© 2023 by Karina. All rights reserved. Use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.
When life is in flux, or it's time to let go, or change is the only constant, or all of the above, the wisdom of ancient eastern sages offers perspective. Here's Lao Tzu, Stanza 8, according to Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching:
One
day you’re on the go, vibrant, athletically active, and doing heavy labor for a
landscaping project. The next day, your
teenage daughter is dressing you, bathing you, and tying up your hair. Both of your hands and wrists are bandaged
up. In the coming days, she and your 21
year-old son will be opening the fridge for you, pouring your water, making you
sandwiches, tying your shoelaces, clipping your fingernails, driving you
wherever you need to go, and cleaning whatever you and they agree to, which is
not much, leaving you with a home and a yard in much disarray. You have to Let Go.
That
was me in August, 2022 after I had fallen six feet from my kids’ play gym while
clipping tree branches from it and the beam I was leaning against gave
way. Thankfully, I immediately fell into
a dream-state which cushioned the force of my fall, spared me from pain, and
protected me from shock for the first 90 minutes after my fall, as described
here in Part 1.
It’s
said that physical pain is mental, something I now know first-hand. For the first hour and a half after I fell, I
was in a dream-state and unaware of pain. Once I began to regain normal consciousness, I
became aware of a mild headache. As it
grew, I complained of it and asked for some pain medication. The doctor said I could have no medication
until the CT scan had been completed and examined. To me, he seemed nonchalant to my growing
headache, but he was probably smiling to himself that I was not complaining of
pain in my two broken wrists (or the yet-to-be discovered crushed ligaments in
my right hand). Not until about three
hours after my fall and a half hour or so before I received pain medication did
I begin to feel the pain in my wrists and hands. Quite how much physical pain that dream-state
spared me from I will never know. But
for that and much more, I will always be grateful.
“Thank
goodness I had no concussion,” I texted my mom and two best friends the
following morning with my working fingers.
“Back & neck OK, I can walk and 4 working fingers. And 2 kids who are awesome – much to be
grateful for.” By divine mercy, I was
also naïve about how little I could actually do and how long my recovery would
be.
A
week after my fall, I texted them again with my orthopedist’s warning to do
barely nothing through August, and closed, “I’ll heal, but this is hard. Thank goodness I didn’t injure myself more.”
“I
know taking it easy isn’t your style,” one friend replied, “I hope you find
ways to relieve your anxiety. Healing
takes time and better to not re-injure those delicate bones.”
I
agreed. ”I’m working to keep it all in
perspective, especially that I wasn’t more injured. The orthopedist was surprised my injuries
were minor compared to what they could have been.”
But
I didn’t agree enough. I kept improving,
able to do a bit more each day, and kept wanting to try something new every day. Two or three weeks after my fall, “new” meant
simple tasks like sweeping the floor, straightening the blankets on my bed,
pouring water, wiping up the water I had just spilled, making toast and
spreading margarine on it, cleaning a few dishes, heating soup in the
microwave, and making coffee. That last
one turned out to be harder than expected.
My coffee maker has its own reusable filter that needs to have the old,
wet grounds knocked out and cleaned before scooping in new grounds. In addition to opening a lid, pouring water,
and scooping new grounds in, I also had to knock out those old grounds, a
simple task that sent pain surging from my fingers to my elbow.
I
was counting on good news at my four-week appointment with the orthopedist, but
she informed me my x-rays showed that while my left wrist was healing, but my
dominant right was not. “Our bones are
like twigs,” she warned me. “Too much
bending or stress builds on the break.”
Again, I texted my trio: “my body is not invincible and I have a very
hard time releasing myself of that delusion!”
That I am not
invincible was just the start. Life
without hands showed me I had much to learn:
Humility:
when your teenage daughter is bathing you and your college student son is
clipping your fingernails, you have to become very humble very quick.
Take nothing
for granted: when you celebrate a thumb that works so you can dress
yourself, you start to see how much you’ve taken for granted.
