A Mariachi Day

Greetings,

Today, I woke up with an enormous headache. The kind that feels like it’s been waiting to arrive for months.

Most of you may or may not know — my 25 year old son has been sick for about a year and a half with an autoimmune challenge.  And it seems the immune system touches every system of the body.  For the last six months, the system it’s been touching has been part of his brain, the part that causes shakes and seizures.  So every morning after he sleeps, there’s a possibility he might have shakes, or he might seize.

Needless to say, this has put me and his father’s nervous systems on edge, as well as his own.

While some of us worry about whether we’ll pay the bills, or if our friends like us, he worries about whether he’ll be walking and suddenly start shaking, or fall backward and have a seizure.

This breaks my heart in a thousand ways.

Because he had seizures as a teenager, and then he didn’t, for many years.  Then he got sick… and the stress and inflammation on his brain and body seems to have overloaded his system.

I could talk about this forever.
But that’s not what I’m here to do.

I want to tell you what it’s like to see him begin to get better.  And how, somehow… I feel more fragile now.

We are currently making progress, through neuro-chiropractic care and a new nutritionist.  We’re working on balancing minerals and electrolytes, something I wasn’t even thinking about three weeks ago.  We’re also reducing medications that may have been contributing to his extraordinary tiredness.

It’s hard to stay out of the details, because that’s where my mind has lived for a year and a half.

Trying to solve it.
Trying to survive it.

But now that he’s starting to get better,  I feel like a wild banshee in a basket.

I haven’t had any time where I’m not managing my feelings about what’s happening with him, or helping myself stay okay so I can keep taking care of him.

Don’t get me wrong,  I’ve had plenty of wonderful experiences.  But I haven’t had a break.

And this is all happening at a time when so many people aren’t getting breaks — aren’t being allowed to live with any sense of safety.

And yet…
coming into some safety is devastating.

I don’t know exactly why.
It doesn’t feel logical.
It feels vulnerable.
More vulnerable to have hope than to have determination.

Yesterday, I ran two of my Whole Body Recovery groups for women. One of them now begins at 7:00 AM because I moved to the West Coast from Austin. And that is early for the amount of beautiful processing people were doing after being apart for a month. That group is for women who have had a precipitating event or are living with an ongoing event and have made a commitment to recovering their sense of self.

In the group, I share a lot of what I do to recover myself, to come back to myself. But I don't know if I've shared how vulnerable it feels when there seems to be some space for yourself after there hasn't been any, how deeply unsettling that can feel at first, and how all the feelings come pouring back into you all at once like you're a full-blown mariachi band with every feeling occurring simultaneously. It actually sounds sort of marvelous when I put it that way.

This morning, because I woke up with this ferocious headache, it felt like a burden. But I like this image of the mariachi band that's playing every note but saying so much emotionally. All right, I do miss Texas for that, for that culture of parties where the whole family's invited and the mariachi band shows up at midnight and all the little kids are still awake flying around in the safety of the lantern light and their parents and the coolness of the evening.

If you've ever felt like you have lost yourself and need a place to resort yourself out, that is the work I'm doing now, helping people sort themselves out. We do some somatic movement work, nervous system work, play, dance and Women's Group support of each other, where we listen, acknowledge, and let each person know they've been received. And if you're a man, I work individually with this. I don't have a group for men yet. But who knows what will happen in the future?

Be with great heart,and I wish you a great mariachi band day with all the instruments and the gorgeous singing heralding you on this summer day,

Margery