On hold: Trust the process

July 14, 2021  

Prompt: On hold

~*~

A quote by Jeffery Rediger, M.D., from the book Cured: 

   

"Whenever I ask people to start 'at the beginning,' they tend to go back to the same place: not when they were sick or back further to when they were diagnosed, or even further back to when they were healthy. They go back all the way to their childhoods. I don't have to ask them to. Something in them knows intuitively that the true roots of their stories are there. And no matter what the disease process is, it's always about the story."  

This is the path I am currently on.

A path to allow early childhood memories to emerge.

A path that has many blanks.

Part of my re-quest, as I call it.

A quest again into wholeness. 

A request to any gods there may be for guidance. 

Since I first delved deeply into mind-body medicine in the early 2000s,  I have been met with an abyss of sorts, when it comes to parental and familial memories. Though this abyss appears black, and sometimes dark gray, it isn't hollow, like abysses are supposed to be. It isn't a never ending hole. It is solid, like there is nothing to even step into to explore. At least with a an abyss, one can step into it, even get pulled into a vortex. At least there is movement. 

So I've really not been met by an abyss.

But it's not a wall either. 

It's more like a solid nothingness. 

It's an odd feeling, this lack of memory when it comes to my parents. 

I spoke about this with Dr. McColloch, the best psychologist whom I've ever been to. I wish he hadn't retired. I wish a lot of things. Dr. McColloch knew me well. I saw him weekly, and sometimes more, from middish-2000 through 2004ish. Then I saw him off and on as needed through 2013ish. 

I think Dr. McColloch was the first one who brought up the word "neglect."  

In one of our sessions he asked, "Do you realize that you are a victim of neglect?" 

I firmly and adamantly retorted, "I am not a victim of anything. Besides, everyone is neglected." 

He responded, "No. They're not. Not everyone is neglected." 

I think that's all we said about that in that session. 

I considered what he said over the subsequent days, and then we explored the issue. The evidence was there from memories I did have and in my symptomology. Yes, everyone to some degree encounters neglect, but not as a pattern during their developing years. Neglect is a type of emotional abuse, where (in maybe a twisted but understandable way) the neglectee feels that they'd prefer some sort of physical abuse just to know that they matter, that they exist. 

It's not about blaming my parents; I don't. I do not believe the neglect was intentional; it was circumstantial. But that didn't matter to the little, developing person of me. It had an effect on my wiring; which is true for all humans and maybe all animals. I am human...and animal. 

I had wondered about sexual or physical abuses: could it be that my little mind had blocked any memories of that? When I asked Dr. McColloch, he said that he didn't think so, from all I had shared and from my behavior patterns. And I thought then (and still think) he was correct. 

On my current request, I've decided that whatever I need to know will surface when I need to know it. 

I do the work, and then trust the process. 

If it were only that easy. 

Chain reaction: C-4 sever, wreck #3

July 7, 2021  

Prompt: chain reaction 

~*~

Anxiety.  Often the end result of a chain reaction. Triggers, sometimes unconscious, cause dominoes, until I wonder, How the fuck did I get here? Why do I feel this way? 

It's like bouncing around in a hall of mirrors, or in a structure surrounded by water which reflects off itself reaching into an ocean of lunacy. 

The third bad wreck. I've written about it numerous times. I think about it almost daily. My husband, John, and I regularly mention it, amazed how Mom and Dad continued to thrive afterward.

I would say it was the worst of the three bad wrecks. 

But, the first bad wreck, when Dad was in a coma and had Jesus come and tell him to wake up. Seems about as close to death as one can be. That was before he and Mom started the family.

And, the second bad wreck, when Mom was unable to recall our, her children's, names; unable to properly care for herself, even though she was in her thirties; and had to endure multiple rounds of shock treatments, in the 1960s. Seems about as close to lost in a house of mirrors as one can be.

July 5, 1983

I stand in the industrial kitchen at the long, shiny, steel counter that is held up by steel legs and has a steel shelf underneath where giant steel pots and pans and bowls are kept. On a big wooden cutting board, I am cutting vegetables fresh from the garden. Joe stands across from me, doing the same. We both work in Food Services, in The Way Corps, at the Way College in Rome City, Indiana.

"Something is really wrong," I say to Joe.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"I don't know. Just something feels wrong. I've felt it all morning."