A gentle
touch: You don’t realize how hard your touch can be until every touch brings you pain. You’re starting to get better, so you’re now
opening doors, pressing the walk button at a crosswalk, closing your dresser
drawer, shaking someone’s hand, patting your teenager on the back for a job
well done, squirting out hand cream, and knocking out those coffee grounds:
those things you’ve done every day for years and taken for granted, and now
they bring pain. You wonder if your
touch has been too hard, and then you wonder if your speech has been too hard,
and if you need to seek a more gentle way to touch, to speak, and to live.
Forgive
yourself: You were foolish and you
fell. Now forgive yourself and learn.
Release
yourself from other people’s expectations: there are those who think you should
heal fast and get back to life. But your
body knows, and it tells you. Listen to
your body and set yourself free from those who think they know your body better
than you do.
Show
compassion: If you find yourself impatient with anyone, remember they might
have just fallen. Maybe they can’t use
their hands. Maybe there’s something
else they can’t do that you can’t see.
Show compassion.
Slow down! You’ve forgiven yourself – good. But if you don’t want to re-injure yourself,
slow down!
Let Go! No matter where you are, where you’ve
been, how hard you’ve fallen, nor how stupid you were when you fell, let it all
go.
By
the time of my fall, I had already and very recently had to let go of more than
I ever thought I could. Within the past
year, I had already lost both my marriage and my teaching career, both of over
two decades, and both so seemingly strong.
My marriage had been a strong partnership for service and home projects,
parenting, and friendship and concluded itself amicably, after turmoil and grief
along the way. In my teaching career, I
was continuing to excel, even with my office and classroom moved into my
bedroom for the pandemic, but I was caught in a political drama outside of me,
a pawn by top administrators, mostly new and from far away. I learned that no matter the excellence of my
own performance, I am not invincible. To
release a career I was passionate about and my marriage all at once called for super-human
strength in Letting Go.
I discovered a
remarkable truth, one that people say, but you have to discover for yourself: there
is much freedom in losing and letting go.
When everything we’ve thought we need to do and need to be is taken from
us and we can’t do and can’t be what we’ve thought we needed to, we discover we
don’t need to do that or be that. We
have the freedom to let go of all of those expectations we’ve placed upon
ourselves and that we think others have placed upon us. We also discover that whether or not others
have in fact placed those expectations upon us doesn’t matter. Either way, we have the freedom to let go.
As we let go, we
also learn one of life’s greatest lessons: Life will work for you if you let
it. This is true even when you lose what
you love. As I was learning to literally
let go during my life without hands, I had no knowledge that before the year
was out, I would have to let go yet again, also of something very significant, from a fire to the place where I worked and played, a story I hope to share in
a third part in a few months.
The universe
provides what we need for our own growth and, ultimately, for our abundant
life. Security and being in control
might be what I had wanted, but they were not what I needed. What I did needed: to surrender, slow down,
and Let Go!
Return to Letting Go, Part 1: The Fall
© 2023
by karina. All rights protected. Please
use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.
In August, I fell six feet from a play gym while leaning against an insecure beam to clip tree branches. Only a miracle protected me from being no more injured than two broken wrists and soft tissue damage to my right hand. Still, without hands, I had to let go. The metaphor of my injury – losing the use of my hands – fits so perfectly into the season of my life. In 2021 and 2022, I lost my career, my marriage, my two kids off to college, my next place of work destroyed in a fire, and in the middle of those losses, the use of both of my hands. In each of these, I had to “let go,” and in one of them, literally. Last month I began a series here, with the story of my six foot fall on “Letting Go.”
Currently, I’m drafting “Letting Go, Part 2: Life without Hands,” to describe the experience of literally letting go of everything, what it was like, and what I was learning from it. To do so takes some time, and I hope it will be ready in March. Meanwhile, I’ve been marveling over the preoccupations that began to capture my imagination during the pandemic. Should I be chilled or awed by the prophetic nature of some of my posts in the past couple of years, like this one, this one, this one, and, especially, at the start of 2022, this one.
Little did I know in January, 2022
quite how much “Hibernation” would mark my coming year. Here is a repost of this poem from a year
ago; then below the poem is a small sneak peek for the experience and the
lessons of “Letting Go.”
