It’s the things we spend our lives pushing into the periphery as far as we can push (as if we have no peripheral vision) that are ultimately the things we have to face head on to be truly free.  Life doesn’t leave anyone without keys no matter how complicated the locks.  Experience is the way we learn.  It’s the impetus for change.  It’s the marker on the tree that lets us know we’ve been on this path before, and asks us if we want to go there again.  Bringing these experiences into focus, is the only way to transform them into the keys we need to unlock the parts of our truth that will allow us full and fulfilled expression that is uniquely our own. 

The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University states in a report titled “The Foundations of Lifelong Health Are Built in Early Childhood”: “Experiences are built into our bodies and significant adversity early in life can produce biological “memories” that lead to lifelong impairments in both physical and mental health.”  This truth we cannot change.  We can, however, decide how these “biological memories” affect our lives. 

1. The way we experience the present (and through our choices made in the present – the future), is directly influenced by imprints left in our brain by past events.

​A simple Google search on the topic of the developing brain will show you that much of the way we live our lives is written into our being by our early childhood experiences.  We come into an understanding of the way the world works in that manner.  Add too that the trials and triumphs of adolescence and the lessons of the earlier experiences are either amended or reinforced. Even before we were born, as shown by the field of epigenetics, our very DNA has been written with genetic predispositions for certain physical and mental behaviors based upon these same types of experiences had by our ancestors.  Yes, the physical and emotional abuse your grandmother experienced before becoming pregnant with your mother could be the cause of your natural propensity toward anxiety as much as the constant bullying by your classmates in school makes you second guess your relevance in your career and creative pursuits.

2.  These imprints create our body’s experience of homeostasis and what we don’t unpack, explore, and grow to understand will be destined to be relived as we attempt to create stability and balance in our lives.

Imagine yourself an infant.  You give your mother subtle cues that you’re hungry.  You squirm, wrinkle your nose, and wave your arms, kicking your chubby legs.  If your mother is close by, she instinctively notices these cues and offers you her breast or a bottle.  But, if she’s busy in the other room, and the subtle cues go unnoticed, you resort to crying. 
In a situation of neglect, you may cry until you are physically wiped out and become quiet, yet still hungry.  You grow despondent. 

Each time any of these scenarios play out, your baby brain takes note of the result of your efforts so that you can more effectively communicate your needs in the future.  If the neglect situation continues, you will eventually stop providing any cues and become what the medical community blanketly terms “failure to thrive”.

This type of trial and error learning is the basic blueprint of how our bodies over eons of time created in us survival mechanisms that allow us to adjust and adapt to some of the harshest situations.  Whether we like it or not, these patterns become our body’s calibration of normal and we’ll seek out and attract experiences and situations that give us the sensations of normalcy.  Yes, that emotionally abusive stepmother is still cutting you down with her words as you look for everyone you meet to manipulate your emotions for their gain, and you find those who will so you can react.  It’s homeostasis rather than stepping out in a complete unknown territory.

3. Our past contains our earliest and most basic perception of the world.

Are you a natural pessimist or an optimist?  Our past experiences (and, yes, our genetic predisposition) set us up to believe that the world is either for or against us.  Logically, we know that the entire collective world cannot be designed to work against us.  Everyone has experiences that can be labeled both good and bad.  Sometimes there’s a predominance of one type over the other, but every day we can experience things that can be placed under either of these labels.

However, certain types of events experienced in our past create patterns of response in us that can lend themselves to certain behaviors that really mess with the way we experience the world.  Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affect our brain development and directly impact both mental and physical health.  This in turn influences our social-emotional wellbeing, creating an experience of life that feels almost adversarial.

Common ACEs include: bullying, death of a loved one, accidents, chaotic home life, sexual abuse, poverty, illnesses, emotional/physical abuse, separation from a primary caregiver, parental incarceration, and more.  Unfortunately, many of these experiences are not as rare as we’d like to think.  Our ability to “look on the bright side” is hindered.

4. Our ability to define our own truth is correlated with our ability to transform our narrative of the past.

When the Pharisees asked Jesus when they’d see the Kingdom of God, Jesus answered: “The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! Or, lo there!  For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

So many depictions of heaven seem kind of cheesy to me.  It’s because heaven is a very individualized state of being.  You are Divine and that Higher Kingdom is one you must build for yourself.  Only you know what’s best for you. 

First, you must become intimate with how and where it all went wrong.  We cannot change the past.  The past is not now.  There is no need to fear it, or try to fix it.  Sure, it might bring up some uncomfortable, even sickening vibes.  How can we release the charge of those vibes without being willing to face them head on?  What if you could rewrite your story?  Not erasing painful things, but finding your personal truth among the memories?

5. A house is only as sturdy as it’s foundation.

In working with the imbalances life has created and, honestly, will continue to create in our basic framework (housed energetically in our bodies in our lower triangle of chakras - focused energy centers in our subtle body: 1-2-3), we shore up our foundation.

Our root chakra is associated with our feelings of belonging in a body and on this earth, sense of place, tribe, and/or family.  The sacral chakra takes it a step further into interpersonal relationships with friends, kin, and lovers.  It’s our beginnings of self-expression and creativity.  Then, our solar plexus brings us to the “I”.  We become individuals based on the support we found or did not find when coming into being through our first two chakras. 
Blocks and imbalances anywhere in the lower triangle comes into our manifestation of reality impacting our presentation and effectiveness in life and our spirituality/wellbeing.
 
So, just as this filthy, dark past created our experience of the present, dealing with its creation in the now, acknowledging what it left within us, and rewriting the story of what we will allow it to manifest in our future are the keys to becoming free of it.

I cannot positively think away my trauma, the events that make me lie awake at night with guilt… the inner complaints that threaten to make me a whiner.  No.  I can only make the decision to put it to work for or against my well-being.  I decide the narrative it creates in my life.  It’s still there in all its glory, but I am the one in charge of the story.

So, when I sit down on my yoga mat, write/journal, bring out my oracle cards, conduct a ritual, or assess my chakras, I’m guiding myself through those dark spaces that if left unconscious will direct my life with their own agenda every damn day.  Utter chaos.

No amount of affirmation, positive meme scrolling, gratitude, or loving your neighbor will process the energy of these places. 

It’s hard to love the neighbor who sexually abused you, the school mates who relentlessly called you names, or yourself after acting in unconscious and hurtful ways, and to be grateful for the lesson when it keeps interrupting your ability to focus on life now.  When it reaches out to you through expressions like night terrors, PTSD, anxiety, social phobias, and more, you can try to forgive and forget all you want.  Those dark places will keep surprising you by coming back up.  

​These events literally wired your brain.  It is through loving and accepting all of yourself that you can choose the gift that your darkness brings.  

Sometimes, darkness is so scary or alien an idea that we’re confused as to how to go there without getting lost in the despair.  That’s when we may need a guide.  Someone who has been there before with themselves and others. 

They aren’t a therapist, or a psychiatrist.  They are a peer, and can share tools to help light the way and dig through the rock to the coal seam.  That’s the work I do with clients.  The realest of real.

If you’ve ever been totally put off by the “happy hippie” aesthetic, the under explained law of positivity, or even counting your blessings, it could be time to face your shadow.

