Pain and progress

The first blog I ever wrote, as requested by and later published in Healers Magazine.

Fourteen weeks migraine free, then bam!

Over the weekend I was struck with a migraine: a day and a half of pain and puke.

“This is painful” I tell myself.

I allow myself to feel it and accept that yes, it’s unpleasant; adding a reminder: that it too shall pass.

That’s unlike last year, from June to November, at which time I felt like it was the end of the world. Then I learned of pain relapse through The World Migraine Summit (the world’s largest online event for migraine and headache disorders). Now, fully aware that a relapse is exactly what this is, I calmed down, surprised to find myself optimistic. Yes, it is a relapse and a small one at that. It’s strangely reassuring to me to accept that this is all part of the journey.

I lie in bed, in a lot of physical pain. Unable to move. Unable to speak when my housemate shouts for me returning home. She doesn’t know I’m ill in bed and that movement, in transporting myself from my sister’s where I took ill, has caused me to be sick, so I daren’t move again.

I can’t quite bring myself to look at my phone long enough to put on my preferred guided meditation for chronic pain (Rising Higher) that has helped me reach so many milestones: i.e., understanding how old the pain thinks I am and how I’m feeling. And so I take what I can remember from it and I speak directly to the pain as though we are having some sort of conversation, a harmless little tea party of sorts.

“I completely love and accept you,” I say to the pain; “I completely love and accept you,” I repeat over and over, many times.

I feel very emotional even writing this down, like it’s touched a nerve. I’m taking this as a reminder that this is what unconditional love is, a practice in the making. I pause, and take a moment to affirm: “I love myself, I love all of myself, even when I am in a lot of pain. I am not my pain.”

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

A dear friend messages, asking me what’s going on, checking if I’m drinking enough. ”Was it a bad one or not as bad?”

I am triggered at being asked if I drink enough water for the millionth time when it’s the one thing I do well. Despite this, I manage to reflect on my triggers: sleep and alcohol are my biggest triggers. I had ten very late nights in August (midnight to 2am each night). And, I remember, I had one bottle of Becks at my sister’s on Friday night, when I was due on my period. Menstrual migraine has been the most challenging and difficult for me to overcome mind you. I remind myself I can enjoy one drink on occasion, but not at that time in my monthly cycle. Ok. I beat myself up a little for not checking in with this at the point of accepting the drink. And I tell myself again that this is a relapse and a small one at that. No need to beat myself up. That’d make the pain hurt all the more.

As I managed with last year’s relapse (further down the line than the very first attack, kick-started with a three-day cluster migraine), I recognize there are more lessons and teachings to an experience like this, more insights to be gleaned, staying tuned and feeling into what they could be. An example: as I have processed this migraine fully, I now see how much more present I was during this attack vs. any previous one I’ve ever had and how much further ahead I am in my daily life because of this.

Last year, I learned what it felt like to experience the difference between migraine attacks and cluster attacks, the significant impact each has on a person’s mental health.

I was in pain for 36 hours. This is exactly half the time of many previous attacks, which were regularly 10/10 pain (sometimes agony, rarely; the pain was excruciating and I had a strong urge to end my life right there and then because of it). 72-hour attacks became the norm for a good two to three years of my life. This is progress and I’ll take it as a win, I think to myself.

One day post-migraine I journal into last night’s dreams, which were all about work and how I hadn’t done enough, about how I wasn’t good enough. I wonder over the connection between this and my head not feeling so great during the night.

I notice my mouth is straight (not its usual upturned-smile position) and I immediately tell myself, “I must be miserable. No one is going to like me today. I will bring everyone down.”

Taking a moment to check in with how I really feel; actually, I feel “ok” and feeling ok is enough. It is more than enough.

Fast-forward two weeks from initially writing this, the insights have become frequent and deep. After posting on my experience in much briefer form on my social pages (@ambientbeautyne) and receiving so much outreach from friends and wishers-well, I realize that I never ever tell anyone when or after I’m ill, or share how much pain I’m in. Only ever if it comes up in conversation at a later point do I casually mention it. I see that in doing so—when the pain is real and raw—and in being seen, I experience so much healing, from this one act.

Secondly, I feel a deep connection to something that has always been very important to me; by sharing my story (as my most vulnerable and cringey-feeling self, warts and all), I am helping others who remain silent, unseen, and often times alone. I’ve found it pretty isolating to live with a chronic condition, experiencing chronic pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety (and more). We face judgement, misunderstanding, a lack of empathy from others, on whom we would never wish this condition. If I can reach out to, engage with, and inspire others—well then, that’s a life well lived by my reckoning.

As I sit here, in my front room, having just returned from co-hosting my first ever retreat (a transformational, life-changing one), I bask in the knowing that my purpose here on Earth, upon experiencing and enduring my own monumental healing journey over the last few years, is to inspire, encourage, support and guide others. I want to help them recognize and realize that they too can overcome life’s greatest challenges and limitations. And that goes for you too; yes, even you.