Warrior Weekly: Fear and Expansion
Feeling fear and breaking the fear cycle, first full blown attack in 3 months and the biggest "what would happen if?" question I've ever asked.
Monday – Community building workshop with
. Feeling panicky and fearful this morning. Work cancelled due to illness. Used the time to do a bit of work on my About page. Spent an age on it, it still feels far from polished but it tells you more about me and why I’m here. Take a look if you’d like, see what you think.Moved the energy of fear with a walk in nature and a meditation in bed when I got back. That was where the idea to turn this morning’s work into blog piece What do I want you to do next? came from. Proud of doing my best to turn feelings around, raise my vibration and open up just enough space for such an idea to come through. Was able to take aligned action instead of being frozen in a fear cycle. I’ve probably spent days, weeks, months trapped in one of these before on many occasions. What a win to start the week on. And the feedback that came on the back of this blog was AMAZING - thank you. If you haven’t already read it, you can read it here.
Tuesday - 9am writing class. Wrote 4 socials posts, shared 2. Floatation tank experience. Wrote a testimonial for the owner Pete. Our conversation centred around how important it is for us to practice what we preach. To use the services we provide in our own business for the support it is designed for. To work with our own offerings which help keep us steady in an unsteady world. Who will want to work with us if we can’t be that tower of strength for others that we need in these turbulent times?
Regular bodywork client at teatime. What an utterly beautiful treatment. Enjoyed every moment of delivering it. Left client feeling all floaty and ready for the best night’s sleep.
Really interesting conversation with a fellow chronic illness warrior today. Her view is that “wellness is not the opposite of illness”. I don’t mind sharing with you that I found that a little triggering to hear. If wellness isn’t the opposite of illness, what is? Please share your thoughts as this one really got me thinking! Encouraged her to write about it as I’d love to understand her views on this, I can only imagine there’s some great insight to it.
Wednesday – no online yoga this week. Pedicure regular cancelled. Regular bodywork client later in the afternoon asked “what is your favourite treatment?” I’ve experienced many deep healing treatments in the last few years such as akashic records reading, power retrieval, reiki, holy white fire, hypnotherapy, sound baths, floatation tanks, shamanic experiences and then of course the bodywork massage therapy which I have monthly. Each treatment has been an incredible experience and brought about deep healing of its own and in many cases, I needed a treatment outside of bodywork to hold me alongside the peak of the healing experiences I’ve had at times where I’ve felt I needed that bit more support and held space.
What swung it with the bodywork is that it was a full body yes from the first time I experienced it and that it came with guidance and coaching alongside it which, for me, has been an imperative part of my journey. In addition, it has been my bodywork therapist/healing coach’s innate ability to hold space for me like no other, and gift me all the time in the world (a huge need of mine that remained unmet from childhood).
Each session has been free from judgement, delivered with bags of unconditional love and not at any point did they tell me what was/wasn’t possible for me on my healing journey or with my health. I’ve never once been told what to do, what I should be doing, what is allowed for me. So for me, it’s not so much the treatment or the therapy as such. It’s the full package that comes with it that has formed the critical support that I so desperately needed. Inadvertently, helping me to meet needs that at one time, I didn’t even know I had.
Have you been able to identify and understand that your needs are? What support do you have in place to help meet your needs?
Left my clients feeling a lot lighter and a lot brighter than I have felt all week.
Thursday – Treats for Two, a new Retreat With Me option that I didn’t even know I was creating! My life long magical friend booked in for a retreat day and brought along one of her employees. Turned out they were both ready for some deep healing and also used the day to prepare for the busy tax season ahead. Intentions were set, channelled messages came through with their bodywork, walks in nature, shadow work journaling, homemade pumpkin soup, curry tea, hot cacoa, card readings, so many cherished moments and lasting memories. A huge privilege to hold space in this way. I might rename my Couples Retreat With Me day to Treats for Two instead. That way it can be couples, friends, work colleagues or even Mother & Daughter.
Friday – woke to first full blown migraine attack in 3 months. Moderate to high level pain. Sick once. The usual shock to my body that a spike in my improving health brings. Brutal as ever (even though the pain is significantly less). Used to feel like my stomach had been ripped out, now it’s left feeling fragile, tender. The pain element only lasted a few hours. It took me until last year to reduce the pain element from 72 hours to less than 24 hours.
Turned up to R’s in my onesie. Infrared sauna and cold plunge pool at his to bring me round. Couldn’t stay in the cold plunge, it was freezing. Listened to my body and dunked in twice, that was enough.
Saturday – head not so good this morning. Asked by sacred soul sister and friend, what do you do to look after yourself at a time like this? It’s all about the rest for me. For the last 2.5 years I’ve also felt an immense amount of gratitude anytime I’m in recovery from attack. Gratitude for the life I’ve created. The life I’ve intentionally designed this way. So that I can be ill when I am ill. Space I’ve carved out in my life to be a human being, living a human experience. Sometimes this includes falling over and injuring myself (like I did the other month) and often, this includes being ill to some degree or another. I don’t ever take this privilege lightly or for granted.