If you don’t want to go alone, find someone who’s gone before to guide you there.  Can you trust anyone who has never gone on the shaded path, but instead chose to “change their mindset” when the shit hits the fan?  How will they react to heavy emotion and events?  Where did their dark side go?

All this time, I had been avoiding my comfort in the shadows because I didn’t want to be constantly explaining myself to the #blessed crowd.  

I made myself palatable as often as I could, and reigned myself in when I wanted to take a conversation into the realm of what is seen as negative talk only because it makes people feel uncomfortable with me and their selves.  I didn’t want to be the person people avoid because she’s always talking about the bits that they want to push back into the dusty corners. 

Yet, part of facing my own truth is to accept that life has wired me for this work, people need a hand to hold, and I am rather content to offer mine.  It doesn’t look like rainbows, pumpkin spice lattes, and tropical paradise, but it is damn beautiful all the same.

Meet Kelli Hansel – The Shadow Guide.

Our culture is all about changing, subduing, or avoiding our physical bodies.  Extreme diets, pharmaceuticals, plastic surgery, consumer culture, social media, obsessions, and even our spiritual practices contribute. What would happen though if we focused on radically being in our body instead of changing, subduing, or avoiding them?  What would it mean to live the language of our body?
​
There are signs all over the place that a great many people aren’t truly inhabiting this human form we’ve been given.  Unconscious behavior runs rampant.  The abuse of food, drugs, alcohol, sex, and one another both emotionally and physically are just some of the ways this is true.  It’s true on the level of faith too.  In spiritual communities all over the globe, there’s a lot of encouragement to “transcend the body,” as it is imagined the Buddha and Jesus Christ did, either through meditation, other spiritual practices, or self-sacrifice.  Escapism is not the answer to the human struggle.  It is the cause.

​​We find ourselves in the midst of struggle and instead of addressing it on the tangible, human level we choose to escape.  At different times of our lives we all are guilty of trying to experience something outside of our human form in various degrees.  Sometimes, this trying is a conscious effort.  Other times, it is completely unconscious.  It isn’t always a bad thing.  Everyone needs a vacation from time to time.  However, considering death is the only real way to escape the human form, if we don’t allow ourselves to consciously inhabit our bodies we are spending our entire lives avoiding living.

Whether we’re experiencing this active escapism as a result of mental, emotional, or physical trauma doesn’t matter.  What matters is that we make ourselves conscious to it so that we can address it.  Are you really letting yourself be in your body?  Are you opening yourself up to a fully impactful human experience?

Here’s some signs you might be in avoidance mode.

1. You don’t recognize yourself when you look in the mirror.

Every time you look in the mirror you feel like shit.  Even when you try to be positive about your physical appearance, you find yourself smoothing wrinkles in your shirt over your midsection.  So, you’ve started avoiding mirrors.  Now, if you happen to catch a glimpse of yourself you’re shocked that what you see is you.  It doesn’t look like you.  It doesn’t look like what you imagine when you’re feeling good about who you are and what you’re doing in life. 
Our reflection in the looking glass and our reaction to it is a good gauge for whether or not we’re allowing our body to be our home.  Feeling alienated by your own body is not conducive to experiencing your personal power, focus, and will – your magick.  We gotta own these bodies.
Try some self-care to learn to connect with your body on a deeper level.  Ask your body some simple questions and trust the answers that your gut gives you:

• Do you need more sleep?
• Do you need to move more?  How do you like to move?
• Do you like what I’m feeding you?  How do I know if the food and drink I am nourishing you with is the right thing?
• Do I allow you to be primal enough?  Fresh air, connecting to earth, clean water, play, etc…
• Do I make you feel beautiful?  How can I help you feel beautiful?
• Do we need to go to the doctor or alternative health practitioner? 

Listen and take action on the feedback your body gives.  But...

2. You overthink everything.

You find it hard to trust your gut.  What is intuition anyway?  Isn’t part of being human our ability to approach things through logic, problem solving, and complex forms of expression?  What if that gut feeling is wrong?
Part of becoming disconnected from the body is that we lose the trust of the feedback it gives us.  We unlearn the language it uses to speak to us.  As babies and young children, we are very good at communicating with our bodies.  Our bodies are how we learn to get around in the world and to obtain all that we need for survival.  Add to those basic instincts the ability to reason and discern, and we’re pure force!
Our bodies communicate in the form of sensations.  From emotions, to experiencing hot or cold our bodies provide us with endless data to inform our action.  What if we began with this feedback, then applied logic, and then assessed whether or not that fits with what we “thought” was true at first – intuition?  This is a step by step utilized Break Method, also developed by Bizzie Gold.  Using our body and mind for decision making is a game changer.  It can save all kinds of anxiety and time second guessing yourself.  

3. You ignore physical sensation or overindulge in sensation making activity to feel alive.

​You’ve found yourself saying – I feel dead inside.  Everything is dull, mundane… unexciting.  Even down to knowing when you’re hungry or not.  You look up from your computer screen and it’s two hours passed lunchtime and you suddenly realize your ravenous.  You couldn’t cry at your grandmother’s funeral even though you were very close.  During sex, you find yourself checking out and making to-do lists for the next day, or debating whether or not the giants mentioned in the Old Testament bible were actually aliens.  Orgasm is overrated. 
In this case, you’ve disconnected so completely from your body, if you don’t recover the connection, it will be a life altering event that finally provides you the impetus to get back in there... if it doesn’t kill you.  Your body can make life exciting.  What’s in there that you are avoiding?  How might you address those things in order to find your way back in?
Or, perhaps you feel alive by being the life of the party.  You take all the risks.  Excess is your middle name.  Indulging makes you feel alive.  The hangover after is what feels like death.  Moderation feels too boring.  Day to day living is not enough to make you feel alive, and it’s only by taking your body to extremes that you get enough sensation to feel present in life.  Otherwise, there’s a numbness to it all.  A feeling of waiting that is nearly unbearable.
You too are disconnected from the body.  Even in exploring the limits of the body you are disconnected and ignoring it.  There’s not a balance.  It is not sustainable.  Therefore, you aren’t getting the totality of experience.  You are not present for life, but constantly trying to alter it.  How can you impact something for the positive if you aren’t aware of all that it currently is?  What too are you avoiding?  How might you address those things in order to find your way back in?

5. Your spiritual practice focuses on transcending the body.

Has escapism become a dogma for you under a spiritual guise?  Flesh as weakness.  Every major religion and most traditional spiritual practices have some form of this thought when taken out of context or to the extreme.  Is all your chakra work in the upper triangle?  Is your biggest struggle in meditation to ignore the physical sensations in your body?  Do you spend hours praying your way out of struggles?  Are you honing astral projection, but ignoring the stomach pains after you eat?
The truth is, looking at the chakra system and other psychological schools of thought, that most of our inner work should be around our connection to home/tribe, interpersonal relationships, and our expression of ourselves as an individual.  The lower triangle of chakras, if you are familiar with that system.  The things that illustrate our human experience.  Without roots a tree cannot reach the heavens.  Without the ability to ground into our bodies, how do we even know what we are transcending?  Maybe the lesson is to – be here now.
​

The same three episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations played repeatedly at least three times that night.  One, he was somewhere in Spain eating in a local's home.  I thought of how Mimi always was the one cooking for us when we all lived together.  How would Bourdain feel about her food?

