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.