October 2010 rounds out my 13-month “year” of shadow and light. Some magical and religious traditions dedicate “a year and a day” to significant life events—mourning and handfasting, for example. I think of October 2010 as the real end of my year of shadow and light, when things really started to look brighter. As I mentioned in an interview this month, at the end of my YoSaL, I felt like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. I was the same basic creature, but reborn.

You can watch/listen to the YouTube video for this chapter using the following link, or read the text below.

 

23. October 2010

You will see,
as cream from the udder rises from milk,
the richest of healing will come to rest on top.
Tip the cup first toward yourself. The richest is for you,
for an empty vessel cannot heal.
—Jeri L. Glatter, Lessons from the Trumpet Vine

[Not all people who receive Divine healing] are instantly healed of grand maladies; a couple of times their diseases don’t go away, but they receive a different kind of healing, which is sometimes the healing that they needed. We don’t always get what we ask for. But we always get something, and sometimes it’s better. —Joan Westen Anderson in Angels: The Mysterious Messengers (emphasis added)

 

Monday 4 October 2010

When we were working in the yard just before nightfall, Mike brought me a bundle of yellow-orange flowers from the Jerusalem artichokes. …

I took them in love, then placed the bundle in the middle of the patch of ground I [had just] finished seeding. … An offering of love given from one plant to Mike, then to me, then back to the universe.

 

Tuesday 5 October 2010

As I lay in bed this morning before falling asleep, I asked God what I can do for God. I was told to finish my book, and to be brave. I didn’t understand how me being brave could help anyone, but I was assured that my bravery would help others to also be brave.

I was also shown scenes from when I was at St. Vincent last year, and [I was] told I was cheerful then, even in the darkest, because I had faith [that the pain and blindness] would end. I was told to have this faith again. Despite my protests that this is different because my diagnosis is for life, for both IIH and my vision damage, the answer I received was that I simply had to have faith that these trials will also come to an end.

I will do my best, but I often feel my best is inadequate, my hope and faith flagging. But the message is that I must persevere in my bravery, my hope, my faith.

 

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Dreamed of having a child last night. He was blonde and blue-eyed and incredibly smart. …

And, oh, he was so happy and bubbly! And I was very proud of him and kept telling him that he was amazing and intelligent.

I pray such a dream comes true.[1]

 

Friday 8 October 2010

A year ago, I started losing my vision. I was nervous about driving, I had to wear sunglasses everywhere, even inside. I thought I had a migraine. I hoped to get pregnant again soon.

Now we’ve “halted” my vision loss, but I know it could go at any time. I can’t drive. Even when I’m careful to look both ways, I sometimes bump into things at thigh level because I forget to look down.

[Today] I walked around half of [a new town] by myself for 30 or 40 minutes without running into anyone or anything or getting a headache, and I felt victorious.

But the more I walk in “busy” places, the more I realize I shouldn’t drive. And my feelings of victory give way to feelings of loss and dependence. And self-doubt.

I still want a baby, but I worry. I still want to drive, but I lose a little more hope every day.

I don’t want to be like this for the rest of my life.

 

Saturday 9 October 2010

Last night, at Becca’s, I … found [in my purse] the little piece of cardboard I had made notes on [in the hospital] while awaiting my D&C. One thing struck me … where I had written that the nurses say they see a lot of husbands in the ER, and in OB, they see a lot of types of men, but they rarely see a husband like Mike.

I’ve always known how blessed I am to have him, even when I’m frustrated or upset with him. I know how lucky I am to have him, how wonderful he is, both as a person and as a husband, specifically. But sometimes it means so much more to hear it come from someone else, to confirm your own “suspicions,” as it were. I don’t even know how to explain how/why I cried at reading this reminder. Maybe reading it just brought the whole night back to me and reminded me of how very close we were a year ago. We had lost our baby, but he thought he had lost me, and that nearly made him pass out. And I woke up to see him so pale and shaky, and I comforted him, reassured him that I was there, that I was okay, that I hadn’t left him.