I had been watching Anthony Bourdain for years.  I was relieved that at least those three episodes was something of a distraction as opposed to infomercials and other random television bullshit that plays in the wee hours of the morning.  Through Bourdain, I saw parts of the world that this working class mountain girl will never get to see with her own eyes.  I would watch him have experiences as I would want to have them.  Ask the questions I was curious about.  See the parts of life that aren't just for show.  His jokes felt like they were coming from a friend who got my brand of humor.  Watching him felt real.  There was empathy in his eyes.  A knowing from somewhere deep.

I lost my Mimi not long after that night.  She had played the biggest role in raising the woman I am today.  Having watched her suffer, I stopped fearing death.  When I understood that miraculous healing is not what we are owed and that this life is but a blip in the whole scheme of things, I realized that death means freedom.  It's real freedom.  And, that when she passed on, she would no longer hurt, suffer, be cold, feel bodily pain, worry, fear, or anything like that.  She'd be transmuted.

I experienced the death of my grandfather, aunt, and uncle during that same period of time.  And, each time, while I was sad and wished they didn't have to go, I started feeling relieved for them. They each had to suffer so much before death.  Sure, you may think it morbid.  Heartless even.  But, freedom is boundlessness.  I only want freedom and boundless nature for my loved ones.

It was within this time frame that I began to not want to exist.  I wanted that boundlessness too.  I was done having to be at the doctor all the time, having entire days lost to physical pain and listlessness.  Done wondering if I was a good enough mother.  Done trying to juggle finances and being poor despite busting tail.  Done waiting to live because everything was consumed by timelines and priorities I didn't create.  There was nothing to make me want to stay aside from the pain that it would cause my daughters to know that I couldn't stay for them.  That was the only thing that kept me living.

You cannot judge someone for feeling this way.  Sure, you can say, look at all they have going for them.  Look at the life they have that I wish I had.  You can call them ungrateful, negative, thoughtless, selfish... but, unless you can understand the loss of emotional attachment to living coupled with a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual exhaustion associated with going about the day in and out... in and out, then you cannot know how not wanting to exist feels.  You cannot judge what you cannot comprehend.  

It isn't that a person does not value or see their blessed life.  It isn't that they are negative or have stopped seeing beauty.  And, other than putting a higher priority on their own suffering than that of their loved ones, you can't even say it is selfish.  We make other similar life choices all the time.  Accepting or declining medical care, smoking cigarettes, walking a tightrope, doing drugs, eating crappy food, driving the car too fast, climbing Mt. Everest... things that we deem worth the risk despite the pain it might cause to us or others in the future.  In a way, that's actually living.  The thing to realize is that the people who decide they don't want to exist are too exhausted to keep trying.  They made the pros and cons list.  They did the risk vs. benefit analysis maybe 1,000 times.  And, in the moment they end it, the finality of not existing felt like freedom.  Boundlessness.  All else would go on.  Life, for all of us is a series of struggles as much as it is blessings.  We cannot save our loved ones from that experience because they are alive. 

I understand how "out there" this sounds.  Unless you've felt it, it's a hard thing to intellectually grasp.  We are born with the instinct to survive.  A newborn baby has the ability to wiggle, smell, root, and find it's mother's breast with no help when placed on her abdomen.  I watched my grandmother fight for her life even after she knew it was over.  We fear the unknown, naturally.  Until, through experiences and chemical configurations in the brain, loneliness, and lethargy from whatever cause, the unknown becomes more appealing than the experience we are having.  Suicide is NOT normal.  It is NOT an answer.  It's an avoidance of the problem all together. 

What we have to do though is make "suicide" a word we use.  We need to ask our friends about it in conversation.  We need to check on the friend that seems so very strong and courageous as often as the one who is having obvious struggles.  That doesn't mean a text (though that is good), it also means visits.  It means getting up in their business even if it gets on their nerves.  It means meeting them where they are - even when they decline invitations, finding something that they can say yes to and doing that.  It's about really seeing a person.  Not just a social media account.  It's about eye to eye conversations.  It's about belly laughs.  It's talking about the tough stuff.     

In a culture that puts so much value on "manifesting" and "postivity," we cannot neglect the experiences that allow us to understand what a "happy life" means.  We cannot stop giving space to our pain and hurt.  We cannot underappreciate sadness.

Stop avoiding your the topic of your friend's suffering.  Stop ignoring that funny look in their eyes that you kind of wanted to ask about, but didn't want to intrude or make things uncomfortable.  Be willing to get uncomfortable dammit!  It won't KILL you!

This past week, despite all the great things in my life, the feelings of not wanting to exist would well up from time to time.  It happens when I haven't had a break and get really tired.  Now, that I understand those feelings, I think I will always face them when things are especially tiring, hard, or the right combination of this or that brings them up.  I have attempted suicide twice in my younger years, before I truly grasped what it was I wanted to do in attempting such a thing.  Now, being a mother will keep me from attempting, because I know that I don't want to be a source of any suffering for my girls.  Yoga will give me reprieve.  I will be open about the thoughts and tell people that if I quit talking about it, that's when they need to pay attention most.  Being unmedicated now, I know I must diligently use my new coping tools.  I will teach yoga, and I will give myself and my gifts as a resource to humanity.  Anyone who wants to sit with me, I will, with honor, listen and I will share if you want to know.  Don't discredit me or the things I share with you because I have these feelings.  Don't label me negative.  Yet, I will still be ok with the thought of not waking up.  I have lost my attachment to living even in all its beauty and glory.  Time is only now and a long, happy life is never a guarantee.  No reason to be attached.

Then, today, while wishing I had more energy to face my day, I saw that Anthony Bourdain had made the choice to end his time here on earth.  I cried.  I've cried multiple times.  I feel like I have lost a good friend.  I've openly talked about him as my favorite of favorites.  His work opened the world up to me.  I'm devastated especially for his daughter, whom it was obvious he loved dearly.  I hope she has a good network surrounding her.  I hope Anthony is free.  Boundless.  He, if any of us, knew the beauty this world offers as well as the bad, and understood it twice as good.    