"Have you spoken in tongues about it?" he asks.

"Yes. All morning," I reply.

Speaking in tongues is perfect prayer. It is the spirit praying for whatever the need may be, since as humans we can't begin to conceive of the multitude of needs on any given day in any given moment.

A few hours later I am summoned to the head office where leadership informs me, "Your brother called. He needs you to call him right away. Your father has been in a wreck."

I call Ted and he tells me.

"It's serious. Dad's paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors say it's a C-4 sever. He's at Baptist Hospital in Winston." 

I don't leave Indiana right away. Instead, I tell the leadership what has happened. The whole campus lifts Dad and the family in prayer. I take a walk around the hill. There are small, empty alcoves in the sides of the hill for stations of the cross that, I think, once housed statues. Remnants of the previous residents of the property, the Sisters of the Order of the Precious Blood, a Roman Catholic order of nuns. 

But The Way isn't Roman Catholic and teaches that Mary worship is idolatry and that so-called saints which people pray to are false or, at worst, devil spirits, and that praying to them opens the door for devil spirit possession. I am a Way believer, so I know not to pray to these idols. But I do think about what I've heard of the Sisters that once lived here and how this property offered healing with its mineral springs, which are no longer used. 

God...

Jesus didn't go to Lazarus right away.

He waited three days. 

I don't know what to do.

Should I wait?

Should I go?

I choose to wait. A couple days later my brother calls and says I should come home. So I go, fully prepared to heal Daddy. 

Jesus made the lame to walk. I can do the same, as long as I believe. Believing is the key. Dad will have to believe too. I know the devil did this to Daddy, to keep Daddy from the accuracy of the Word. The devil is always after the Word; his mission is to steal, kill, and destroy. 

Before I was relocated in May to the Indiana Campus, Dad had come to visit me for Parent's Weekend in April at The Way College in Emporia, Kansas. I was embarrassed when Dad wore his plaid golf pants to a meeting, the meeting where he signed up for the Power for Abundant Living Class. But it was fun when Dad and I went dancing together at a local pub. 

I had no idea that's the last time I would see Dad dance... 

Or wear the plaid golf pants...

I would say it was the worst of the three bad wrecks.

~*~

Nothing was working: Trash on the windshield, wreck #2

July 7, 2021

Prompt: Nothing was working

~*~

The first bad car wreck happened before Mom and Dad started the family. They landed in a creek where Mom had to use a straw to suck blood from Dad's trachea. She spit the blood in the creek. The ambulance whisked Dad away to the hospital where he underwent surgery. A metal plate was implanted in his forehead. He lay in a coma for three weeks until Jesus appeared to him under a lone tree in a field and told him, "It's time to wake up now." 

The second bad wreck happened around 1960. Mom was driving. My five-year old brother sat in the front passenger seat. One-year-old me sat in an infant carrier in the back seat, sucking my baby bottle. We were on our way to pick up my eight-year old sister at the movie theater.

"Ted, take off that football helmet," Mom demanded.

"No. Not gonna do it," Ted retorted.

Back and forth, back and forth.

"We are going to pick up Becky at the movie theater. Now take it off."

But Ted would not comply. 

All of a sudden Mom screamed, but not at Ted. The trash truck in front of us had malfunctioned, and trash came pouring out, covering our windshield. 

Another scream. 

We crash.

Mom is whipped forward and backward.

Ted flies into the windshield, making a giant crack in the glass with his football helmet. 

Mom manages to turn her head and look at me in the back seat. 

I don't have a face. 

She goes into shock. 

The truth was, I had a face. But my baby bottle had burst and my face was covered with milk and bottle debris. 

Mom stayed in shock. Whatever the wreck did to her, she couldn't remember our names. She was like a child unable to make decisions and care for herself properly. That's when she was first institutionalized, in the psychiatric ward at Emory Hospital in Atlanta. I don't know how long she was there. A lady named Katie, whom I have no memory of, helped Dad care for us kids. I feel sure Uncle Fred's family helped too. We didn't live far from them in Daytona. Fred was Dad's eldest brother.

After Mom came home, she still had trouble, especially with memory. So Dad and the doctors decided we should move nearer to her origins in North Carolina. Maybe that would help her memory come back.

So we moved to Hickory, North Carolina, around 1961. But Mom had to be institutionalized again. This time at Broughton Psychiatric Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina. 