Hibernation
The creatures of fur follow the signs of Nature
We
creatures of skin run to and fro
no
matter Her works of beauty or terror
Snow
coming, forecasters warn
The
furs, ready, hibernate
The
skins, deaf, go about their day
All
afternoon, snow surprises
dumping,
dumping,
softly,
quietly,
deceptively
The
day still young
the
sky turns black
Snowflakes
stream,
glistening
the darkening sky
in
lights of white
haloed
in orange
Any
who slow themselves
who
sit
who
watch
fuse
with the flakes in stillness
5
am, calls go out
Schools
are closed
Businesses
are closed
Roads
are blocked
All
are snowed in
What
if calls come the night before?
Or
before quittin’ time the day before?
When
the creatures of fur,
with
no forecasters,
are
already nestled in hibernation?
says
the master,
“For My load is light, and My burden
is easy.”
Racing
about, we wonder how
Could
we hear the wisdom of the furs
who
follow the signs of Nature
and
work when it is time to work
play
when it is time to play
rest
when it is time to rest
and who know
there is a season for outings
and
a season for hibernation?
I
of skin,
used
to the race,
am
paralyzed, mute
Could
I learn from the furs?
Could I
learn
of
a time to speak,
a
time be silent,
a
time to walk,
a
time to rest,
and
a season
to hibernate?
I think this is precisely what I’m learning. Although August and September were hardly months for “Hibernation,” they were for me, when I could do little and go nowhere. It was like Life was saying Let Go and Hibernate, and while you do, you’ll reflect and learn the beauty of letting go. As a sneak preview, some of this is that I am not invincible; to have humility, gratitude, a gentle touch, and take nothing for granted; to forgive myself and release myself from others’ expectations; to slow down and let go!; and to build compassion and sensitivity for others in whatever limitations or trials they may have.
Letting Go:
“Did I call you?” I asked my son, unaware of whether I was awake or dreaming.
“You
did.” My son, home from college, spoke
in a voice firm but gentle.
“That
was smart of me.” My voice felt wistful,
barely audible, yet demanded much strength.
“It
was very smart of you.”
Seeming
to open my eyes that were likely already open, I found myself lying on
a wheeled bed-cot in a clinical room with my son sitting in a chair next to
me. A steel rail guard to my side, as
high as my upper arm, separated me from him.
To find my way between its beams to reach for his hand would require an
energy I lacked. Saddened, I looked down
to my hands instead and saw them limp, dirty, and injured. I realized I could not move either hand
anyway.
The
Emergency Room. Clarity was dawning,
but I wondered if I was dreaming. Hoping
so, I mustered the energy to speak. “I
dreamed that I fell from the play gym.”
“You
may have dreamed it, but you also did it.”
My son’s voice was quiet and caring.
“I
must have been sleepwalking,” I said, wistful.
“Maybe.”
“Did
I call you?”
“You
did.”
“That
was smart me.”
“It
was very smart of you.”
I didn’t know it
yet, but an hour and a half had passed from my call to my son to that moment in
the ER. I remembered my activity before
the fall, the call to my son, and very little else, but wondered whether all of it had been a dream. My son was entering his senior year of
college and home for the summer. We had
a swing set and play gym in our backyard that he and my daughter, about to be
head off to college, no longer needed, and I had a friend had shown interested
in it. “I’ll cut off the branches from
the tree and then you can come see it,” I texted her. If she and her family would dismantle and
take it away, they could have it for free.
But I, at least, needed to make it accessible by cutting off the
branches from the nearby tree that were now enveloping the play gym.
I
began the project on the ground, beneath our gorgeous but looming maple tree,
and I clipped many branches from there. But
with my limited tools, other branches could be accessed only by climbing up
onto the play gym itself. Many more I clipped
by standing on the wooden structure, beginning with those to the side and then
to those in front, some of which were further out, but still very much in the
way. The play gym had not been used in a
long time and had weathered many of our region’s harsh winters. I should have checked the stability of the
wooden 2 x 4 beam, nailed into the wooden beams to my side, before I leaned
against it to cut these further out branches.
The wooden beam gave way. “I’m
going to fall,” I thought. “It’s okay.
I’ve dreamed many falls.” I
entered the dream state and let go, then fell six feet.
