As I wrote Interlinked a couple of weeks ago, I discovered my intense aversion to those militant-themed messages that seem to pop up everywhere when you’re sick. KEEP FIGHTING, warrior! Scripture verses about battles, blood, and fire will find you in the algorithms. Maybe it’s sheer exhaustion from new treatment, but my soul’s response is mind your business. My body is in an ultimate fight with itself and threatens my existence. Ceasefire is my prayer.
While I am presently engulfed in autoimmune flames, I bear little resemblance to Joan of Arc. My capacities are low. Medicine aims to calm a misguided immune system which deems everything unsafe. The rearrangement is taking its own sweet time. A wise part of me knows that when I feel stuck, it’s time to move out of the way. Time to allow the new to arise in my soul.
What is arising is an invitation to feel rage.
Initially I thought the rage was sheer irritability from chronic illness and daily pains. If I eat even a bit too much, punishment follows, but too little, and there is risk of dehydration or hospitalization. I also can’t roll with weather changes without extreme overreactivity. There’s a pervading powerlessness in my days, and we can’t just throw money at this disease and watch it disappear.
My relationship with rage is troubled. I push it down routinely for reasons I am only beginning to understand. Embodiment work takes time, and suffering is an effective motivator to change.
Working with rage is strange and new. I’m extra tender with myself now and attending to negative emotions as if they are fussy infants who need nurturance.
When did I become a storehouse for lingering pains that don’t belong to me? It wasn’t the summer of 1970 during Vacation Bible School. I was four when I gave a boy the finger from a church pew in our chapel. Who was that bold preschooler? She felt everything deeply as a sensitive soul.
At first I ignored the older boy’s taunts about my unflattering pixie haircut, refusing to make eye contact with him. When others joined the teasing, it didn’t occur to me to flee. The chapel was full of children so my impulsivity was quickly reported to the minister who was my father. More than a half century later, I recall the self-loathing and guilt.
The preacher’s pixie…encouraged at every turn to be a silent sunbeam for Jesus…was actually a fleshy embarrassment full of rage; a soft woundable animal with limits for pain.
My skills later sharpened to manage threats and avoid embarrassment when bullied through the school years. I don’t think I experienced more abuse than the average shrimpy kid who is picked last for every team on the playground. But I internalized my grief.
Jesus wanted me for a sunbeam, and I imagined my part of the transaction was to harbor rage and swallow dark clouds I could never digest.
As children, we make subconscious decisions to stay safe, connected, and whole. One of mine was absorbing negative energy. It felt proactive; as if I were purifying the atmosphere. I became invested in over-identifying as good. To stay peerless, I grew hypervigilant and avoided mistakes. Reinforced by religion, I learned self-sacrifice, self-denial, and self-discipline to gain respect and admiration. This worked well, but un-processed rage in the body is never kind as an extended houseguest.
Is the embarrassing Nixon-era pixie without emotional baggage still in there?
Gabor Maté explored the stress-disease connection in When the Body Says No and writes: “If you don’t know how to say no when you need to, your body will say it for you.” This feels true. How many times do I abandon myself even now to avoid making waves or feel guilt?
Will stuffing down rage in the body damage the very structure of cells? Is this why “only the good die young?” Gabor is a medical doctor and cautions: “If you face the choice between feeling guilt and resentment, choose the guilt every time. If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide.”
The message of Jesus I hear suggests we empty ourselves, not fill with unholy resentment. Think about how disgusted he became about arrogance. The angry pixie in the church pew also reminds me I have options. I can protect the health of my soul and cells in fresh ways. I can learn to metabolize emotion without absorbing darkness. I can listen to the wisdom of my body.
Right where I am with brittle bones, spastic feet, and assorted skin lesions, I am learning new ways to liberate my body from rage. I am holding attachments lightly, allowing a surprisingly dark sense of humor to clear the smoke where fires still burn.
It’s curious. As my body and skin grow thinner with disease, my interior life becomes less opaque. What was hidden in shadow and protected by armor is more accessible, more permeable to healing beams of light.
A friend sent me a packet of daisy seeds in the mail this week. (Thank you, Reta.) Their meaning is not lost on me. She decided a few months back that a healthy response to her rage and restlessness is planting these seeds everywhere. For me, it’s a picture of radical hope and resilience.
I imagine happy fields of daisies blooming in my inner landscape. They occupy space where old pain and resentment were once rooted. They revive dormant acres with joy and hidden wholeness.
Peace to you right where you are.
-michele
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I am so sorry about your terrible disease. You seem like a beautiful angel.