I don't know how long Mom was in Broughton, but my older sister said it seemed like a long time. The family would visit Mom, and she'd show us the ceramic crafts she had made. 

Her mind found its way back; she was able to come home (at least) by the time I was four years old. I remember she had to wear a collar around her neck, an injury left over from the whiplash. She'd undergone electroconvulsive therapy both at Emory and Broughton. The shock treatments probably caused some of her memory loss, but they also helped her recover. Duality. 

Mom got a job selling Avon and then encyclopedias. By the late 1960s she was the top, national, Compton's Encyclopedia salesperson for five years in a row. 

In the mid-1990s I found Mom on her kitchen floor after a suicide attempt. I then learned the rest of the story about why Mom had been institutionalized back in the 1960s.

Until I was around eight years old, I slept with a baby bottle. I hugged it  for comfort as I fell asleep. I didn't suck the nipple; there was only air in the bottle, no liquid.  

Instead of a security blanket, I had adopted a security bottle. 

Choppy seas: In the creek, wreck #1

Penned June 23, 2021

Prompt: choppy seas

~*~

The story goes that Mom and Dad eloped. 

Mom's name was Flo Rae. She was the next to youngest of ten living siblings. Would have been twelve, but two others died young. A boy whose name was Timmy, I think. And an infant, who was just called "the infant." Mom grew up in Balls Creek, North Carolina, on a family farm. Her daddy, Ed, worked at the sawmill. Mom told me that one time John Dillinger parked in their gravel driveway. 

Dad's name was Albert Watkins, named (in part) after his great uncle, Albert Galiton Watkins, a lawyer and pro-confederate politician who served at least one term  in the US House. Dad was the youngest of three boys. His brothers' names were John and Fred. 

As I was growing up, Uncle Fred was my favorite uncle. He was a photographer and lived in Daytona Beach. He owned a Jaguar; and Aunt Lucille, his wife, owned a talking parrot that would sing Dixie. Aunt Lucille helped Uncle Fred in his photography business; she applied the paint touch-ups to enhance color in the photographs, before the days of real color photography. Fred and Lucille had three children -- Freddie, Linda, and Suzy, all older than me. I had a crush on Freddy. Linda and Suzie were on lots of Daytona Beach post cards made from photos that Uncle Fred took. Tourists bought the post cards. Linda looked like Cher, the singer. 

At some point Dad moved to Hickory, in his later teens or maybe early 20s. He and Mom met I don't know where. But they eloped when Dad joined the Coast Guard and was going to be sent to New York City. 

Story goes that after they eloped, they went back to Momma's farm house. Mom's family had a meeting discussing whether or not they'd allow the marriage to be. Mom and Dad were put in an upstairs bedroom while the rest of the family talked it out in the dining room. Mom took an empty drinking glass and laid the open end on the hardwood floor and placed her ear on the bottom of the glass so she could hear the discussion downstairs. My Grandpa Ed, who was apparently a man of few words, ended the discussion with, "They made their bed, let them sleep in it." And that was that. 

Mom moved with Dad to NYC and got a job working as a bank teller in the Empire State Building while Dad went off to help monitor the Eastern Seaboard during WWII. He was a radar operator.

When I look at their old photos, Dad was quite handsome and Mom quite pretty. Mom's hair was wavy-curly and dark. She was light-skinned with blue-grey eyes. I don't know if her curls were natural, but maybe that's where I got my wavy-curly hair. Dad had a lean, strong, chiseled face. He had dark hair, high cheek bones, dark olive skin, and brown eyes. Mom always said he was part Cherokee, coming from western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. But I don't know if that's the case. I don't know how much any of the stories are the case. 

After the war, Mom and Dad moved to Daytona Beach and lived there for some 15 years. That's where they started our family. All three of us kids were born there. My sister Becky. My brother Ted. And me. I was the youngest. 

I'm not sure if it was in Florida or New York where the first bad wreck happened, but I think it was in Florida. I think that's maybe when the shape of Dad's forehead and face changed, from less chiseled to more round. 

The wreck happened before Mom and Dad started the family. Story goes, when they crashed, they landed in a creek. Mom had to use a paper straw to suck blood out of Dad's throat. After the ambulance arrived, Dad was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery on his head. A metal plate was implanted in his forehead. He was in coma for some three weeks.