My
next memory has me lying flat, face up, on the grass in our backyard. I remembered that my son was home and my
daughter was at work, so I screamed his name, and kept screaming, but neither
he nor any of neighbors heard me. “Do I
have my phone?” I wondered. Reaching for
it in my back pocket was a strain, but it was there! With much strength, I pulled it out and
clicked Contacts. “Thank goodness he’s
an ‘A,’” I thought as I scrolled for my son’s name and clicked the call button.
After
that, including the call itself, I remember very little until I found myself in
the ER. My other clear memory of events
was seeing my daughter next to me, driving our car. My son was in the back seat. In that brief moment, I knew she was driving
us – me -- to the hospital.
The following morning,
back at home with both of my hands and arms bandaged (later to receive
orthopedic casts), my son told me why I knew: he had told me many times his
sister was coming home, “and then we’re taking you to the hospital.” She was at work and had the car. He had called her to come home and informed
me of this. He also told me what else he
had done: how he had lifted me up at my armpits from my fallen state, walked me
to our patio swing, got me some pillows and water, brought me inside to my own
bed, propped me up there, and kept talking to me. Once my daughter was home, they both helped
me to the car, and my son buckled me in while saying, “We’re taking you to the
hospital.”
I didn’t remember
any of these events, and I thanked him for handling my rescue and my care so well. I also told him I was astonished by the text
thread on my phone, used by him to share
the news of my fall and give updates to his dad (my recent former husband), my
mom, and my two best friends. My phone
recorded details of what had transpired, complete with time stamps: my entrance
into the ER, my tetanus shot, the doctors’ concerns, my CT scan, my x-rays, the
report of my CT scan as normal, and my responses along the way. “I don’t remember any of that until I was
wheeled in for x-rays,” I told my son, shaking my head. Then I smiled. “I most remember learning the good news that my CT scan came out normal.”
I then shared with
him the misty memories I had just after the fall, not only calling him, but
also the interaction about it -- that I had asked him if I had called him, that
he said I did, that I said that was smart of me, and that he replied it was
very smart of me. My son laughed and
said that interaction was “a broken record,” something I had asked many times,
always the same way, always with the same replies from him, and always with the
same reply from me, something he now found charming and amusing.
I
chuckled. “I really thought I was
dreaming.”
“I
know,” he interrupted with another chuckle.
“You kept saying, ‘I dreamed . . .’ and I kept saying, ‘You might have
dreamed it, but you also did it.’”
“Another
broken record,” he said, laughing. I
joined him in laughter and praised him. Had
he complained that my repetitive question had already been answered, he might
have thrown out me of a state of mind that was protecting me.
“It
seemed to calm you,” he replied, “so I kept doing what seemed to be working.” He said he didn’t mind my repetitions as long
as I was speaking and awake, but it was worrisome, and the doctors were
concerned about a brain injury. My own
sense was a very dim perception of a possible concussion overlaid with the
continued sense that I was dreaming.
Although I lost memory of most of the actual events, I shared with my
son what I remember of my thoughts, that part that thought I was dreaming. What I call my “whispers of mystery” were
coaching me. You’ve injured
yourself. Stay alert. Keep talking. Talking took enormous energy, and I was too
delirious to say anything. My whispers
kept encouraging me. Keep talking.
What do you remember? My strength
was waning, but I continued to comply, succeeding only in a couple of broken
records. But importantly, with my son’s
loving replies, I succeeded in what most mattered: staying enough awake to maintain
consciousness.
It
wasn’t until I was informed of the good news from the CT scan that my thoughts
became clear. By that time, my daughter
was with me in the ER. Due to COVID
protocols, the hospital permitted only one guest in the patient’s room. One of my dim memories in the ER was asking
the nurse if my daughter could come in too and hearing her apologize that only
one guest was allowed. I understood, but
was sad. Then I heard my daughter on the
other side of the wall say, “But I can hear you, Mom.” That comforted me; I told her I love her, and
heard her say the same to me. I could
breathe better having heard her.
Then,
while I was away for the CT scan and the x-rays, my kids switched places. When I was wheeled back into my room, I saw
my daughter sitting there, another moment I remember, still with dim
dreaminess. I was happy to see her. I don’t recall what she and I talked about, nor
how long we waited for the health care workers.