     After a few times seeing clips of Bizzie Gold and the Dynamic Flow DVD, I was intrigued.  I recognized elements from my vinyasa and kundalini practice, but there was an undogmatic freedom and power I had yet to experience.  I wanted to know what it was that I was witnessing as I watched Bizzie move.  So, on March 19, 2017, I did the 30-minute Dynamic Flow practice in my bedroom.  It kicked my ass and I fell in love.  I had found the missing elixir to aid my healing.
Despite being what I had thought was pretty fit, as I continued to practice, I found Buti a challenge.  My joints would swell.  My doctor told me that my body just didn’t like the intensity, and if I were to continue, I should do so mindfully.  He, knowing me and my determination, said, “I’ll see you back when you have an injury.”  I love a good challenge, especially when my success is up to me and only me.  I knew my body should be and would be capable if I listened and supported my effort properly.  I kept up, mindfully.  My joints stopped swelling. 
                Within a few months, I had all the DVDs available.  I live in a very rural community with poor internet access, so I waited to subscribe to the Tones.  The closest, in person, class was over two hours away.  No one in my town was doing Buti.  Buti, alone, was motivating me to keep up.  Before too long, I was following the three days on and one day off schedule recommended by the DVD inserts.
                The change was subtle at first.  I didn’t know if I’d stay enthusiastic.  I had no clue that I was committing to the practice that would lift me out of the dark pit.  Oh, but I had.  I connected with the tribe of butisattvas on Facebook and was floored by the beauty and loving kindness there.  No cat fights.  No body shaming.  Personal answers to questions from Bizzie herself and all the other master trainers. This practice was not created to leave you in the deep waters to sink or swim.  It was created as a tool for thriving.  Never before had I been in a group of women that actually felt like a genuine sisterhood.
                Soon, I stopped getting on the scale every week.  I stopped using the tape measure I bought to measure inches to avoid weighing on the scale.  I no longer felt the need to monitor my intake of macros.  I just kept up with my autoimmune protocol paleo diet and started supplementing collagen and turmeric.  Then, I found Golden Ratio Nutrition and used the protein powder to support my new level of activity in a way that brought vitality.
                By July 2017, my community had crowd funded my Buti certification in Nashville, TN with Talen Lane.  Experiencing the Buti sisterhood in person gave me a new level of understanding in my practice and friendships that are still ongoing.  While I haven’t had the opportunity to teach Buti much in my community (my Buti class will start at Evolation Yoga Kentucky in just a few short weeks), I already use the principles I was taught to enhance the beginning vinyasa classes I do teach.  I know that one day I will share Buti with a tribe of Appalachian Kentucky butisattvas, and we’ll be badass.  

The most important thing in all this is the fact that I’m ok with my body for the first time in my life.  I appreciate its strength and its intrinsic healing powers.  I see beauty in its flaws.  Even those, like my stretched tummy, that still gives me pause when looking in the mirror.  I’m in the best physical shape, at age 39, of my entire active life.  I’ve taken my yoga practice to places I could not have without the aid of Buti.  I know what it feels like to stand in my worth and know I work hard.  I trust that I am strong enough to make it now.  I questioned that before.
​Yoga means – “union” or “to yoke.”  It is the connection of mind, body, and spirit through breath.  It is learning to be fully in the body in order to spiritually transcend its limitations.  I have practiced yoga for fifteen years now.  I taught yoga before Buti, but Buti taught me yoga.  This year has brought me away from a daily desire to not exist.  I’ve reached a degree of healing that I had given up on finding.  I’m pursuing dreams, taking risks, finding inner confidence, learning to be grounded, and showing my daughters what it means to live life out loud.  There’s still so much room for growth that I get scared sometimes.  How much more wondrously real can it get?  What I know now, because I found Buti, is that I have what I need to move forward with grace, supportive sisterhood does exist, and my body is not to be a shamed object.  I know that I am fierce.  I am strong.  I am awakened.  I am Buti.

             I can’t help but share my story when I hear the struggles of others.  The year I became a mother, I learned the hard lesson that ignorance is not bliss.  More of us, especially women, should be sharing the truth of our stories.  We need to share it all, even the hard parts – the parts we’ve yet to fix or grow into, included.  It’s how we learn from our own mistakes and from one another.  It’s how we can prevent a little heartache and some aimless wandering.  You may be thinking, I don’t want people to think I’m a negative person.  Or, on the opposite end, I don’t want anyone to think I’m bragging.  I understand.  Totally.

                My story of healing sounds nearly impossible if I tell it in its entirety.  Pieces of it are scattered throughout this blog and my other writings.  I share bits of it on social media.  A lot of it isn’t easy to hear, but I try not to be shy about sharing those parts too.  I’m a warrior.  I battle depression, anxiety, Hashimotos Thyroiditis, polyarthropathy (chronic non-specific joint pain), chronic migraines, and chronic gastritis and colitis.  I have a little bit of stuff that likes to slap me in the face every morning.  But… I’ve lost over 100 pounds, and I have weaned myself off of all prescription medications aside from my daily thyroid hormone.

                I could say that the main factor in getting this far for me was consistent positivity, but that would be a HUGE lie.  It would not only be a lie, but it could even set others up for failures in their own journey if they think positivity alone can get them where they want to be.  Try remaining positive when in constant pain, worrying that something you said days ago was taken the wrong way, and all the while you don't want to exist anymore.  In that state of being, nothing is as simple as a positive attitude.  Worse than that is if that positivity is a distraction from the things we’re truly feeling, because it will keep coming up and asking for our attention.  For those of us born into a state of fairy like bliss, positivity may come naturally.  For others of us, life coupled with brain chemistry wired us differently.

                I don’t mean to sound derogatory toward people who naturally tend toward positivity.  In fact, there are aspects of that tendency that I can become envious of if I’m not careful.  Yet, we must point out, in the age of incessant out of context quoting and the popularity of memes, that positive thinking, as it is portrayed by that mostly online culture, is not accessible to many people who desire to make positive life changes.  At worst, those types of attitudes can bring shame, guilt, and alienation to those who feel like they must always keep a positive outward appearance to not seem like an ungrateful, sour person. 
​
                There have been times when I personally have felt demeaned for sharing aspects of my story that others perceived as negative.  Other times, I’ve taken a deep personal look at this idea that a “change of attitude” is what it takes to bring happiness.  I saw a meme once that brought such a sick felt heartache to me that it shocked me to feel it.  It said:

​The person who posted the meme said they had no room for negative people in their life.  It felt as though because I was in a state of unhappiness, I was being accused of being ungrateful.  I am immensely grateful for my life and always have been.  I do go through periods of intense unhappiness without losing that gratitude.  Secondly, I felt rejected by this person for any possibility of friendship or working together because I openly share my struggles with depression and anxiety.  Our society sees these things as negative, therefore, did they perceive me as one of the negative people they were referring to in their posting?

                I took a long time to explore this idea for myself.  Was there something I was missing?  Is it really as simple as saying – hating my pain is negative, I need to stop whining and just accept my pain as a permanent part of my life.  Be positive.  It isn’t that simple.  For me to make positive changes in my life, I could not wait for myself to feel that positive attitude, I had to harness the energy of the emotions seen as negative to create my forward momentum.  I had to transform "negative" emotions into positive motion.
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                A fair number of people reach out to me who are also feeling sadness, depression, or intense struggle.  Often, these feelings are coupled with health problems, financial issues, or loneliness.  None of them want to remain in this state.  They want it to end or at the very least believe in the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  It is naïve to expect that someone (even yourself) can just choose not to feel the emotions our society have deemed “negative.”  To transform these emotions into forward, or healing momentum takes time, goals with a plan to reach them, and a willingness to be more flexible in your thinking.  Consistency in those three things is key.  Some things will be worked at hard with no results.  Some will make you feel worse before you get better.  Others will ask you to confront some really hard truths about yourself and your life.  The process will demand you use your intuition to guide your way forward.  

               ​A lot of language I hear from people as they share their story is self-limiting, such as: I have no motivation.  I can’t.  I won’t.  Others use blame shifting like: There’s no time.  The kids won’t let me.  I can’t afford it.  I have no support. 

             I’m not going to call those “just excuses.”  They’re not.  Many of these things are very real obstacles.  I am, however, going to call it “stagnant” or “stiff” thinking.  While some obstacles will be ever present, those things do not have to block us in other areas.  If a person I’m talking with doesn’t respond to my suggestions, or seems resistant, I know what I am offering isn’t something they are ready for at the present time.

          For example, diet can be pretty difficult to change, but you want to make yourself physically healthier overall.  Don’t start with diet.  Start with exercise.  You can exercise at any time.  You can exercise for free.  Research shows that exercise lifts the overall mood.  Exercise can look a lot of different ways.  Begin by setting a goal.  I will exercise 3-4 days a week.  Then, make a plan.  I will wake up 30 minutes early and do chair yoga.  I will always use the stairs at work.  After dinner the kids and I will walk the dog.  With that, you’ve begun.  As you reach goals, you’ll become motivated to create more. You may begin see some of your obstacles differently, turning them into opportunities. 

 If you’re wanting to begin a healing journey, but find yourself “stuck”, ask:

1. When is enough – ENOUGH?  When you find you’re truly fed up with something, you’ll be more motivated to change it despite the odds.
2. How long will I give this situation power over me?  Am I letting this circumstance dictate how I experience my life?  Does it deserve that much power over me?
3. What resources do I have that are in my favor and can I utilize those aspects of my life or personality to address the areas that aren’t working?

These questions aren’t easy to answer, especially if you’re being honest with yourself.  Often we become too comfortable in discomfort, and the very thought of changing our story brings up anxiety which tricks us into self-sabotage.  It isn’t easy or simple to shift toward an unknown even if it can create positive change.

             For those who carry some heaviness of heart or circumstances, it can sometimes be the things meant to guide us toward the light that add to our darkness.  No one sharing these memes or ideas means harm.  The most important thing to remember is that everything exists in shades of gray.  Nothing is completely black or white.  No one will be happy all the time.  You don’t have to accept your darkest days as a state of permanence. 

         According to the Buddha, there is suffering.  Suffering is common to all.  Everyone experiences the tears of birth, sickness, old age, and death.  Buddha said, 

Two days after my birthday in 2011, before I became a mother for the third time and that birth along with subsequent events sent me into this bizarre realm of simultaneous excited joy and the personal space of death (I've not maintained spaghetti arms - LOL.), I received my spiritual name from the 3HO organization.  I read the name - Hari Dass Kaur, but I felt disconnected from it, disappointed even.  The email read:

Hari Dass Kaur, the very essence of it's meaning is vague.  The names are translated from  Gurbani (in most cases) - sacred language of the Sikhs- using the Gurmukhi alphabet - sacred alphabet of the Sikhs.  However, there aren't literal translating capabilities using the English alphabet, so it is tranlated in order to achieve the nadh, or the sound current of the name, which is the most important part.  This means it is more important that the name be pronounced correctly than spelled a certain way.  The names are meant to lead us more fully into our destiny as we adopt them as our legal name, a name we use, a personal mantra, a prayer, a meditation, or any combination of these.  The more we speak or hear this spiritual name, the more this destiny becomes our reality.

"Hari" is one of the many names of God (Source, Creator, Universe).  It is the aspect of God that actively creates or takes away and in taking away creates a new thing, being, or situation.  And, as the email said simply, Dass means "to serve."  I couldn't help but think, why else is anyone here?  We are here on the whim of the Divine no matter how we understand what the source of our existence is.  I closed the email and had looked at it only one other time until a new virtual friend of mine reminded me of the 3HO spiritual names and I remembered I had one.  

About two weeks ago, I opened that email again.  After all that I have gone through beginning with the triumphant birth of my Gweneth, and the sweet bliss that entering into the realms of death gave me...  My midwife being arrested and charged with murder when the birth of a baby she attended directly after mine ended tragically.  The case being drawn out for three years without a trial.  Her being on house arrest and in a county jail for 10 months.  Me conversing with those working on setting her free.  Opening my life up to these strangers.  The emotions involved.  My PTSD being triggered which was still very real from the first time I became a mother.  My realizing I had no business being a doula, birth advocate, or childbirth educator anymore as my thoughts on all of it were drastically changing and I had a ton of inner work to do.  This thing which had become my identity falling away much to my relief.  This resulting in a constrained sense of freedom that wanted to be expressed.  Extreme ups and downs as I fought against accepting and expressing the emotions that would lead me to this freedom.  Excessive amounts of physical and emotional pain that made me wish for death.  Pain like I wouldn't wish on the people I consider my worst personal enemies.  Working to fight this disease (Hashimoto's) that keeps trying to put me in a place of weakness.  Finding a way to begin speaking my truth.  Asking my husband to see and hear me again and also be present.  Knowing that I was strong enough to expect that because I deserve that.  More emotional extremes that made me feel like a lunatic.  Becoming a public affairs director for WMMT - a small community radio station.  Sending my daughters to a cottage school.  Moving into town rather than living off grid.  Exposing myself in so many ways to more people than I ever wanted to...  I understood that name, Hari Dass Kaur, for the first time.

Regardless of what your belief is in a Divine Intelligence or even that of a seemingly miraculous, but very explainable science, I think we'd agree that if we aren't living in our Truth (not being true to ourselves), what's the damn point?  Why even live at all if we don't allow ourselves the freedom to be the fullest expression of who we are?  If we aren't allowing this quintessence to be expressed, this embodiment of life force that is uniquely ours from the moment we opened our eyes/third eye in this life, we aren't only short changing ourselves but everyone else in our life.  Hari Dass Kaur (the kind, creative and prosperous Princess who loves to serve God and who is God's Lioness) might be the hardest thing I have left to express in this world.  I've learned to express emotion.  I can complain with the best of them.  I love words.  I love writing words.  I love the radio and making stories for the radio.  I adore art and making art.  Music pervades my soul.  I enjoy feeling anger and expressing that to anyone ready to listen when the time is right.  Expression isn't hard for me.  Allowing my Truth to be the expression of my life no matter what that means for me, my friends, or my family, that feels scary.

I am realizing as I am getting answers from the medical end of my health and emotional issues, that what I have been experiencing over the last four years, but very intensely since Spring of 2015, is a kundalini awakening.  If anyone clicks on that link, I'm running the risk of being seen as a "nut".  That's ok though, I don't care.  I'm used to being seen as a nut in most ways.  I fly my freak flag with pride and have since I was very young.  However, I'm also a serious person and hope to be taken seriously, not made fun of.  I know that someone will see this as beyond eccentric and into the silly.  I run the risk of friends, family, and colleagues seeing me as someone lost.  Kundalini awakening is true though.  I'm in this process right now, and it isn't at all simple (though not everyone experiences it the same way).  I hurt on many levels.  I long for things to feel balanced.  Until I realized that kundalini awakening was what I was experiencing, I was perfectly fine with death as a solution to what I was feeling, though I didn't want to inflict it upon myself.  I was tired and didn't want to try to overcome anymore.  I didn't want to fight.  I didn't want to cry alone, or whine to my friends on Facebook and embarrass myself.  I didn't want to experience anything but nothingness.  

Now, I feel I have a plan.  I have a way to exist.  I work on seeing this awakening process through and I become the expression of life that I was meant to be.  Through all of my struggles, sadness, fighting, winning, feeling, joy, pain, learning, I can be of service to the Most High.  That Higher Power that is in us all.  That Truth.  I can be there for others.  I can use my gifts and experiences to reflect back this Truth to others so that they too can see it in themselves, knowing they aren't alone.  The thing is, I don't worry about what this means.  I don't worry about more pain.  I don't worry about loss of any thing or person.  I'm not concerned about suffering.  For what I know is, I am complete and this life is a brief moment in the expanse of time and all that is given me is purposeful to an end goal.  This isn't just some meaningless accident of tragic chaos, suffering, and pain.  I'm capable of working through all this with the help of those the Universe will send me who want to support me through each stage of this journey.  I know I will find that place of peace.  Now, hope has returned in the name, Hari Dass Kaur.      

​​

This past summer and early fall, I gave myself the space I needed to get in touch with my soul.  I found there a fire burning so bright and asking me to change my whole life to feed it.  I made some significant changes.  I went from homeschooling to working mother.  That was the biggest.  I decided to move on the grid.  I'm packing today.  I began teaching yoga, and I applied for and received a grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women to finish an essay collection I'm working on concerning events in my own life as a rural mountain woman. I feel the essays will illustrate the universal experience of being a woman.  My 3 year old goes to a babysitter 3 days a week now.  Between yoga work, driving, and my work as public affairs director at WMMT, I'm doing this thing 50-60 hours a week.

Another gift I gave myself during this time, was to be honest with me.  I searched my heart and let myself be free to experience things my heart longed to experience.  We don't have this freedom all the time, and when we do it is intoxicating.  I'm 37, so maybe what I experienced some would call a mid-life crisis.  I'll be a lucky person to get another 37 years, so maybe it is.  For me, it held real meaning.  For the first time in a long time, I gained the feeling that there was something to hope for, not just for my daughters, but for myself.  I felt like I woke up and had decided to come out of the shadows to live.

However, there were some moments for those who were attending to my needs that became frantic.  What I was experiencing while they were assessing my bleeding and getting it under control was bliss.  My body grew warm and fuzzy.  My ego retreated.  I felt whole.  I didn't care if I continued on in life in the physcial body.  I felt like I was completed.  It is very hard to describe, but I haven't felt anything as good before or since.  What makes it even stranger to talk about is, if I hadn't been tended to.  If I had been alone to care for myself, I likely would have bled too much and passed on.  In the moment where the veil between worlds grew very thin for me, I felt most at peace.  That makes people uncomfortable.  That makes it hard to share because there aren't many who understand.

This summer, I began finding a way to live and recreate those feelings of letting go completely.  It isn't as easy to replicate in life as it is when your body actually is letting go of its life blood.  Life is complicated.  I'm a realist.  I fought to keep that energy going, but it became just embers and I've had to accept that for now.  I couldn't control the death of it and I've taken that in a hard way.  I've sunk into a dark and grieving place.  I'm not a crier.  I've been crying a lot lately.  The hope I built has been put away.  I'd say it is gone, but there's always the possibility she will return.  She stayed in Pandora's box after all.  I just have to not wish for her anymore.  I find myself thinking more and more about those moments.  "Kelli, stay with me," she said.  I thought, why?  I decided I didn't care to stay and if it was meant that I go, I'd let it happen.  "Just a minute," I said.  Another minute in complete surrender.  I long to go back there.  I'd happily go back there unafraid.  

I was fighting tears Monday while driving the girls out of the holler.  Right as we were going into the creek, I noticed what appeared to be an old weathered bone on the flat rocks in the shallow part of the creek.  I collect bones, skulls, and other natural oddities, and I stopped to get a better look.  I opened the car door and discovered this very heavy statue.  It's been either buried or in the water a long time.  It was painted at least twice.  Once red and once black.  It had also been mounted to something.  Maybe a fence, entry way, or gate.  It looks like it is holding a staff or spear.  A resting warrior.  The Universe had sent me a gift with no explanation of how it made it there on that day for me to find.  Universe told me to rest.  To be patient.  It's ok.

Then, I get word from the artist Bonita Parsons that someone who wished to remain anonymous had bought this piece of art from her and asked her to send it to me!  I adore this piece and when I found out I cried.  I feel so unworthy of such a gift.  I socialize very little.  I don't talk on the phone even with family and friends I want to talk to.  I forget to answer some messages I get on Facebook.  Very few people really know me.  I am as a ghost and very alone.  I have no idea why someone was compelled to gift me this.  It makes me feel very thankful and at the same time sad.  When I write about my own life, I write it honest.  It isn't a bad kind of sad, but it is a type of sad.  I've cried several times over the receipt of this gift.  I simply don't feel worthy of it and would like to understand why it was given me.

The Universe has gifted me twice in a week when I just wanted to completely give up.  I don't want to stoke the embers.  I want a lobotomy.  Yet, Universe is telling me that my life is a gift.  Don't squander it.  It is ok to be sad, but it isn't ok to take yourself away from the collective before it is your time to go, whether you do it metaphorically or physically.  

This month marked 21 years since I told my husband I'd be his girlfriend for sure.  I had just turned sixteen.  We married when I was 20.  In June, we had been married 16 years.  I used to share those numbers at every opportunity that arose.  I'd share it like an accomplishment for which I should receive an award.  Yet, most of the time it was taken as some kind of impossible feat we had managed to pull off.  "You two are so sweet."  "You were made for each other."  "You've got such a great man/woman."  Those are the comments we get, and to be honest, I'd get angry sometimes at those assumptions.  Then, we get the questions about how we do it.  Do we argue/fight?  Do we disagree?  Do we aggravate each other?  How do I get someone to stay with me?

I am most definitely not qualified to give relationship advice.  Simply because I haven't bailed on my husband, and he hasn't bailed on me, doesn't mean things have been, are, or will be fabulous.  I suppose we are both pretty loyal people by nature.  That might be one thing that has helped us remain married.  We have some common interests.  We have children.  We also respect others who are at least attempting to live consciously.  We are also friends.  Long time friends.  You know, the kind of friend you have that you'd forgive for almost any act of offensive and even harmful results to you or others.  You just know each other that well.  You know where actions and behaviors come from.  You know when someone is acting from a place of self control or out of control.

I come from a "broken" home.  My parents divorced when I was eight.  I have spent most of my life lamenting their split.  It created a lot of uncomfortable and sad moments for me and my siblings/step-siblings.  However, in my experiences of the past year, I have come to realize that my parents divorce wasn't the fault of one of them in particular.  It takes two to make or end a relationship.  I released so much of the fear, anger, and sadness in my heart around my first nuclear family not making it.  I opened to more fully embrace a broader definition of nuclear family and even release arbitrary expectations I had put on myself as someone's wife.  Self sacrifice can only go so far in a relationship before it turns what should be a mutual compromise into an unhealthy harboring of hurt feelings and disappointment.  For the first time, I understood in the depths of my soul why my parents' relationship didn't stand in the storm.  It was an incredible moment of healing for me.