God, how much I must have hurt him in the times since all this [when] I have told him I understand if he wants to divorce me. I hope this year hasn’t driven a wedge between the two of us. I don’t feel it has driven an unsurmountable wedge between us, but I do feel it’s different than last year, because of what has happened. We are stronger in some ways, but all too often, we lose that loving gentleness with each other that we used to have. … We were happy, not miserable in work like he is [now] and wishing we could find joy in life, like I do [now]…

This, I can remember without too much fear or anxiety right now, because it happened in the pain-filled haze, where, luckily, most things are obscured.

***

Someone in one of the support groups the other day said they learned recently from one of their docs that anemia is worse than weight on the effects of IIH. Anemia … and this all started after I lost so very much blood.

 

Sunday 10 October 2010

Just made sure to tell Mike in person that I love him and am thankful he’s my husband and that I appreciate him. …

I guess he’s not like many husbands. I never really compare him like that. But I do know he’s … devoted, loving. I’m ashamed at the pain I now am pretty sure I caused him by telling him I understood if he wanted to leave me, to divorce me. I was trapped in despair and depression when I told him that, but I do remember seeing his face—maybe it was just his eyes—change like I had insulted him. Luckily for me (that phrase is so common, I don’t know how to make it convey how much I mean it…), he’d been through depression and recognized my fear, my unjustified guilt, and [my] self-loathing for what they were. Somehow, I’ve managed to keep him, and I am thankful for that every day.

 

Tuesday 12 October 2010

This is the biggest tragedy so far in my life, losing my baby and losing so much of my sight. I always knew I’d led a blessed life. It wasn’t always easy, to be sure. I’d lost loved ones, and that was more than a lot of people my age. But death is a natural part of life. I’d accepted that a long time ago. Plus, those deaths didn’t directly impact me. Yes, they were cousins and grandparents, but these people didn’t impact my day-to-day life when they passed on.

But when my child and my vision passed on, they DID impact my day-to-day life. And not having them still impacts my day-to-day life. True, not having a child is the same as my life was before I was pregnant in many respects, but it added a certain fear to become pregnant again, a certain hope, knowing that I CAN become pregnant—or COULD, at any rate. Outwardly, my life isn’t much different than it was 13 months ago, really. Our sleep pattern has changed, and I depend now on my husband to get me places, and I now have to go to the doctor quite a bit more than I did before. Still, that doesn’t seem like much. But inwardly, that’s where everything has gone plaid (to borrow a bit from Spaceballs). That is, all the lines, which were traveling in parallel before, have now been crossed, and the color of my life has changed, somehow. Does that make sense? Probably not. I’ve never been particularly good at coming up with analogies. In fact, I’m rather terrible at it. I can think in both concrete and abstract ways, but when it comes to translating abstractness into the concrete, well, I’m not so good. Everything’s interconnected, and I can see that. I can see the wavy line that connects Point A to Point B but also splits off to Point D and veers around Point C only to come back to Point C from Point F down the road. I can see it, but I can’t describe it—at least not precisely, clearly, succinctly. My dad used to tell me I babbled. It’s true, if what you’re looking for is a quick yes-or-no answer, or a two-sentence summary. But the connections I see are all too complex for anything less than a full exposition. …

I want to teach the world what I know, what I suspect. I want to share what I think so I can hear, in turn, what others think, what they know, what they have to teach me. But so many people think they don’t have anything to teach—I still often think that about myself, in group settings, convinced that I can teach only inadvertently, through basic discussion—that they don’t know anything, that they don’t have anything interesting to say that others want to hear. … I DO want to hear it. How can I know what someone else has seen in the world, what someone thinks of this or that, unless that person tells me? Yes, I have my own powers of observation, but they work best in concert with that person’s testimony—I can see if they really DO love the thing they profess to love, or [whether they] say it only because they think it’s what I want to hear.

What does all this bring me back to? What does this have to do with the biggest tragedy of my life so far? Nothing and everything, I suppose. I valued every life before and recognized the uniqueness and value added to this world from every life. But now I more readily recognize the uniqueness of my life and the value it adds to this world. That feels odd to write, and even odder to say. I never felt worthless before, but I was certain I would touch the world in very small ways. But since this happened, I have been told by more people than I can count how much of an impact I have had on their lives, or how much I help them from day to day, or how much I inspire them. It’s still strange to hear. I had been told such things a few times by a few people before, but now I hear it so often, it’s starting to sink in. Before, I brushed it off modestly, saying, “Oh, it’s no big deal,” or “Anyone could do it,” and I honestly believed that. I believed that anyone could do it and I was nothing special because anyone else could do the same. What I am coming to realize, however, is that yes, anyone can do it, but it IS a big deal. Anyone CAN do it, but not everyone DOES. I’m not saying this to toot my own horn. I’m saying this because I am finally starting to see just how special and important I am. I always believed it about everyone else before, but somehow, never about myself. Not TRULY about myself, anyway.