In my late teens I asked Dad about his coma. He said he had a vision just before waking up. He met Jesus in a field under a lone tree, and Jesus said, "It's time to wake up now." 

Something didn't feel right

Penned June 23, 2021

Prompt: Something didn't feel right

~*~ 

Five years old. 1964. 

"I HATE YOU!!!" 

Pound! Bang! 

"I HATE YOU! HATE YOU!! HATE YOU!!!" 

Crack! Crash! 

Pieces of red plastic scatter the floor --remains of the the small, red, once-rectangular, toy gum machine. 

"I DON'T WANT YOU ANYMORE..."  

Exhausted. Crying. 

Upset that the toy is destroyed. It will no longer dispense the two-pack Chiclets. 

Momma looks on from the kitchen, standing in the doorway, dressed in a patterned dress, wearing an apron, looking befuddled like she doesn't know what to do. The apron is a half-apron, tied at her waist. White, edged with small, embroidered flowers and a crochet-laced trim. 

I sit cross-legged, curly headed, and bucktoothed on the dining room hardwood floor. Probably barefoot, wearing cut-off jeans for shorts and a tee shirt. 

I don't recall why I was so upset with that toy. But I killed it with a fury. 

Maybe I just wanted attention; I threw tantrums on a regular basis. Mom talked with Dr. Davis, one of our family doctors, about my tantrums. He advised to allow them and to not respond. Apparently it worked; eventually I quit kicking and screaming and killing inanimates. Maybe I just decided nobody cared, so why bother.

Six years old. 1965.

David, my new 6-year old neighbor, and I meet for the first time. I don't know where his 7-year old brother is right now. David and I stand face to face. Me, a tomboy with neck-length curly hair and buck teeth, wearing cut-off jeans and a tee shirt, barefoot. David, short straight hair and straight teeth.

I'm not happy with my new neighbor. He seems like a sissy. I lift my hand, palm toward his face, place my fingers on his forehead, and pull down ha-a-ard scratching his face with my fingernails; it draws some blood. He screams and cries. 

Yeah, he's a sissy. 

Our moms jump up and run right over; they'd been sitting in lawn chairs getting to know each other.  The scream ended the visit. 

I don't recall getting punished or ever apologizing to David. But maybe I was and maybe I did. We played together on a regular basis for the next six years.  I'd play at his house and drink city water. I swam in his pool, along with the rest of the neighborhood kids, as the neighborhood grew. 

Maybe I wanted to prove this was my turf. I'd lived here at least three years already. Maybe I was jealous because his family built a brand new house right beside ours. I'd played in the big sand pile that was used to make concrete when the builders were building it. 

Our house was built in 1930, not 1965. Nothing modern about ours. We drank well water. David had city water. David had a driveway and 2-car garage. We didn't have a driveway. We had a tiny ramp for a maybe-future driveway at the new curb that had been built when the dirt road had been paved. Mom and Dad parked our cars parallel with the new curb. The new curb that ended right at the end of our yard. It didn't go down the road until some decades later when the Abernethy's old house was torn down and new houses were built. 

I deemed David's family higher class than us. 

David's family had a little Yorkie that his mom carried in her arms or walked on a leash. We had a hound dog named Dan who was rarely, if ever, on a leash. Dan used to go hunting with Daddy. 

The same trajectory...

In my previous chronic-illness life, I developed symptoms in 1982. Symptoms were severe. Too much to list. In 1999, we discovered my body was holding high levels of mercury which can cause immune dysfunction. With my then-integrative-doctor's guidance and treatment, we got to work. It wasn't easy, but I made significant progress. In 2000, I developed a herniated disc which led me more deeply into the mind-body connection. The delve and practices worked; the herniated disc gave up its spasms and pain. By 2005, I was well enough to leave a toxic religious group and its doctrine to which I'd been loyal for 28 years. Leaving the group was one of the hardest things I've ever done. By 2010, I was well enough to take up backpacking. I set a goal that by the year I turned 60, in 2019, I'd fulfill my high school dream of thru-hiking the 2180-mile Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately that dream never materialized because of the next chapter.