Author
Thanks for reading. I’m not special at all – just trying to get free and bring some light in the darkness. 🙂
But you are special to all of us. You start our days with sunshine, sharing your soul and keen eye to the good and the bad of life. I wish I could repair your ailments and give back to you all that you give from your heart and beautiful mind. I love your honesty and pray you will turn the corner of your overwhelming ailments. I think about you often with all that you are experiencing and yet here you are still using all your strength to keep up with your blog which is my favorite way to start my day. I thank you for that and wish I could give back to you all that you gift us every morning. Much love is coming your way my gentle friend.
Author
Thank you for the love. xox
Hi Michele,
Thank you for this post today. I so needed to read that quote from Gabor Mate. It resonated strongly with me. Saying no has always been hard to do. My heart breaks for you when I read about how much you are suffering. You are on my super prayer list and I pray that one day you won’t need to be on it anymore because you are completely cured. XOXO
Love,
Holly
Author
thank you, friend. thank you for keeping me on the list and for joining me in this chapter of struggle. maybe it is enough to simply be openhearted right where i am in the middle of it all without a cure. to be so needy. i can still claim wholeness, yes? healing is about becoming whole rather than arriving at a cure. a cure and complete healing are wonderful miracles when they come, but so is pure healing and peace with the body which i am investing in at the moment. is this not a miracle too? to be joyful in sorrow? your work inspires me – there’s an effortless and incomplete wonder to it that allows so much space for the beholder. it is more healing than cure. do you know this? it’s set apart. i long to be in that world of holy wonder where i have nothing to prove, nothing to lose, only love and truth to gain. xox
YOU ARE MOST CERTAINLY SPECIAL!!!!! Your don’t realize the example you set for dealing with adversity!! It is all about trying (note l said trying) to have or find a perspective that gives us the ability to see the hard times through a different lens. You provide that and it helps us all when we are facing or will face whatever troubles have or are sure to come our way. I also stuffed my childhood anger. It surfaced with a vengeance in my 20’s and 30’s. I had know idea what was going on. Thankfully I learned and understood and overcame it. We all need inspiration desperately, especially in the current times. I am grateful to read your blog. It is unique in that aside from your great decorating ideas, it is deeply personal. My heart goes out to you and I pray you find healing soon. Gods Blessings special lady!
Author
you honor me. thank you for joining me and seeing me in the light and through the lens you gained from suffering and doing the work. i’m so weak. i’ll get there. xox
flow
Flowers grow in the valley
Well, blue skies and hillsides feel so far away
And I wrote in my notebook that I’ve seen better days
Than the ones as of late
I can’t bear the weight
The rain won’t stop pouring out my windowpane
And I haven’t left my bedroom in 76 days
I wish something would change
‘Cause I’m losing faith
So I brought it up in a desperate prayer
Lord, why are you keeping me here?
Then He said to me, “Child, I’m planting seeds
I’m a good God and I have a good plan
So trust that I’m holding a watering can
And someday you’ll see that flowers grow in the valley”
So whatever the reason, I’m barely getting by
I’ll trust it’s a season knowing that you’re by my side
Every step of the way
And I’ll be okay
‘Cause I brought it up in a desperate prayer
Lord, why are you keeping me here?
Then He said to me, “Child, I’m planting seeds
I’m a good God and I have a good plan”
So trust that I’m holding a watering can
And someday you’ll see that flowers grow in the valley
Mm, mm
When I’m on the mountain and looking down below
I’ll see a valley of flowers that needed time to grow
And I’ll thank you for the rain
The hurt and days of pain
And I’ll bring it up in a grateful prayer
Thank you, Jesus, for keeping me there
You know just what I need, and you’ve planted seeds
‘Cause you’re a good God with a real good plan
And you hold my world in a watering can
So I can have peace ’cause flowers grow in the valley
Songwriters: Samantha Ebert. For non-commercial use only.
Data From: Musixmatch
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You have to listen her sing this on YouTube its just so beautiful and true .
Author
what a gift to me. thank you. thanks for seeing me in the valley and being here. xox
As females, we are conditioned to deny anger, which leads to unexpressed rage. Yet males are celebrated for their willingness to wage war. We too often develop physical pain as a result of anger denied. When I recognize always too late that I feel anger and deny its existence, I listen to “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. I dance away to it and feel that primal messy emotion. I own it, rather than stuff it away. I’m ready to voice it in an effective way, rather than explode or allow it to simmer unexamined, eating away at my soul. Music heals. Thank you for sharing your gift, Michele.
Author
Music is definitely medicine and such a universal healer. The work with rage is still new so I am moving through all this in a spirit of deep unknowing. Yet I know my relationship with it must change – I can’t afford to retain unhealthy patterns if my health is a priority. Transforming it takes intention and tools and maturity and humility. Thanks for joining me. 🙂