The unbearable heaviness of being…in chronic pain

That was going to be my blog post this week.

That I found out there are no surgical fixes for my damaged spine.

That my only option is pain management.

And this was the song I was going to have you play:

But I’m not going to tell that story. I’m not going to explain how I walked away from the surgeon’s office feeling like a weight had been lifted while at the same time feeling a deep a sorrow pulling me into the ground.

I’m not going to tell you that the doctor had been incredibly empathetic. That he had looked at me with eyes that spoke of regret, regret that his knife couldn’t solve me.

There is nothing surgically to be done.

I won’t tell you that I wanted to drown my immediate feelings in a big, bold bottle of red, but because I’m not drinking, I instead sat in my Honda Fit, scrolling on my phone, trying to find the name of a passable non-alcoholic red wine. I gave up. There are none. Determined to feed my feelings, I heard the call of my next vice: sugar, and drove to the store, walked down the ice cream aisle, and grabbed several pints and boxes of treats. I fought with good cancer patient me who should be avoiding added sugars. The hurting me was determined to drown my emotional chaos in caramel swirls, but good me took control and peeked at the nutrition labels. It was too late, several sweet options were switched out for sorbet and no-sugar-added yogurt treats. This disease haunts me, even when I want to indulge.

This isn’t the story I’m telling you because it changed when I got home. I put the ice cream in the freezer – unopened, then popped the tab on a can of watermelon flavored La Croix. Something shifted.

This is where the story starts:

My body is my home.

The news that I have to accept my back’s limitations didn’t come as a surprise. In the month since I wrote that I wouldn’t stop until I got surgery on my spine, I had secretly considered that my current limitations might be permanent. That driving down two-track roads which disappeared into a sagebrush horizon would forever be out of reach; that the washboard rattle in my vertebrae would be too painful to endure.

Instead of the news prompting another round of grieving for what I lost, I stopped. I sat. I stared at the wall.

This is my body now.

This is my life now.

In the great pause of the afternoon, I got several texts from dear friends. I received a phone call from a radiant soul checking in on me in the exact moment I needed someone to check on me, and I knew I could let go now. That my friends can carry me, that my peeps got me, the world will catch me.

The final message was when I decided if pain was to be my constant companion that it didn’t matter if I was in pain at home under a heating pad, or in pain on a trail, out in the world. Yes, I had been living this way all along, walking the camino last fall, going on rafting trips, and snorkeling adventures, but I FELT it now.

This is my body now.

I looked up the yoga schedule at my local studio. I haven’t done yoga since January when I thought I was falling apart. I wasn’t physically any different now than I was then, other than I understood that I was going to have to exist in my body as is. This is as good as it gets. I might as well start doing yoga again.

Then I saw it. Joanna was teaching the 6am class, the class I had started taking 16 years ago. The class that had seen me through career changes, thru-hikes, and confronting an aging body. Joanna is a member of my cancer support group along with Pam, who just happened to be my first teacher at that 6am class on a murky morning in November. THIS was a sign. It was time to go back to yoga. It was time to find out what this body is capable of, without thinking a magical cure might appear out of my future’s uncertainty.

I entered the warmed air of the studio, eased my body into it’s first child’s pose in a very long time, and breathed as Joanna explained today’s theme was: Your Body is Home.

Tears welled behind my closed eyes.

My body is home.

This is my body now.

This is my life now.

There is certainty in that. I have a future I can work with now.

This is the song I want you to play now. Close your eyes, sit back, or better yet, lay down in the grass and let it sink into you.