But I do remember the moment the nurse shared the news that no damage to
my head was shown on my CT scan. My
whispers returned. You can relax now.
The nurse checked my vitals, left the room, and I took in a very deep
breath of relief. “I can relax
now.”
“Did they tell you
that?” my daughter asked. I knew my
daughter’s pronoun “they” referred not to my whispers, but to the health care
workers. How could I respond? The doctor then arrived. “Maybe he can tell us." The doctor reported the test results: I had
shown symptoms of a concussion, but the CT scan showed no physical evidence of
one. “But you broke both of your wrists.” I wasn’t yet ready to take in what that might
mean and thought, “At least I still have my head.”
We didn’t ask him
whether I could now relax, but I knew I could.
Ironically, that was also the moment when my need to strive so hard ceased.
I found myself awake, no longer in the
dream-state. Maybe I needed to hear that
my head was fine before I could fully wake up.
The dream state protected
me in ways that chill me to consider. I
had fallen six feet. I broke both of my
wrists and injured my right hand, but I broke nothing in my legs, nor my feet,
nor my back, nor my neck, nor my head. Miraculously, I walked in and out of the
hospital, never needing a wheel chair. I
had limped my body into a dream state, lightening the force of my fall.
In dream mode, I had
let go. I was in a season of letting go:
letting go of my husband through the official end of our marriage four and a
half months earlier, letting go of my kids off to college, letting go of my
teaching career through early retirement the prior year. Now, instantly, I would be called upon to let
go of much more. I was entering a time
in my life without the use of my two hands, about to learn what it literally
means to “let go.”
Continue to Letting Go, Part 2: Life without Hands
The longest night of the year. The least daylight. And this day does feel bitter cold. In my town, temperatures are forecast to reach down to -5˚F. Our freezing temperatures are matched across the country, with freezing and blizzard conditions coast-to-coast.
Today is also the day for my Winter Solstice message, now the third in an annual tradition. I had begun journaling and brainstorming ideas for this message in November, mostly the lessons I had been learning while paralyzed from doing not much at all, braced in both arms from a six-foot fall in August that broke both of my wrists and injured my right hand. My message, with more specifics and less metaphor, was to mimic my poem, Quietest before the Dawn, posted on November 30. On the day I posted it, I really felt that I was arriving at the “dawn,” and feeling its hope.
Two days later – yes, only two days – a significant calamity hit, one that impacts many, and me especially. I thought the dawn was here, but it is not. Winter is here. So is Hibernation. I began the year in hibernation (see post here), and I end the year in hibernation. Thank goodness I’ve been learning the beauty of hibernation.
It seems that we collectively may also be in a season of hibernation, begun in March of 2020 to “stay at home” and now in nationwide snow, ice, freezing temperatures, and winter storms. I reflect back on my first Winter Solstice message of 2020, when I cited the Prophet Daniel envisioning a future time of people running to and fro and knowledge increasing. Daniel was so overwhelmed by this vision, he laid dormant on the floor for three days. Over these past few years, I have been learning much about the need to slow down, to cease running to and fro, to stay at home, to rest, to hibernate, and to take one day at a time.
At this moment, when I am feeling the cold and the dark, I lack the words of hope in my Quietest post, or my Hibernation post, or my Winter Solstice 2020 message, but we humans also need to learn to allow ourselves to enter into the darkness and to be honest that we feel it, and that it is hard. Could it be that I keep entering the darkness because I try so hard to hide that darkness exists and that it is hard? If so, I admit today I feel the darkness, and it is hard.
In much gratitude, however, I have been glimpsing mysteries of humanity and have grown in ways that are precious and priceless and can never be taken from me, “treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can destroy.” Perhaps in January, I will begin a Hibernation or Winter or Quiet series that shares some of what I have experienced and some of what I’ve learned.
For now, whether you are feeling the warmth of the holiday or the cold of winter, I send my own warmth and love to you for this long night, this holiday season, and this coming year, and bless you to soak in Panadonix's amazing rendition from their Christmas CD of The Sound of Silence.
See also:
