So.. 50 spins around the sun and here I am! Still an enigma to most, but to those few who have really scratched the surface, they will know the true riches in my life are plenty, even though I possess so little! I am the very essence of the date I was born, just shy of Imbolc. That seed ready to burst into life, but not quite there; not quite brave enough to break out. Then through ill health, from embodying it all, to relentlessly pushing against the tide, to complete surrender, to being so deeply misunderstood, to learning (still learning) not to give a shit really is crucial to breaking through that ground.
It’s been a propelling few years, and a deep delving into the trust of life’s flow and honouring the real voice inside. Learning that fear often shouts, and truth often whispers. Learning to be brave enough to say yes, and brave enough to say no (most of the time!) So at 50, I’m here waiting for spring. I love my life. I’m kind of in awe of what it took to get me here! I love the beautiful people that have entered my life and those I miss back home. I love my Son… and again, in complete awe of him. I love living in a place where I feel more connected to the land that holds us, the land that truly provides for us. It is our medicine, and the very key to our survival.
My prayer for the spring of my life, and for all life, is to heal the disconnection …. AND to be less of an enigma and to share my gifts!
It was the longest Imbolc. She was a burgeoning seed, nourished and ready to burst into life, Yet.. Dormant. Fearful of where she had landed. For she did not belong within the orderly mandala of colourful blooms set within the pristine lawn. She was a wildflower. And they were sure to pick and pull at her, to stop her in her tracks. And so she sat safe in the soil of her long Imbolc. Yet, above the surface, The wheel had turned again, and again, and again.
The darkness grew heavy, A terrifying deathly pressure was bearing down upon her, And in her suffering, she was drowning in regret of a life not lived. A pain so intense, she no longer feared her demise, But yet she cried.. “I want to live, I want to live, I want to live!” And in that moment the ground broke And in the crush, she had broken open. There in a tiny chasm in the frosty earth, the greenest shoot appeared, where for a while she sat in awe of the light…
And so she crept, And then she crawled, And then she climbed, And from then onward, she always reached toward the light. And they picked, And they pulled, But she did not care, Because in her darkest days she realised her roots would grow long and deep.
***
The wheel had turned again, And it was her shortest Imbolc, For she had dared to bloom. Now her roots had spread and weaved within the mycelium, way beyond the orderly mandala set within the pristine lawn. And as spring broke, the light beckoned her home, To where all the wildflowers danced fearlessly to the rhythm of the seasons, and the butterflies suckled upon the nectar of their dance. And she was free. Oh… she was free.
She called to me from a valley afar, and like a migrating bird I flew. To a place that gave warmth, right through to my heart, and to my soul, this songbird, I knew.
Her heart song echoed the silent call, that through muted voice my soul yelled. With her familiar song, I found my wings, Now together, these songbirds, are held.
Sometimes I sit in complete wonder at where life has taken me in the past year, It feels like a homecoming in more ways than one, having come to a place of connection to the earth, and in my soul, back to a place of deep trust.
After the past few years of what felt like walking through fire, I now look out daily at the beauty of the beautiful corner of south west Wales. Hard to imagine that six months ago, my back still against the wall with the long haul of ill health, and refusing to become a slave to a system that was failing us and adding complete insult to my situation, I needed to take back my autonomy. I found myself in a place where my only compass was my soul and I knew something was coming up for me. As things crumbled away in one life, and trusting that was exactly where I needed to be, and by answering a call of pure resonance, I found myself starting a new life nearly 300 miles away with beautiful souls who felt like home.
So much gratitude to my beautiful soul sister, her bravery in making the call out, and the pure trust I put in making the journey because of the truth I felt in her words. Somebody too, who knew deeply, that we were entering a time where we have to completely trust and live by what feels right as human beings, each step of the way, one day at a time, taking back our power, we would find our way through this time of transformation in human evolution. As I opened my heart to a life moving towards community living and deeper connection to the land and our hearts, I felt with no doubt, I was taking steps into a life that aligned with who I was. A crazy gamble some may think, with little in the way of money, and trusting in a different kind of energy exchange. The green lights and synchronicity just reinforced the knowing feeling within, that this was not only a life I would imagine for myself, but a life that was a step closer to being true to me, to us all, as wild beings. Where everything that mattered came from the land and the love in our hearts. A home where we thrive in care and shared vision for a more beautiful world.
A new chapter in my life has begun. I made so many promises to myself, when I was in the depths of hell with my health in the latter half of 2020. When my deepest regrets were not fully living. Now here I am… and it’s time to honour that.
I swim for my life as the waves pull me down As hard as I swim I’m starting to drown I begin to feel weak I give in I go under and as I go further down I see the depths filled with wonder I swallow the water but it doesn’t fill my lungs It cleanses my heart as I begin to see the sun I’m washed up on the shore and as I take a deep breath I realise I’m so alive because I found the depths
I went straight back into writers block since I shared my last post ‘Barefoot in the snow’. I’ve struggled to read it too. Truth be known I’m still feel the trauma of 2020 and my body is healing since I dishonoured my own soul voice and allowed a trial vaccine to be injected into me causing a relapse. I should have known better after the rapid decline my body went through with the pharmaceutical drugs given to me in 2020. What I do have is a dysfunctional vascular system that not only struggles with me doing too much or doing too little, that is constantly trying to find a balance so I can live a normal-ish version of my life, but my cells are responsive to everything that is good for me and everything that is bad for me. From food, to movement, toxins, to my environment, to my inner peace. My body is has given me a clear insight to how to heal, both physically and spiritually, and one thing I know for sure is can’t spent my energy putting off being me… I can no longer dishonour my soul and to hold back my own truth. I’ve been discredited and had my life turned upside down, but it got me here. I’m now on a new path, that came from making decisions from deep within my soul and taking care of me, and without pharmaceuticals! My body is of this earth, and just as I would choose not to poison the soil, the water, the air, I choose not to poison myself. This amazing ecosystem that is my body, is regenerative, and everyday I marvel at its ability to heal, as I step closer everyday to my body coming back into balance once again.