People tell me and ask me about John being my soulmate.  I have always answered that I guessed he was, and I still do.  What I understand now is that he wasn't my first soulmate, he isn't my only one, and he isn't the last one.  He is one of many persons of all genders with whom I have a soul contract.  The following quote is from an article that explains soul contracts and sacred contracts, which I have come to firmly believe in on both the intellectual and spiritual levels.  It just makes sense to me given my personal experiences and interpersonal ones as well.

I don't know for how long I will have a deep connection with anyone with whom I have a soul contract.  It is something we, hopefully, will mutually decide if we have respected one another and have continued to make an effort to see the other's wholeness as an individual.  

Being married is a tremendous amount of hard work.  It's an agreement between two people to devote themselves to making a life with one another and always consider the other in making decisions that involve everyone living under their roof.  It sometimes requires us to delay our own ideas, druthers, or even comfort for the sake of the couple/family as a whole.  It demands open communication and when that isn't in place, things will be guaranteed to be extremely unhappy or fall to shambles.  In order to maintain a romantic relationship with someone, you MUST respect them.  You MUST make an effort to be a witness to their life, emotions, and dreams.  You MUST be willing to meld them with your own where you can.  You MUST be willing to bare witness to the others erotic and explore it with them.  Otherwise, if we cannot make exceptions for our partners, or we do not feel seen, wanted, or respected by them, some action needs to happen.  

1. Open communication - Tell your partner what you are feeling and your perceptions in a respectful way.  Don't just blanket accusations.  State how you are feeling, explain why, and ask if that is accurate based on your partners reflection on the same topics.
2. Walk away - If a partner is unwilling to communicate, you must ask them if they respect you enough and value the relationship enough to continue it.  If they still cannot communicate, then walk away.  This walking away may not be permanent.  It will give you the space you need to determine the next steps and to help you gauge your partner's willingness to remain in a relationship.

So many people I talk to have an all or nothing attitude when it comes to building a life with someone.  It isn't in any way the stuff we dream about as younger folks.  There's a lot of hurt in it for most of us.  A lot of growing together will happen, or the relationship will not last.  So many are very determined to have life exactly play out "their" way, or if they aren't of that mindset, they are so self sacrificing that they realize they are being looked over way too late to save anything.  Compromise and communication.  Love and know yourself enough to love and know another.

In this life, I have loved a number of soulmates.  I still love them and always will.  I will love them for what they taught me.  I will love them for the time they spent with me, and their willingness to see me beyond what the average person opens up to seeing.  I will be grateful for what I share with them.  

I've realized that love isn't something that should be controlled.  We all need to feel wanted and cared for, and we can all find that if we open ourselves to loving and being loved.  We cannot force another to accept our love or force someone to love us.  That's the beauty of it.  "It hurts so good." Those individuals we grow to love have to be ready to accept what we are offering.  The need is there in all of us, but it is the want that matters when it comes to love.  It is the want and the ability to acknowledge that one is worthy of another's love.  If those things aren't there, there's a forcing involved, and the relationship will be strained.  

After years with someone, sometimes complacency can occur.  One, the other, or both of you can become too satisfied with how you've formed your life together that you fail to see the reality of your own or your partner's feelings.  Depending upon the personalities in the relationship, one partner can feel like things are going well and the other like they are drowning.  Blindness to the others reality can occur.  It can alternatively result in arguments that go nowhere.  If we are living life on autopilot, we won't understand what is happening, proper communication won't occur, and the relationship will be unfulfilling or end in an unhealthy way.  If you choose to make a life with someone, be willing to learn yourself enough to know when you need to open a channel of frank, respectful communication and when it is time to walk away out of love for the other and yourself.

In this world, there are too many strained and contrived relationships.  There are too many that should have never resulted in marriage and many more that ended needlessly.  There's so much heartache in this world that none of us should endure a relationship as a martyr.  If we are going to raise the next generation to be strong, independent, comfortable, and unembarrassed to love, we have to show them that love means many things.  Love is the ultimate strength.  Mothers and fathers shouldn't preach contempt for one or the other to their children.  If they at one time cared enough for each other to make a life and to have children, they should continue to respect each other if at all possible.  Again, it takes two.  If the partner is unwilling to act in a way that allows friendliness, it isn't something that should be taken out on children.  

I don't know what the future holds for my family.  What I hope is that I have partnered with someone who will always remain my friend and someone who I can always hold the deepest respect for.  I think I have.  I also have to trust myself enough to not be so self sacrificing that I become sad and stifled, or so bent on my own desires that I sacrifice the good of my family and the person I partnered with.  I pray that my partner will do the same.  What I want people to know who think things are perfect just because you can give a big number of years, or because you've been with someone since you were a teen to know is that it isn't cute.  It isn't always happiness and roses.  Many times, it isn't even sweet.  What I also want to say is that is okay.  We're all growing.  Sometimes we grow together.  Sometimes we need to grow apart.  The most important thing is that we do our best to live consciously, and acknowledge the Divinity in others.  We have to see our impact on others.  We have to try to understand ourselves.  We must have a deep desire to share ourselves, but to also provide the nonjudgmental arms for another to be vulnerable in.  None of these things are easy.  It's all hard work.  Relationships are hard work.  If one lasts many years, it isn't a coincidence or a fluke.  It isn't a fairytale.  It isn't guaranteed to last another day.  

Think of it this way.  Our paths cross like a web.  Some of our paths will be connected always.  Some only briefly.  Yet, each thread is needed for the whole design to appear.  We need each and every person in our lives.  They offer us a piece of themselves as a lesson to cherish whether hard or simple, devastating or sublime.  Be thankful.  Be thankful and grow in your personal understanding.  Grow in your ability to act from a loving place in all areas of your life.  Do this, and you will find your many soulmates and have a life filled with love.  As bittersweet as that might be, it is our truth.  

 Today, I've decided to give up fighting.  I'm on day 3 of a another migraine.  I'm home alone with my girls who are getting much better from a bout of upper respiratory illness.  They are giggling and horse-playing.  I need to work on a radio piece for my new job, but this week has thrown so much at me, I need to clear my head first.  So, I come here to write.  I also took an Imitrex.  The medicine hasn't been helping.  I hate taking all this medicine. 

A good friend's mother and a regular in my yoga classes, my chiropractor, and some folks in my online support groups for Hashimotos urged me to get my thyroid scanned.  I'm on thyroid medicine and my thyroid had never been palpated nor had I had an ultrasound of the thyroid.  This last year I have had a few CT scans, 3 x-rays, 2 MRIs, and countless blood tests.  My main condition which I MUST have daily medicine for had never been evaluated by anything more than a thyroid panel blood test.  I could write a whole other post on my frustration with this fact, but I will just say this.  If you work in healthcare (medical, mental, alternative, or spiritual), listen to your patient/client.  Even if you believe what they are saying is a crock, listen with all your effort.  In their words, you will find the next appropriate steps regardless if their words are medically meaningful to you.

