those moments strengthen your bond, soothe your soul and help you believe more deeply in the good of life, even when you are in the bloodbath of disease or disability.

 Me, I am still working toward a cure. I don’t want to live with this. My body and mind take a beating with the trauma of extreme pain and I am tired. But my commitment to myself for many, many years now is that I will only pursue cures that facilitate healing, I will not throw healing over board for a quick cure.