MONTH IN REVIEW

Again, I am late in changing my altar. Our road trip to northern BC was…a challenge. The sun burned brightly all the way up north; in fact, when we arrived in Prince Rupert we were stunned by the sunshine. Quite a contrast to our previous trip last fall, when it rained six days out of seven. We eagerly explored the city, striding out exuberantly after being cramped on the ferry for 22 hours. We walked up and down stairs, found new neighbourhoods and exalted in a day that seemed to go on forever.

Unfortunately, the morning of my first talk I woke up with a sore back. During breakfast I quickly realized how sore it was: I couldn’t get comfortable and ended up leaving Angelo to sign for the bill as I returned to the room. Faced with a 90 minute drive to my first talk, I quickly realized that I couldn’t possibly sit for that length of time. Just minutes outside of Prince Rupert, I asked Angelo to pull over and I struggled into the back of the van to lie down. Such was to be my fate for the next 48 hours.

I completed all of the five scheduled talks, in pain and with varying degrees of difficulty. Had I been on my own they would have been cancelled; but since Angelo was with me he did all of the driving, schlepped all of my material and books and brought the van around to minimize the amount of walking I had to do.

Once my obligations had been met, my back went from bad to worse. Even though I slept on the floor of our cabin on the ferry back to the island, I was unable to get up off of the floor. I experienced first-hand the humiliation of not being able to change my underwear, go to the washroom or walk on my own.

After the three-hour journey from the ferry terminal to our home, I was again unable to get out of the van. My neighbour supplied me with painkillers, phoned an acupuncturist and only after an hour was she and Angelo able to assist me into bed. I lay there relieved and grateful to be home with pillows propped under my knees. All was well until I had to go to the bathroom, and that short trip signified the beginning of the end. At about 2:30 in the morning I begged Angelo to call for an ambulance. At 7:00 that morning, I emerged from the hospital full of drugs but able to walk. Today, three weeks later, I continue to recover.

I was challenged to re-think my desire for purple: prosperity and empowerment. Once able, I eagerly looked up the explanation of low back pain in Louise Hay’s book, You Can Heal your Life. I had referred to this book before and found it interesting to note what emotional issues might be attached to various physical ailments. To my horror, I read that low back pain generally signifies fear of money and lack of financial support.

I set about re-framing my definition of prosperity, and realized that I had neighbours who would do anything to help, and friends of those neighbours who were also willing to lend a helping hand. Angelo took over everything: shopping, cooking, cajoling and challenging my beliefs about work, rest and healing. Not surprisingly, the hardest thing about being incapacitated was refraining from my desire to ‘pick things up’ around the apartment. I had to let that go, along with my ability to care for myself and be ‘the strong one’.

As I healed I made my way to our backyard, a symphony of happy birds and several shades of green. I stood and stared at the blue sky and marveled at another spring. From there I eagerly returned to Kaylah, my neighbour’s dog that I had returned to health earlier this year, after weeks of determined walking. We resumed our walks and day by day we went a bit further, a bit further. Now Kaylah had switched roles and she became my physio-dog, eager to return to our previous routes through the woods and across fields. Only now, three weeks later, am I able to gingerly complete the same routes that I had willed her to finish when her leg was weak and trembling.

My desire to fulfill my contractual obligations seems almost hollow now; yes, I completed the five talks to the best of my ability; two of them could have been better, three went very well. At one point Angelo had asked if canceling was an option. I had quickly replied, “NO”, but the thought was to cross my mind a few times before I finished. Would it have been the end of the world? Of course not. Was it worth it? Yes, for my own peace of mind and sense of duty. But I have paid the price with pain. And, I have spent about half of my speaker’s fees on chiropractic, massage and acupuncture appointments.

It will come as no surprise that green, the colour for healing, will be the focus of the coming month’s altar.