Smokey Mirror

When diagnosed with chronic fatique syndrome / ME, the prognosis is not too optimistic and people would tell me that I had a long road ahead of me. When your body is hurting and you’re too tired to even unload the dishwasher, it is soo easy to believe that your road to recovery will be long and tiresome. And I was about to believe that when I heard this still voice ask me: ‘What do YOU believe? Do you believe that just because a lot of people believe something, just because the statistics say something, it is true for you?’ And out of that same stillness came a loud ‘NO!’. No, I don’t. I’d rather be viewed insane but healthy than sane and in the condition I was in. So I chose to believe what is best for me, what feels best to me. Longtime ago, I choose to view my reality differently. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I believe I’m “a spiritual being having a human experience”, not the other way around. This basically means is that I believe that I am first and foremost an energetic being and that my body is the physical vessel that allows me to operate in this physical plane. Now it was time to act on it, because in the realm of the non-physical, things are not linear, nor time-bound, things can change in an instant, in the blinking of an eye. It is what we would call miracles. And yes, I believe in them too.

When I looked at myself, I saw this soaring spirit living in a body that did not in any way match this vibrancy. There was an enormous, visible incongruency. It was a pointer. I believe all physical illnesses are pointers. They create a possibility to let go of what we don’t need anymore in order to become more aligned with who we are. I knew that my fatigue meant that I was leaking precious energy, and I assumed it was through certain deep-seated beliefs. I knew I needed help to uncover them, because in the past decade of inquiry I had not been able to get in touch with them.

It has only been three weeks since I met with my therapist for the first time, but in the three sessions that followed amazing things have happened. With her help, I uncovered this overwhelming sense of powerlessness, and through EMDR she helped me reconnect the dots. Last weekend, I knotted my linden trees on Saturday, had friends over on Sunday, and then on Monday my daughter was able to have a friend over to play and I was still feeling fine. This is almost unbelievable when you imagine that three weeks ago I could not walk normally, because my joints and muscles were simply hurting too much. However amazing, the true miracle is in the power I feel, an almost unearthly sense of groundedness, it is in the absence of the fear I’ve carried with me for almost 39 years, it’s in my relaxed response where I normally would freak out, it’s this new, completely foreign inner voice that is telling me all this weird stuff, like ‘so what!’, ‘just try again’, and my favorite ‘you will be alright’. People have said these things to me for years, and so have I, but however hard I tried to believe them, I never felt their truth. Today, these words come from within and they make sense, perfect sense. The power they carry feels amazing, but I think I can get used to that, as well as this renewed sense of self.

image of the ‘tree pose’, a grounding yoga pose
image by Michael Lorenzo

Over the last year, I’ve become a firm believer that my thoughts and emotions create my reality. A few weeks ago, I learned an even deeper truth.

During my time in France, I learned that one man on our campsite was suffering from colon cancer. I honestly was perplexed as the man in question seemed the healthiest of all. Almost automatically, I started thinking of him as a man with cancer.  And it felt wrong. All of a sudden, I knew it would have been better for this man if I had not known about his illness. It would be best if I perpetuated to see him as this healthy man I had imagined him to be.

With children it is true that they live up to your beliefs.  They are formed through the energy you invest in them emotionally, the deep beliefs you hold true, positive and negative. I am convinced it is the same with everything else.  With my thoughts and emotions, I not only create my reality, I create our reality, I co-create your reality. I’d better make sure I envision the best for us, for you.

As for the man on our campsite, whenever he crosses my mind, I try to think of him as the man who’s caravan was rammed by an other caravan, the youngest of two brothers, the man who took his bike in the morning to fetch a pain, a healthy man. Period.

Long ago, I learned that knowing something does not automatically mean I will act accordingly. What I have come to learn last week is what every preschooler already knows: my imagination can help me connect the dots……
I know eating sugar and saturated fats is bad for my arteries, so I try to eat as healthy as possible. Indulging myself with little amounts of the darkest chocolate. But in the face of temptation, I failed miserably. Last week, I got as a present a large tablet of high quality milk chocolate; very unhealthy, but very yummy. I ate it in two-and-a-half days. Afterward, I felt so guilty, my imagination took hold of me and played some scenes right out of a horror movie. I saw milk chocolate lining my arteries, clogging them up with each piece I ate. I was only days away from a chocolate induced heart-attack. All of a sudden, I had no need for anything that had either sugar or fat in it. Bread, water and some fruit was all I wanted. Next time, I’ll use my imagination before I start eating. I’ll imagine my arteries being be the prettiest any doctor has ever seen for someone my age; like the arteries of an 18-year old: flexible and smooth. Did you know the condition of your arteries determines what your skin looks like? Now you connect the dots…