The next chapter

In this current chronic-illness life, I developed symptoms in 2011, coinciding with some emotional trauma and a medication for toenail fungus. Again, symptoms have been severe. Too much to list. In 2016, we discovered my artificial hip implant from 2008 had been leaching cobalt and chromium into my body which can contribute to, and even cause, the nerve damage that was plaguing me. In 2016, I got the defective implant explanted and a new non-defective one implanted. My metal levels were down within two years, and I've made significant progress. In 2019 I began to develop shortness of breath, not related to the nerve damage. Doctors couldn't find a cause, other than maybe anxiety from an emotionally traumatizing series of events which had begun in February, 2019, and culminated (at least externally) in January, 2020. In May, 2020, I began having thoracic-back spasms and pain. (Also, I had shingles in October and November.) In February, 2021, the shortness of breath and thoracic pain worsened. By March, 2021, doctors had ruled out (with added tests and images) physical causes...so, in March, 2021, I began (again) a deeper dive into mind-body medicine on a re-quest (quest again) toward healing.

It appears, I'm on the same trajectory now as in my past healing journey...

• Emotional trauma
• Overresponsive immune system
• Diagnosis of disease(s)
• Begin medications
• Connected with good MDs
• Begin integrative medicine with  herbs, nutrition, mind-body work, education, journaling
• Discover heavy metal toxicity
• Remove the cause of the toxicity
• Help and allow my body time to rid the metal toxicity
• Symptoms slowly improve
• Physical symptoms unrelated to the disease(s) appear
• Approach the new symptoms as strictly mind-body
• The new symptoms disappear/improve
• Delve deeper into mind-body work with renewed hope that it may help the initial disease(s) that were in part caused by heavy metals and emotional traumas

In 2004, I got well from decades of chronic health adversities.
In 2021, the outcome remains to be seen.

~*~

Yesterday, 6/30/21

I load my schnauzer-printed tote bag, which I carry almost everywhere, with 2 books I'm reading and my journal, to take to my appointment with Dr. Smith who is my chiropractor, homeopath, nutritionist, and functional medicine doctor. I've been his patient since 2002. Currently I've hired him as my mind-body coach on my current re-quest; ie: quest again.

As I placed the books inside the bag, I thought...

I used to do this with Dr. Piva....

Immediately an image appeared in my mind. 

Me, 1999 - 2001, sitting across from Dr. Piva as he sat at his desk, unloading my books and journal and and then sharing with him what I was learning. Dr. Piva was my GP, osteopath, allergist, and nutritionist who was crucial in my past healing from two decades of chronic autoimmune illnesses.

My immediate thought following the image was...

I'm on the same trajectory...

Some weeks back I wrote, I have renewed hope. It's a hope I haven't had in awhile. This renewal has originated in part from again re-educating my self on healing, the connection of soul, mind, body. The books I'm reading now have newer research about our intricate human bodies; it's a subject that thrills me and instills awe and wonder and amazement...and hope. 

Back in 2000, after starting to journal and re-educate my self, this same thing happened...this renewal of hope. I state in my health story regarding that era in my life: I continued to journal and began to re-educate myself on healing. I began to have hope again.

I pick up my tote bag and go on my way to my appointment with Dr. Smith. 

And again I thought...

I'm on the same trajectory... 

~*~

Today, 7/01/21

Currently one of the books I'm reading is Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing by Jeffrey Rediger, M.D., published in 2020. As I read this morning about our amazing bodies and how the immune system and nervous system communicate and what scientists are currently learning about psychoneuroimmunology, I got soooooo excited. (I first read about psychoneuroimmunology in 2000 in the book Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine by Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., published in 1997.)

As I sat cross-legged on the the floor, headlamp on my head, hardback book open in front of me, pages scribbled by my pen with notes in margins and paragraphs squigglied and sentences underlined... 

I stopped reading... 

Closed my eyes... 

And breathed in this new information letting it settle in my body and mind...  

Then... 

I lifted my arms into the air... 

Opened my eyes... 

Tilted my head toward the ceiling... 

And thanked whatever powers that be for this renewed hope...

I whispered aloud, "I'm on the same trajectory..."

I immediately called Hubby at work, knowing he may not be able to pick up the phone. But, he's the only person that would completely understand this hope and renewal as I felt it so biggly this morning. He's been with me for over 37 years. He answered and had time to listen and share and validate and rejoice in the moment with me...

I'm on the same trajectory....

In the first chronic-illness era (1982-2004), I got well...

Maybe it can happen again (2011 - ????)?

But even if it doesn't...

I'll have fun and rejoice along the journey...

~*~