Felt a few nudges to write a blog around this month’s migraine reflections so I did that before a walk in the autumn/winter sun. 11/11 today. A powerful portal apparently. An hour before it started, I saw an invite in my inbox to an online event that was free: “Reclaiming the Woman You Are Meant To Be”. R was having a drink with his friend after they’d both finished up painting for the day at his mums house. I stopped drinking over 5 years ago (spent the money on healing treatments instead) so was chuffed to bits that I got in on a women’s circle that took us on a journey to connecting with our wild woman within.
What is your relationship with your inner wild woman? 3 years ago mine was fraught with resistance and fear of being me, fear of being free. Tonight I connected with a fully formed and healed relationship, an embodied heartfelt feeling of being enough. A feeling and a knowing to an extent in which I have never felt before.
Sunday – went out for breakfast with R and his friend before they went back to his mum’s to finish painting the kitchen, living room, hallway and stairs. Managed to type up this post before he came back. Snuggled up to watch the movie, Pain Hustlers (inspired by true events). About a fictional pharmaceutical company who created a fast-acting drug for cancer patients, alleviating pain within 5 minutes. Invented based on the fear that cancer patients have around pain. I’ve seen in the chronic illness community recently that there is a lot of fear around the risk of pain medication stopping working. It got me thinking…what would happen if we let go of our fear around pain?
Let me set the scene on where I’m going with this:
Over the counter pain relief stopped working for me back in 2016. I was only diagnosed with migraine disease the year after (when I finally found a doctor who listened). She took time out to research how best she could help me and found the pain abortive, Sumatriptan. They worked to some extent for a while. One of the biggest pay offs was that they helped keep me in work a little longer before chronic illness took hold to the extent that I could physically no longer drag myself out of bed and into the office some months later. I went on to find out about medication overuse headache at a time where I was taking 6 or 7 Triptans per attack (in line with the prescription). Only to find out from my neurologist that no more than 3 are recommended in any one week. At this time, I was experiencing 2 attacks a week (taking 4 times the amount). This insight and moment of reflection enabled me to realise they were no longer working anyway, I’d been taking them out of desperation long after they had stopped working - just the same way I had over the counter pain relief back in 2016. I immediately went cold turkey and stopped taking them completely. The pain had been severe and agonising for 24 hours at a time, increasing to 48 hours and was by this stage, 72 hours. It took me 4 years to reduce pain from the highest end of the scale down to high level (comparable to childbirth, kidney stones and gunshot wound) and back to less than 24 hours - something I had not experienced for over 8 years.
Because I was all out of options, signed off by my neurologist once I broke the chronic pain cycle (even though I was left bedbound 6 days a month and chronically fatigued the rest of the time), I had not other choice, no other option and no other way out than to “befriend the pain” (a term I use for it). An approach I started a couple of years ago after reading The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle), The Power is Within You (Louise Hay) and supporting myself through this process regularly with You Tube’s Rising Higher chronic pain meditation. In the last year, this approach has enabled me to reduce the high level of pain down to a moderate level and I am now living with pain that is consistently mild. Mild pain is something I have never experienced in my life. During this time I have tried pain relief on many occasions. Over the counter continues not to work and has never worked since pre 2016. Sometimes a Triptan will work/take the edge of and other times it won’t (it’s about a 50/50 chance - unless its not working at all which has happened for prolonged periods of time on a few occasions in the past 5 years).
One of the biggest lessons I have become consciously aware of this year (after embodying the lesson for so long) is that as human beings, we are capable of feeling pain.
So, really, what would happen if we were to let go of our fear around pain?
Space for reflection
My greatest passion is to help others who live with chronic illness find their voice. Part of the work I do around this is to ask thought-provoking questions. Choose one or two and let’s chat in the comments section below?
Is it a general misconception that wellness is the opposite of illness? And if wellness isn’t the opposite of illness, what is? Please share your thoughts on this one as it really got me thinking (after feeling mildly triggered)!
Have you been able to identify and understand that your needs are? What support do you have in place to help meet your needs? Be it at work, at home, in relationships/family and/or professional.
Feeling seen, heard and understood by others who take an interest in me and listen to what I have to say makes me feel lighter and brighter. What leaves you feeling this way?
The relationship with my wild woman within has moved from resistance and fear in recent years to fully formed and healed this year. What is your relationship with your inner wild woman?
One of the biggest lessons I have become consciously aware of this year (after embodying the lesson for so long) is that as human beings, we are capable of feeling pain. So, what would happen if we let go of our fear of pain?
Thank you so much! It was upon being ignored that I learned to numb out. Maybe a question for next week: what would happen if we didn’t learn to ignore and numb out our illness? Would we stop hearing “there’s nothing you/we can do”? Hmmmm.
Always so thought provoking! I'm sorry to hear you had a difficult few days due to a migraine. I have never considered wellness not being the opposite of illness, but I imagine I'm now not going to be able to stop thinking about it! I guess speaking from my own illnesses, when I was working through them I wasn't "aiming" for wellness, I was aiming to be "normal" and pain free. Now that I am further into my healing journey, I'm looking at wellness separately - taking better care of my body, making changes to my lifestyle that will benefit me long term. Illness requires a cure, or treatment, whereas wellness doesn't. Wellness also feels like a privilege, a luxury to have.
I'm working hard to understand my needs, and put things into place to support those needs. Recently, I've discovered boundaries and taking a step back from the noise of chatter, Whatsapp messages etc. is really important for my mental health.
Happy Sunday!