Sleeping, Trusting, Letting Go

My friend, Fran Wellgood, is also my Reiki Master, Metaphysical Energy Bodywork Therapist. In normal times, I try to get a treatment from Fran every two weeks. Her energy work is incredible, releasing tension and tightness, getting the energy flowing again, balancing and refining, and making room for mental, emotional and physical healing in profound but subtle ways. Fran is a good listener, intuitive, “connected,” if you will, to Source. I resonated with her beautiful writing here, and have had similar thoughts, but without the energy to put pen to paper much. I am very used to isolation and “stay at home,” “shelter in place,” since I stay inside my house nearly all the time — not just for a few weeks, or months, but for years – 30 years — my life with ME/CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). But this COVID-19 thing is different. There is something very unsettling about it to me. The fear is of the unknown, the most paralyzing for me. The fear of getting it myself (age 60 with multiple autoimmune disorders, and immune system issues. The fear one of my kids or parents or grandkids will get it and not make it. Or just get it. The fear of not knowing how long this will last and that I will totally miss the new baby smell of Isabelle, born 2/29/20, while we “shelter in place.” I dare not risk it. I miss my daughters. So fear that I won’t see them again for a longer time than just April, May, surely by June? No guarantees. Fear that my mom will get it and not survive. Fear that my dad, Alzheimer’s patient in Memory Care Facility, won’t make it through this, and that none of the family will get to see him again. And sadness that Dad, or Mom, or any one of us could perish as we watch the whole thing unfold with quizzical disbelief.

Anyway, here’s what Fran posted today:

via Sleeping, Trusting, Letting Go

Praying for us all,

Ginny xo

“This book”

Prompt: 25 minutes: “this book”

This Book

This book I’ve tried to finish, publish, get out there for so very long, still sits on my cluttered desk, pulled, wrinkled, from the bag I took with me to the fall writer’s conference this past weekend with high hopes of making headway in a seemingly never-ending process, like this sentence that can’t seem to find its ending. Period. Not. There’s more. There’s always more to edit, reword, rewrite, rethink. “Is it good enough yet?”

Ahh.. the real question: “Am I good enough yet?”

There’s the pit of the peach, the core of the apple, the stabbing, tingly feeling in my heart when I dare to release this baby into the world for other eyes to see. Will they like it? Will I be embarrassed or proud as I timidly show it to my writer friends to evaluate, judge, critique?

It’s dangerous business, this putting yourself out there on the page, like lying naked on the doctor’s cold examining table, paper crinkling under you, vulnerable, chilled, a bit anxious now that you’re here. New thoughts surface, concerns begin to pop around in your head like microwave popcorn during its last 30 seconds: wondering deep down that maybe they’ll find something you never knew to think about – some strange new diagnosis with a complicated name you’ll have to learn how to pronounce, and spell, to Google it. You arrived for this routine follow-up, not thinking to fear, but now suddenly it occurs to you they might find another suspicious lump or bump or something that needs an MRI, an ultrasound, a biopsy, hopefully just minor editing and not a complete rewrite.

This book I’ve been trying to birth is a pretty book. A coffee table, a gift book. A hopeful book. A book to inspire and uplift. The need to get back to writing it, honing it, word by word, has kept me fighting these last five years. I want to see it published before I die (which could be a very long time, mind you), and so I persevere. In between doctor’s visits, the time-consuming devotion to alternative avenues of healing mixed with traditional allopathic, insurance-covered appointments, tests, labs, imaging, I occasionally pull out The Joy of Shelling and reread, edit a little, research to fill in gaps, imagine it in print.

This book reflects the world I wish I could live in all the time – the pensive, calm, centered, connected place I think we all hunger for, though we often cannot name that restless feeling, that inability to focus, to stop flitting from this to that. A world in which we can just be! For heaven’s sake, the incessant need to do this and that can drive you crazy, really. Take this vitamin, see this specialist, “You don’t have a hematologist? Well, here’s a referral.” I realize the next day that yes, in fact, I do have one – my oncologist is also a hematologist! Whew! I can avoid filling out another long medical history intake form, and maybe write a few words on my book or my blog instead. To slide back into the fluffy, cozy covers of the inner experience – writing, shelling, meditating – it’s all the same: a welcome escape from medical appointments that drain me, suck my time, my life, my writing life. Reaching for my iPhone, Words with Friends and Scramble an easy diversion from the fluorescent, windowless, sterile rooms of answer-seeking, blood draws, IV’s, plastic orange urine collecting containers, saliva-soaked cotton rolls stored in the freezer until I can find a UPS site nearby so I can send them off to some lab in the mountains whose results will offer me new data, a new treatment plan, new hope of returning to a life of normalcy, now 22 years in my past.

Or maybe I should just finish this book.