I sometimes still struggle with the idea that I am something special, that I can impact the lives of people I’ve never met or of people I’ve met only once for 10 minutes here or there, but I’m beginning to accept it.

My grandmother once told me that I was an angel. She didn’t mean it in the “oh, you’re such an angel for fetching that for me” [way]. No, she wasn’t really that kind of grandma. She was very smart, and deep, and kind. And when I told her that me washing her dishes did not make me an angel, she corrected me. She referenced the Alabama song “Angels Among Us” and said there are some people put in this world to make it better, to touch the lives of others, and she believed I was one of those people.

I know, she was my grandmother, of course she would say such a thing, right? She was the type of grandmother who saw the beauty and specialness and promise inside everyone, but I don’t recall ever hearing her say things idly. Even when I was a child visiting, we had deep conversations when it was just the two of us alone, having tea and playing dominoes or wandering around a flea market. I only saw her for a week or so every couple of years for most of my life, but our time together was not wasted on small talk and pleasantries. When I was still a teenager, she told me why she had left her husband and three young children (which included my mother). She didn’t say it with a bit of blame or anger. Honestly, I don’t even remember [hearing] remorse. That isn’t to say it wasn’t there. I just remember thinking at the time that she said, essentially, “This is what happened, and this is why it happened.” No excuses, no apologies, no asking me to never tell certain people, [no] begging me to understand. That’s the kind of woman she was when I knew her. So, when she told me I was special, I wanted to just brush it off as silly grandmother talk, but I know exactly what she thought about every one of all my relations, the good and the bad.

So, that was my grandmother’s opinion. I’ve tried to write it off numerous times in the past 10 or 12 years, but I’ve been told essentially the same thing by an incredible number of people since then.

I know, if you hear something often enough, you will start to believe it’s true, whether it is or not. That’s one way to look at it. Studies have also been done looking at children and what happens when they are treated with love and compassion and told that they are great and smart and wonderful compared to children who are told that they are stupid and insignificant and worthless. Those children who are repeatedly told that they are great and smart and wonderful eventually become great and smart and wonderful. I’ve believed most of my life that I have done so well in life because I had wonderful parents and family who told me how great I was and how worthwhile, how significant and intelligent. So yes, maybe if you hear something enough, you begin to believe it. But more importantly, if you hear that you ARE something enough, maybe you become it as a result. Or maybe you have ALWAYS been that something, but you need to be told it enough before it finally sinks in to your brain. Does the path matter? Not really, but then [again], also yes.

I know, I’m full of seemingly nonsensical contradictions. The ultimate destination is what matters … so long as you get where you’re supposed to be going, that’s what matters. The path DOES matter, because you can take any number of paths to get to the same place. The only differences will be—well, I’m not sure what the differences will be; I suppose that depends on the path. Have I always been meant to help a lot of people? Probably. Does it matter which path I took? Probably not. The path probably determined only what happened to me and WHICH people I would help. If I hadn’t deviated several years ago, maybe I would be a patient advocate and would be helping to shape the current health care legislation, and maybe I’d still have my vision. But then I wouldn’t [be writing my] book and probably wouldn’t have reforged my relationship with the Divine. I probably also wouldn’t have reconnected with several people in the past few months who maybe needed my specific words of wisdom. And I certainly wouldn’t have written this book. Maybe in a parallel universe out there in the multiverse, I am fully sighted and have a house full of children … and am a publishing executive in Australia. Maybe in another, I am a patient advocate, working incredibly long hours in a frustrating but rewarding job and am living in the city, still childless, and with a very frustrated husband. But in this one, I am simply me, trying to make my way the best way I can on the path I am on, trying to follow the urgings of my heart and spirit to somehow improve the lives of those around me (and thus the lives around those people), while I am still childless and have lost most of my vision, but [I] have some of the most supportive family and friends I could ever imagine to help me through this tragedy and, more than that, maybe to emerge even better and stronger and more wonderful than I was before. Just maybe.

