View this post on Instagram

 

“The next message you need is always right where you are.” ~ Ram Dass

I always have a headache…

What is the power in acceptance?

Since I fell ill 12 and a half years ago, I have been hearing all about acceptance.

Accepting my illness, my circumstances, that my life may never look the way I once imagined it.

And for most of those 12 years, I was angry and I resisted.

Acceptance? Well, that sure sounded a lot like defeat. And I, for one, wasn’t having it. How was I, at only 34-years-old, to accept that my head was going to hurt forever? That I was going to be nauseous for the rest of my life and might never be able to look at the sunshine again?

How was I to be alright with the fact that I had lost my part-time job at my kids’ school, which fit so perfectly into our schedules? That I lost the ability to read anything more than a short magazine article—and also the ability to write one.

And if those mountains weren’t enough to tumble down, also gone was my ability to be a full-time functioning mama to my two small boys. How was I supposed to eat all that and be at fucking peace?

Acceptance was a cruel and far off joke. I could not ever see myself in that place and I didn’t really want to. Acceptance, as I understood it back then—or misunderstood it—meant slaughter—that I might have allowed the pain beast to win. I saw it as a struggle, a battle—me against the pain. Acceptance was on the side of pain, and I was against it.

It’s funny how a tiny tiny shift in perspective can change so much.

I learned about pain meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn at the beginning of my more serious illness. When I was in the hospital at a headache boot-camp, one of our many requirements was to listen to Mr. Zinn’s meditations every day—whether we wanted to or not.

This was my first go-round into meditation, and like acceptance itself, at first, I resisted. I didn’t like the tenor of Zinn’s voice and I didn’t like being made to do anything. But I was paying a lot of money to these doctors, and Botox injections, my last “best hope” for my now-disabling migraines, had blown up in my proverbial face.

The injections resulted in an immediate crushing burning pain in my left temple. A searing cherry-hot ice pick insistently and unrelentingly pummels through into my brain. Forever and ever. Amen.

I still have the migraines, and these intensify this ice-pick pain. Doctors have given it a number of names. None of them matter.

In the headache hospital, I meditated at least once a day in my cold sterile bed, every day for two-and-half weeks. Here I was, arms open, heart open. Willing to try anything that didn’t involve another needle in my head.

I shared a room with a lovely girl from New Hampshire. I had been terrified to share a room with anyone at all, per my usual anti-social tendencies. We still keep in touch years later. The kindness among us patients was palpable.

Knowing how sad I was to be missing my favorite holiday with my boys, the wife of the middle-aged man across the hall, whose headaches had devolved into strokes, purchased a Halloween bucket filled with treats when my husband brought them up to visit. In October 2012 they were six and eight. Older than in my memory.

Back home, I stayed with Mr. Zinn.

I fell in love with kundalini and the pranayamas. I shook and shimmied in my living room.

But life happened, as it does, and I fell far from the path.

Three years ago, I stumbled upon Ram Dass, and I was right back in it. Yoga. My breath. Myself. And ultimately, that acceptance that I railed against.

It wasn’t my enemy at all. It wasn’t pitted against me and my pain, standing on the other side, jeering at the misfortune. It was right there with us, lying in bed, saying “come on, come on, it’s okay here. You’ll find a place for yourself here too.”

“Bring the pain and everything. You’ll be so surprised at what it’s going to show you.”

“What it’s going to reveal.”

“What is already inside you.”

Oh it’s been ugly and difficult—and I’ve cried so much. I cry every day now. Hard. It often makes the headache worse. But my body wants and needs it, and I feel a bit healed after. I feel stronger and more in touch with myself.

I cry during conversations and commercials, during yoga and meditation. I struggle with accepting that too—this new hyper-emotional me, who laughs and howls like a banshee. But I am trying to embrace her.

My favorite way to come back to myself is a simple eight-minute Ram Dass meditation called “Just Be.” It reminds us there is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to achieve. For me this is quintessential as there are many times when being is all I am capable of.

Breathing and being.

We are all able to breathe and be as long as we are alive.

And we are blessed to be alive.

~