Getting My Will Out of the Way

 In order to release the deep wounds of childhood

and the conditioning that was spoon-fed to us from a very young age,

we have to surrender it.

We have to get our will out of the way.

And that isn’t easy for me.

So I asked myself:

How do I surrender when I’m afraid of physical pain?

Because that’s exactly what I want to release.

The fear.

The fear that began long ago with threats and punishment.

The fear of not feeling safe.

Today, that old fear can attach itself to my body.

And I can feel myself wanting to control it.

To protect myself from what might come next.

But perhaps surrender means something different.

Maybe it means saying,

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.

I don’t know what my body will feel.

And I don’t have to know.

I can surrender the fear.

Not perfectly.

Maybe a hundred times a day.

And if that’s what it takes,

then that’s what I’ll do.

Every time fear rises,

I can surrender it again.

Every time my mind tries to take control,

I can let go again.

Every time my little girl becomes afraid,

I can remind her:

We don’t have to live in the past anymore.

This isn’t about forcing the fear to disappear.

It’s about no longer allowing it to lead me.

I’ve spent enough of my life carrying what happened yesterday into today.

It’s time to loosen my grip.

It’s time to let go of the past.

And perhaps surrender is how I finally begin.

The Only Answer I Have Left

 Even though I carry an unbelievable amount of pain in my body every day, I have finally come to accept—or at least I’m beginning to accept—that there are no answers outside of me.

I’ve searched.

I’ve researched.

I’ve looked everywhere for something that might help me understand what is happening and how to make it better.

And time after time, I have come up empty-handed.

Doctors have called me a mystery.

I have been given possibilities, treatments, and suggestions, but never the answer I have been searching for.

So what am I left with? What is the answer?

Give it all to God.

Surrender the endless searching.

The endless trying.

The endless hoping that the next answer will finally be the answer.

I’ve made the decision to stop looking.

To simply be with the pain.

Not because I like it.

Not because I’ve given up.

But because fighting against something I cannot control has exhausted me.

Maybe surrender isn’t giving up.

Maybe it’s finally putting down the weight I’ve been carrying.

I know myself well enough to know that surrender doesn’t come easily.

I’m a fighter.

A seeker.

I will keep looking until there is nowhere left to look.

But perhaps we sometimes have to reach a very low bottom before we’re willing to let go.

Maybe that’s where I’m heading.

And perhaps, strangely enough,

maybe that’s where the healing begins.

Putting the Pieces Together

 The more I learn about Neuroplasticity, the more I find myself looking back at the timing of my symptoms.

And this is where the pieces of the puzzle begin to come together.

My fibromyalgia showed up around the time I was finishing my AA degree and was asked to write a timeline of my life.

I had never put my life on paper before.

It was too painful.

But I completed the assignment.

And it brought me face-to-face with an enormous amount of emotional pain.

Around that same time, my daughter began displaying behaviors that frightened me.

Years later, my knee pain appeared after my doctor sent me to a pain clinic for an injection for a neck problem.

My daughter had visited places like that during her addiction, so simply being in that clinic brought up a tremendous amount of emotion.

And then there was the bladder pain.

It appeared a few months after my partner died.

He had been my rock.

When he was gone, it felt as though someone had pulled the ground out from underneath me.

I’m still learning how to find my balance.

I don’t know that I have all the answers.

But for the first time, I’m seeing something I hadn’t seen before.

These symptoms don’t feel like completely separate chapters anymore.

I’m beginning to see a thread running through them.

Emotional pain.

Loss.

Fear.

Trauma.

And a nervous system that may have spent a lifetime believing it needed to protect me.

As I put the pieces together, my story makes sense in a way it never has before.

And all of it seems to lead back to the same place:

a frightened little girl who learned very early to be afraid.

She learned to anticipate.

To brace.

To watch for danger.

Perhaps her body has been carrying those lessons all these years.

Maybe healing isn’t about fighting my body.

Maybe it’s about teaching that little girl—and the body that has protected her—that she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore.

I don’t know exactly where this understanding will lead me.

But for the first time, I feel like I’m beginning to see the whole picture.

And sometimes seeing the picture

is the beginning of finding the way home.