 

Saturday 16 October 2010

Been in a pretty good mood since waking. Just before falling asleep last night, I … just knew I will be able to see well again. It’s like the feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and know you can conquer any challenge that comes your way.

All day/night/morning, I’ve been in a good mood. No wasting time. Just working, cooking, dancing while cooking, multitasking like crazy. And every once in a while, I look at something and the thought enters my head: I see this better today. And I’m full of hope.

I’ve got some neck and back pain today, but I feel good anyway. Occasionally, I’ll feel a pain near my eye, but when I do, rather than thinking and worrying that it’s a bad sign, I don’t. Before I can consciously think anything [else] when that happens, a thought enters my mind: This is the pain of healing. You are healing.

Yes, the cynic in me says that’s ludicrous, but the faithful believer in me says that’s the Divine healing being done. The main, well-balanced part of me doesn’t give a shit whether the healing is real or not because what matters is that I am happy and I believe I am healing. That’s also the part of me that says about medicines & treatments, “Who cares if it’s the placebo effect? If it works—for whatever reason—it works!”

[Overall,] I am inclined to agree [with that part of me].

 

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Yesterday at dinner, Mike and I were discussing changes in our lives & behaviors. Mike, completely without prompting from me, noted how differently he acts now from a year ago. Now, even if he wants to ignore a situation or “hide” from it because he doesn’t want to deal with it, he (usually) does [what he must] anyway, because he has to. There [were] some things that he would agree to do, then put them off … until I did them either out of exasperation or because they couldn’t be put off any longer, but now he has to do them because I can’t.

He also mentioned that he had been a little overprotective and pissed me off. I agreed but explained that was better than … him not caring enough. …

Mike sees what happened to me as a real turning point in responsibility in his life—as a moment that defines him now—I think. I think he was already moving in that direction, but slowly. Even before this past year, he had been becoming more mature, more responsible, but this was the real kick in his pants to get him moving.

I’ve thought about it before but didn’t really give it much credence: Maybe this happened to me to help him develop. Maybe it’s even helped [others] … take better care of [themselves]. It has certainly helped me not worry so much about hounding Mike to do certain things … and [has eased] a certain tendency to demand near-perfection from myself. … I’m more forgiving of and gentle with myself—and therefore of and with people around me.

So do I want this challenge? No, not really. Do I like some of the results of it? Yes. If given a choice, would I have chosen this path? If compared to my life before, no. If [the choice] was [between] this or some other physical challenge, maybe.

Good has come of this, I know, and good will continue to come of this. Sometimes (often), I just wish I could choose more of the good. But we are human, and we tend to learn best and shine brightest after facing adversity. We are a crazy, crazy species.

***

It’s been one year today … [since] I had my double optic nerve sheath fenestration. … A year since my vision stopped deteriorating and [I started getting] a little better. Almost a year since I can see light again.

Note

[1] On October 9, 2015, it came true. Our son has dark brown hair rather than blonde, but he is so happy and bubbly that we call him Unbounded Joy and describe him as “full of joy … and sweets … and joyness!” I suppose I have only myself to blame, as while I was pregnant with him, I kept praying for “unbounded joy” in 2015: “One of the things I pray for for this year is unbounded joy and success, and I put no limitations on it, other than our idea of success: happiness, ease, doing what we enjoy, having enough money to pay the bills and also do fun things” (Friday 13 March 2015).

***

Thank you for allowing me to share this part of my journey with you. Please let me know what you think so far and if you want to hear/read more of my story.

If this is the first chapter of my story that you’ve read or listened to, you can catch up by listening to all of the episodes on my YouTube playlist, starting here.

 

Find Me Elsewhere on the Web

YouTube

Facebook

 

My Services

Do you want to know what message a particular spirit (for example, a spirit guide, angel, earth spirit, deceased loved one) has for you? Contact me.

Interested in knowing more about how the energies of the next twelve months will affect you directly? Purchase a personalized Year-Ahead Review.

Looking to complement the emotional, physical, or mental healing you’re receiving elsewhere, or looking for a place to start self-improvement efforts? I offer distance Reiki sessions and other intuitive readings.