Last week, I had my first thyroid ultrasound.  I had been complaining of tightness in my neck, difficulty swallowing my medicine and some food, dizziness, hearing my pulse in my right ear, and the feeling of being in an airplane taking off in my right ear as well.  It's messed quite a bit with my hearing.  I was prescribed allergy medicine and had an MRI for that complaint.  I don't have seasonal allergies.  I never have.  I very rarely even get a cold.  The MRI showed normal blood flow in that region.  The symptoms didn't go away even when I gave the allergy medicine a chance despite feeling I didn't need it.  I didn't think these symptoms were something I should have to just ignore the rest of my life.  Sometimes the swooshing and pressure change in my head is impossible to ignore.  Being a yoga teacher, it affects my balance and impacts my practice.  It also makes it hard to talk on the phone and at times in person because I can't hear the other person.  That's not normal.  That's not ok.

I got a call Friday that my doctor wanted to review my ultrasound results with me in person.  I went in this past Monday.  These are the results.  Pardon my coffee stains.  I'm a little obsessive when it comes to reviewing my medical records and I had an accident.

I have multiple nodules that are small in the left side of the thyroid - "hypoechoic areas".  Lo and behold, I have a complex mass of a significant size (though apparently they can also be larger) in the right side of my thyroid.  The radiologist has recommended a fine needle biopsy guided by ultrasound to rule out cancer.  It will also need to be assessed if my thyroid needs to be removed even if the mass is benign.  If you look at the size of the mass in comparison to the size of the right side of my thyroid, you can see why it is something that needs further testing.

Many members of the population have nodules on their thyroid.  Not all of these people have been diagnosed with thyroid issues.  However, people with nodules measuring on the larger end and who have a history of thyroid issues, are the most likely to have a malignant nodule.  Malignancies occur in few cases compared with the commonality of thyroid nodules.  I'm supposed to get my appointment for the biopsy today, and at 3:16pm, I still haven't gotten the call.  I'll be traveling to Lexington for the biopsy.  It's a 3 hour trip.

I'm starting my first round of employment in a decade on Monday, and I am just now getting this news.  For almost a year, I have been having symptoms associated with these findings.  I can't begin to explain how angry I am that I am now going to have to deal with this at all.  My hormone numbers were improved in my last bloodwork.  I had several months of feeling better after adopting an autoimmune paleo diet and a no-holds-barred 7 days a week yoga/meditation regimen.  I've added herbs and supplements, cut many of my favorite foods, and tried my best to surround myself with people and activities that feed my soul.  I thought it was working.  I suppose it was a little.

To me that seemed like a reasonable option.  I was done with spending half of every month in pain with the headaches.  I told Creator that night that I would take on anything if it helped me move passed this pain.  I told Creator I'd accept cancer, brain tumor, craziness, aneurysm, all of it.  I'd accept it because it would be a diagnosis and with a diagnosis I could have a plan.  Whether I lived and got treatment or died, I'd have more freedom than I was currently having.  After seeing the neurologist, I got some improvement in my headaches with medication, but now I have had a headache 10 of the last 20 days.  Back to the headache from Hades (not that all of them aren't bad, but I literally would've downed a bottle of pills and died if I hadn't had the ER option that night).  I told Creator that I'd use whatever I was given to improve my life while I am here and to try to improve the lives of as many as I can reach through my experience.  I said, "Please, bring it on."  A diagnosis big or small was the only way out I could see aside from death.  Yes, it's a dark place to be, but it isn't a godless place.

I still don't know what I'm dealing with, but I'm closer to an answer.  I don't know what road lies ahead.  All I know is I am tired.  This year I have lost 2 grandparents, 1 grandparent-in-law, had 2 aunts and 1 uncle diagnosed and battling cancer, 1 sister with a cancer scare, a niece with blood clotting issues in the brain, and 1 sister under immense stress and battling Graves disease.  I am currently grieving another great loss that leaves me recognizing how alone I really am.  Surrounded but alone.  All my close friends live away from me and are busy people.  None of us enjoy phone calls.  My husband must work regular hours.  My parents are busy working and caring for the other kids in the family.  I've always preferred being a loner, but sometimes, I wish I could just sleep in someone's arms and not have to tend to anything. 

breath. Strength comes from the breath and if you become a witness to your inhales and exhales and your body's reaction to the breath, you will discover relaxation and the panic mode dissipates. It is always good to concentrate on basics, and just observe the breath connection from head to toe. Just lay on the floor, stretch and breath, and be a witness. Understand you are strengthenIng inside out. We all should do this on a regular basis, but, I think we view this as no effort towards our practice, when it is the most important part. You never lose a gain...it remains with you."

I stopped and realized that all the pushing, making myself keep going, and searching for answers beyond the medical is wearing me out.  I realized that I have not focused on one of the most fundamental aspects of yoga or spiritual practice - equanimity.  I have not found my balance.  In all the striving, I have built my willpower up so intensely that I do not know when to allow myself a break or to stop, celebrate, and live in my gains.  I just plow down the next row.  Start trying to fix the next biggest issue.  I want so badly to be a light to myself and others that I think I have let my ego get out of control.  I have overestimated the impact I can have on a life, including my own.  My efforting will only go so far, if it doesn't create space for me to also take the time to live what I have learned.  Sometimes, we can try to make up for the lack of self-esteem and self-worth in our lives by building other parts of the ego like self-confidence.  I have been relying on my own strength and my own mind to do everything for myself and others.  At this moment, I really just want to be loved and carried for awhile.  I'm done fighting.  I'm going to breathe instead.

I have to make a plan.  I have to hone my spiritual and yoga practice.  I have to re-think my self care.

1. Maintain a 7 day a week yoga practice along with sharing yoga with others.  Listen to the body and focus my personal practice more on maintaining breath and meditative movement than physical strength.  Try not to worry that because I didn't physically push myself a little harder that it means I have not made a great effort on my mat.  Remember that is not yoga.
2. Continue eating the autoimmune paleo diet.  Continue taking my supplements.  Focus on eating real meals and not snacky meals out of convenience.  I need more nutrition.
3. Focus on my real work.  The work I am called to do and the work I get paid for.  Aside from children and homelife, focus here more than maintaining or creating friendships.  Remember that I have friends.  The friends who care for me will make an effort to be present for me whether or not they feel I am resisting their efforts or overwhelmed by them. (An introvert's concerns.)  Those friends who truly appreciate me will be with me regardless of my moods or my ability to make an effort back.
4. Take up a more intentional meditation practice.  Try for a 40 day consecutive practice of a familiar meditation, but do not bruise myself if I have to miss a day.  Just start again when I can.  Start very simple.
5. Don't be afraid.  Creator doesn't give us anything beyond our abilities to learn and grow from.  I will find truth in this experience and I will find my truest allies and those who care for me most.  Above all keep writing.  Write more.  Learn and read more.  Hope that my words mean something beyond what they mean to me.

That's the plan, until there's another.  So, let me begin resting.  Let kindness carry me a little.  I cried out in pain.  Universe has answered as the crow flies.

"You can't fully appreciate the light until you understand the darkness." - Black Yoga Asanas Ritual Vol. 1

If you would like to read more about this particular aspect of thyroid disease, these links are where I have been doing my own research on what is to come for me.

Thyroid Nodules - Cedars-Sinai
Does the Risk of Malignancy Increase When a Thyroid Nodule is Larger than 2cm? 
Risk of Thyroid Cancer Based on Ultrasound Findings
Thyroid Nodules - AAFP