Blessings come in the most unexpected ways and the opportunities to learn life’s lessons are always around us, but do we take the time to learn?  I was blessed to survive an MVA rollover recently that forced me to take a break from working.  I made the choice to “lie around and heal” rather than “wallow in self misery” and the difference of that mindset is active healing.  The most valuable lesson to me is the value of listening to my body and just allowing it to be.

Though there are flaws in our health care system demonstrated by the delay in supposed “Urgent Diagnostics” (I still await a CT scan and MRI), there is a blessing in “the not knowing”.  As soon as we diagnose something we slap it with a rule book of  “do’s & don’ts” rather than listening to our pain.  Expected Recovery Time labels often render us hopeless rather than hopeful.  Because we deem our jobs or responsibilities more important than ourselves, we often take drugs to numb our pain so we can deny that our lives have changed and in so doing, make our symptoms worse.  This coping strategy is more clearly self-talk ignorance — we tell ourselves that it’s okay to avoid the issue because we don’t have a name for the issue. I suggest to you that a hungry baby does not know the name “hunger” but is quite clear in its cry for resolution and will not stop until it is resolved.  Why does our society have such difficulty with this as adults?

Denial is not an option for this pain.  In the meantime, I’ve relied on the non-invasive remedial massage and alternative medicine modalities of BodyTalk, CranioSacral, Visceral Manipulation, Acupuncture, Schiatsu and Therapeutic Massage along with olde-fashioned-flat-out-on-my-back-no-visitor kind of rest to manage pain and encourage recovery.  The beauty is in my clear awareness of the improvements over the past 5 weeks as well as giving myself permission to just “be” in the not-knowingness and let my body’s wisdom do the healing.

In the mean time, while I wait for my “Urgent Diagnostics” and in spite of my comments about blessings I still feel that my life is somewhat in a holding pattern until the source of my pain is revealed.  The irony is that this “in the meantime” holding pattern really IS my life.

Namaste

Unbeknownst to Dena, she sustained a broken neck, a broken back, two disc tears, and two disc herniations in the MVA rollover accident on August 31, 2008 in the back woods of British Columbia.  These injuries were revealed over 5 weeks later, after the above post was written.  Click here for more information about Dena Liebrecht and how the story of her broken neck and subsequent 2½ year recovery unfolded.