I'm full of mixed metaphors and random thoughts right now so this might not come together as well as I'd like.
My shoulder is healing. So very slowly, but steadily. Physical therapy is such an essential part of the process. I am grateful for the knowledge and assistance my PT provides. Healing movement and touch.
My last blog post was pretty somber. I was in a dark place emotionally, really feeling like the anti-hero wounded dragon casting wards and cinching tight the laces around my heart, closing off and containing the bleeding stuff. Tied those laces pretty good, or at least I thought.
The other night I was sitting in the dark looking out the window and appreciating the shadows cast by the outside light. Not all darkness and shadows are scary or threatening. No shadows exist without light, but the darkness came first anyway. Does the light carve out the darkness giving it shape or does the darkness contain the light to its own designs?
Sometimes I need to be in the dark, sensing the night sounds, sights, smells, and air on my skin. Our bodies are of nature and need to be in nature not just when it's pleasant, light, and warm, but also when it touches our thresholds of comfort. Our thresholds need to be tested and exercised. It is another form of therapy to feel the cold and the hot and sometimes our bodies tell us what they need. Sometimes our eyes need to look in the darkness, adjust to their perceptive limits. Sometimes our ears need to listen to the stillness of the winter night and hear the movements of the nocturnal creatures that also listen intently and move with purpose. Sometimes the cold, clear air carries subtle scent waves of burning firewood, and sometimes vehicle or dryer vent exhaust. Our machines are part of this world too. I've learned that the sounds and smells carry differently depending on the moisture and clouds. Machinery and traffic sounds carry very far through the fog and low clouds.
Sometimes we need to relax into the world and just exist as part of it. I've been grounding myself a lot by exhaling and pushing stale energy into the earth. The inactivity of this long recovery has my chi a bit bound up and stagnant, so now that movement is becoming easier I am working on improving its flow. Healing creates bi-products like scar tissue and spent fluids that need worked out from the elemental level - air, water, earth, and fire.
Heat is what seems to be most healing right now. I just need to be in hot water sometimes. It helps improve the circulation, warmth and bloodflow, relaxing scar-bound tightness and stiffness. It makes therapeutic movement easier. Undoing the scar tissue laces around my shoulder.
What I am needing more of now is therapeutic touch. I have a massage scheduled next week and I am so glad to be able to get back to that part of my wellness routine.
I feel like my heart needs some kind of additional therapy as well, to deal with the loosening laces around it. Do they need to be retightened? Are they dissolving like internal sutures? I'm not sure if I can trust anyone to touch my heart. Being wounded creates a sense of self-protection and guard. The wards I cast don't know if they need reinforcement or repeal. The kind of touch that best heals the heart isn't quite available anyway.
The song Sara quoted above is the song that makes me cry about losing my mom so long ago. It's just the whole sound of the music- melody, rhythm, harmonies, and part of the lyrics. It's a dreamy emotional song- hypnotic and lush with a sadness laced with hope. Mom loved Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. Mom was kind of an exotic gypsy like Nicks. Mom is the poet in my heart. I came out of her so there will always be that connection in my heartbeat. The aura of that song will always undo the laces...
