Another Skin Peeled

With a date for surgery suddenly set much closer than anticipated, my focus becomes sharpened on the result, my movement, appetite and emotions influenced by what will help me best. Training for a marathon is an easy comparison: I have to be diligent, disciplined and committed.

Despite the heart-warming wishes and promises of support, prolific and profound, it is astounding and sobering to feel so alone. Even were I to have a mate to hold me close, or a mother who could still understand, the fear and the pain and the much longer ache and effort to come round this are ultimately my own burden to bear.

Wonderful friends and family have heart-fully volunteered, but they all have their own busy lives, families and trips to manage. My inner demons manipulate every opportunity to assert the belief that my need is just too inconvenient. The most insistent challenge for me right now is to ask for the help, remaining both flexible and clear—within myself and to others—about my needs. The response inspires tears of gratitude, choking my voice even as I learn to give them sound.

Physically, after six months of squatting on the couch, I am heavier and slower. Unable to run, I can walk more and more, ever eager now to exercise a friend’s dog. For my birthday, I gave myself the first massage of my life (could be a new addiction!) and will see a woman later this morning about Reiki.

After so many McDonald’s on the musical Road and weakness at mealtimes all these months, my body will be lightened by fresh vegetables, more tofu, rice and wonderful melons. My brain meditates on a diet of visions of being tubeless in a few months and playing soccer next year, as active and healthy as ever.

On the eve of my birthday this week, I spent hours in conversation with a good and wise friend. All illness begins in the mind, she said, and can end there instantly when we are ready, confirming and confusing for me how uncomfortable I feel about the location of this injury and the circumstances of my life surrounding it. Certainly, there are accidents in life and we can place too much emphasis on our abilities to create our physical world, but in this training regimen, a stiff dose of contemplation surely seems appropriate.

That my life has been in financial and emotional chaos is self-evident, described by many (including myself) as a disaster and disappointment. The root chakra at the heart of the pelvis is all about family, emotional and financial security, and having a solid footing on this earth. The sacral chakra at the groin is all about relationship and sexuality.



She suggested that after so many years of caring for others, especially women (a mother, four sisters, two wives and three daughters!), I have taken the opportunity to rest and care for myself; let it be all about me and let others take care of me. The little boy, rediscovered on my New Warrior weekend, is lounging in the attention to the injury, crying out, “Look at me! Look at me! See all that I have suffered!”

Later in the week, she could see the difference in my energy. To the best of my ability, I accept the limiting condition of my present and embrace a tubeless, fully functioning future. Today, I stand straighter, breathe more deeply from the belly like I used to do. My throat feels more open, less constricted. By pulling back my shoulders, my heart is opened. When I play music, I dance more, even though it produces more blood in the urine bag.

With my opened heart, my eyes are brighter. I feel almost giddy. I listen more to other people’s stories and talk about music instead of health (mostly). I have a million (well, not quite) blog ideas and am so excited to stand up and play with the band. I embrace the details of my part-time job and appreciate the gifts of abundance, love, security and good health that already surround me, blooming just as beautifully as the flowers in this spring celebrate the approaching summer.

The certain date of the surgery means I am no longer in limbo. There is a plan to move me forward, work to be done to release me from this semi-immobile state. The surgeon can clear out my urethra. I am in charge of my chakras, no longer stuck. When another friend heard they had moved others around to get me in earlier than I had been told, she cried out with joy, “Congratulations! You’ve done the work you’ve needed to do around this. It’s a graduation!”

image designed by Che Schreiner

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