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Date: Sun, 5 Apr 1998 22:05:51 -0700
From: Mary Dignan
Subject: Laid-Back Peace
Hi, Mary Dignan from a cold wintry Sacramento here.
The last three weeks of glorious balmy blooming spring have chilled into
winter redux, thanks to a bank of storms moving down from Alaska, and
it's too cold, wet and windy to be working out in the yard. So I
thought I'd come in and give you a fill-in on what's been going on for
me lately.
I'm now just over 5 months past my brain tumor surgery. I tried going
back to work the first of March, but after two weeks of putting in very
minimal time, I realized that I am simply not ready to return to
work. Until my facial nerve heals and my eye is able to blink and
take care of itself on its own, I simply cannot sustain the kind of
day-long intensive reading vision that I need in order to function as a
lawyer. This will probably take several more months, and could even
be a year or more.
It was hard making a peace with that, and my main difficulty was sheer
fear. It was especially painful confronting the compound and
synergistic effect of the tunnel vision, the additional loss of hearing,
the additional balancing and mobility hassles, altogether with the
facial nerve damage and all the other impacts of the brain tumor surgery
... The surgery really has pushed me over the edge into that category
of "disabled" as far as my ability to function in the workplace
goes. It might be a different story if the facial nerve damage from
the brain tumor and the surgery didn't affect my only good eye, but as
it is, not being able to blink the only eye that I can see with presents
much more of a healing challenge than I expected.
My spiral of fear was mainly worry about my future: if it really is
going to take several more months, maybe even a year or more, for me to
heal completely from the surgery, what is my vision going to do in the
meantime? Of course, the question is really a fear that the answer is
that my vision is going to get worse in the meantime. This fear (and
feeling overwhelmed about all the major lifestyle changes and the new
living and coping strategies) has been my shadow for a long time, at
times a very dark one that has paralyzed me to the core and given me
days when all I can do is crawl out of bed, get myself a cup of coffee,
and then sit in front of my computer playing solitaire in my jammies.
When I finally get up the courage to walk through the fears, usually in
my writing and by working in my garden while thinking through
everything in analogies (lawyers are big on analogies!), I find that
most of the fear is about things that haven't happened yet. I haven't
lost ALL my reading vision, I haven't lost ALL my hearing, I haven't
lost Andy, I haven't lost a friend, I haven't even lost my job. I fall
into the pit when I start imagining all that happening. When I am
able to realize that none of that stuff has even happened yet, I can
climb back into the present moment, and I am able to distinguish and
work through the legitimate grieving issues and other valid emotions of
the present moment. There is a saying, "sufficient unto the day are the
cares thereof" -- well, let's just say, sufficient unto the present
moment are the cares thereof. That's more than enough to deal with at
any given time. When I work through all that, I find my peace; it
comes when I trust myself and my inner knowledge that all I need to do
right now is focus on healing, period.
This isn't something that happens all that gracefully or painlessly.
Some days it's a thousand times around the mulberry bush, but at least I
am getting to the point where I find a tiny touch of peace each time
around the bush. They all add up synergistically, those thousand tiny
little pieces of peace, until I'm actually able to work myself up into a
solid chunk of feel-good time.
Focusing on the healing and the peace makes it possible to reframe my
fear. Instead of experiencing the fear as a harbinger of future
worsening vision, and letting it be my signal to start focusing on and
worrying about losing more vision, I decided to let my fear be my signal
that I need to stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and reach in to
touch that trust and faith that all I need to do at this present moment
is heal, and to heal well. Before, I was working on healing "so I can
get back to work." Now I'm learning to heal just to be physically and
spiritually whole and healthy, period. I'm still looking forward to
getting back to work, but the timetable isn't for me to set so much as
it is for me to simply recognize when it comes in its own good sweet
time. And the "work" that I will be "getting back to" is also
something for me to recognize when it is time, rather than it is for me
to define right now. A year is a long time and a lot of change. This
isn't an easy year, for sure. But I don't need to deal with the "long
time" and the "lot of change" right now. I don't even need to deal
with a year. All I need to do right now is heal. If I attend to my
healing now, and I heal myself well, I will be better able to deal with
anything that I come across in the future.
So ... at this present moment, my garden looks great, I am writing, Andy
is happy to get his home-cooked meals again, and I am even happier to
be back in blue jeans. I never thought I'd evolve into a Laid-Back
Lady In Blue Jeans, but you know what? It ain't a bad life.
Mary Dignan
mdignan@pacbell.net