A Hit in the Head brings Healing/Remembering

In early October, a dear friend came to visit our tree sanctuary/retreat space. It was a beautiful crisp day with leaves making their shift to green veined yellows and rusty brown oak as they fell. The leaves of the wild hazelnut like golden feathers floating suspended on their thin branches. And all the auntie and uncle trees all around us.

I was so happy to see her as it had been awhile. As I was showing her the cute hand built wood sided well pump house, I stepped backward, forgetting that my husband had moved a tree stump there for easier water jug filling. I tripped backward and came down with a hard hit on the back of my head.

Amazingly, my friend is a doctor with extensive background in traumatic brain injury. So although I was in pain and a bit of shock, I felt so comforted to be in her hands.

The next day the stiffness, like whiplash, set in and my head continued to hurt and be a cloud of fog. Initially, I liked this fogginess because as someone who tends to overthink, I enjoyed the inability to think. It was like a forced meditation.

I had to surrender to it and it did feel like a gift, to be slowed in this way. The forced stillness in my mind felt peaceful, all details simplified and since thinking was painful, I had to practice just being. Although I don’t invite another concussion into my life, I am grateful for this experience. I kept saying, ‘well now I understand why lobotomies were a thing’ (although the real question is what is going on in society/ways of living that makes one overthink)

Partly because I pushed through and my struggle was not as evident and partly because of the grind, my partner went to work as usual and I was left alone to figure things out, as my head throbbed and I could barely move.

This experience of being left alone in pain and illness, has been very common in my mothering journey. And it happens to many mothers. There are no sick days and maybe because we do manage, everyone becomes accustomed to that we will.

My concussion made me weepy and extra tender, and I spiraled down feeling the despair of having lived here for five years now and still not having much community around me. I felt that no one cared about me and I grieved that even though I had devoted myself to creating the family I never had, in this western world, my two eldest children were miles away.  I cried for days with this heartache, a grief so old and deep. My little girl’s dream of finally having a family, dashed.

Initially, through my brain fog, I kept trying to think of who I could reach out to, and I did reach out to some local friends who were kind and helpful but they were very busy, as everyone is in our nuclear structures and the hustle.

I kept thinking, ‘what did I do wrong? what can I do to feel more community here?’

But eventually I remembered that I had had this experience in SoCal also. That everyone is running on the hamster wheel of survival and any idea of actual community is broken. This I know, from having worked with mothers for so many years. Regardless of whether one is part of a church, or lives near family, there are often many many times when mothers are left alone.

And I realized in talking with my partner that if he were sick and left alone, it would not be triggering for him. He would likely just sleep and, as an introvert, enjoy the solitude.

But I was internalizing it as something wrong with me, as it always had felt over the many years of being passed around in foster care. I kept hearing, “I am all alone, nobody is here for me” a despairing internal wail and deep existential pain, a tender old wounded narrative.

And I finally remembered that I had begun my life, as a two months early preemie, in an old school incubator before skin on skin and sensitivity to newborns was recognized.

I remembered that even before foster care, these were her feelings upon exiting the womb, that were being triggered/restimulated and I needed to go back for her.

I brought compassion and unconditional love in from Creator/Mother Earth/Jesus/Mary, all the Love that every child deserves, through my heart and saw myself taking that precious, vulnerable baby out of that opaque grey box and into my arms.

I held her close to my heart and validated all the grief and despair she had been experiencing.

As an emancipated foster youth, I found so much solace in learning to reparent myself and it felt easy to assume that role because it was very very clear that neither parent could do so. Through this, I realized that I had been putting more hope in the possibility of community. Like many who hold onto the hope that their parents or partner will one day give them the love they need, which keeps them from actually committing to holding themselves.

I realized that this early hurt sometimes leads me to try to correct the situation by focusing on community, but first, I just need to pick her up. And as I always say in session after session, to let this little precious baby part know ‘I’ve got you.’

Even if we had an intact village and people knew how to do community, we would still need to bring this internally to be able to integrate any love shared.

This self reclamation/integration allows us to feel the wholeness that is our birthright.

Holding myself and breathing into this wholeness, all the little stories I told myself that were ways to try to make sense of things, fell away.

I welcomed this sweet baby into my life, into my heart, and let her know I am so grateful that she showed herself to me.

As complex as everything seems, this is the simple inner holding that heals.

As this season calls us toward inner reflection and tending, I will be taking time to sit by the fire with this deepened sense of wholeness, opening to what is speaking and moving in this dreaming time.

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I am sharing very vulnerably here in hopes that it can be helpful to you. Which is always my hope!