I’ve found my self wanting to edit ‘Barefoot in the snow’ especially the regret of refusing to leave the hospital knowing what I know now, but from where I was at that time, I know the absolute courage it took to honour that roar inside of me, while knowing I would be discredited, with nothing concrete on a test, yet I had a body telling me exactly what was going on for me. I wanted to scream and say that people were dying, not just because of what doctors could see, but because of what they couldn’t see. At the time the hospital felt like my only hope of recovery via access to a test I was never going to get until I was actually in heart failure (while fighting to try and prevent that happening… an upside down fucked up system in my mind). The guts that took was beyond any I had tapped into prior to that. It was the biggest crash course in handling judgement. All that while suffering unimaginably on a physical level.
It took another inner roar to reveal what I had been through, so essential for my own growth into my truth. It was a story of healing, an important one I would not forgive myself for not sharing as I would have benefited so much had somebody shared that experience with me. To know my body could overcome all that when death often felt like the only way out. My body was not ready to cope with a virus in 2020, as I was already experiencing tiredness, aching limbs, seriously heavy periods, low vitamin D, low feretin, eating a high carb diet and never replenishing those iron stores enough while going through perimenopause, and all that comes with that. The vaccine was certainly not the answer! As well as the feeling that something was seriously amiss in the health system. Also, that drugs made my illness so much worse, from functioning with ill health for months, then when medicated a rapid decline being unable to do anything for myself. Especially the months on the beta blocker when I was having painful angina attacks, and my whole body felt like it was in a state of suffocation . When I could feel the build up of pressure all over my body and especially in my neck and left arm, but mainly on my heart side, the convulsions, and the fear of an impending aneurism. I could barely get an hour of sleep at a time, and only by lying on my front as my vessels struggled indescribably in any other position. The tremors and buzzing all over my body. Trapped in my body, struggling to move even to the next room.
Our hearts do NOT work alone. There is a system of cells that run along the 60-100 thousand miles vascular system in our body and it is called the endothelium. It is the conveyor belt for our blood. It is the flow within us. So what would happen if this system of flow gets damaged If the cells no longer function properly? Whether it be extreme tiredness, brain fog, being unable to exercise without doing harm, or to the extent when our hearts would need to work harder to compensate. Bouts of tachycardia and constant irregular heart rate, angina attacks etc. I see that was what my body needed to do to balance itself out as best it could, yet I was on a drug to try and stop it from doing that and I suffered so much more. Then coming off the drug and an even sicker body than before, with test results on my record that look normal (yes my heart structure was perfectly healthy), and an irratic heart rate again, so when nothing can be seen on a scan (as your vessel lining cells can’t) so therefore somebody can be wrongly diagnosed as having a functional disorder. Where are the endophelial function tests? Why couldn’t I even have a privately paid for right heart catheter, yet I can have a catheter for an angiogram? WHO writes the protocol? (deliberate play on words). I wanted nothing more than to leave my parents care and be on my daily walk in nature, I longed to be at home, pottering about in my garden, in my kitchen, being with my son, singing and dancing. Now on reflection I’m so glad I didn’t get what I fought for as no intervention was needed other than deep rest, gradual movement as my body healed, and care.. Our cells are truly amazing and regenerative. The stretch of cells that were damaged healed, and with that the whole system running through my body was able to function again.. the buzzing stopped, the fluctuations of pressure felt around my body. The angina stopped. The constant struggle to move. The conveyor belt was no longer broken. The best feeling I’ve ever experienced. Until, I fucked up and ignored my gut voice not to mess with my cells, and got vaccinated. Never again. By being backed into a corner by the system once again, I let it all just fall away, so once again I come into a place of acceptance. Trusting that life was taking me down a different path. One that brought me again to a place where deep healing can take place.
My memory of Christmas day 2020 was being woken up in my hospital room, being helped upright by the nurse, feeling doped up and vomiting because it was the first day on a new drug, and it was not agreeing with what was already happening in my body. I was now done with telling people I was in deep trouble and needed help. I went into submission. I had been completely bed ridden for four months and unwell for nine. I was in a psychiatric hospital during my first week of a section order. I was taken in there, in a wheelchair. I firmly believed that I had an aggressive form of pulmonary arterial hypertension caused by endothelial damage after my own process of elimination based on everything I had suffered and inconclusive tests, knowing absolutely in myself I’d been through hell in my veins. I left six weeks later, in much better health, my weight regained, and walking freely again. I was completely broken by what I had been through. Despite all of my pushing for a hospital bed elsewhere there was nothing that could have been done for me, and a place of deep rest, some gradual mobility, and a lull into acceptance of whatever was to come contributed to my recovery.
You learn a lot about yourself when you have time to examine every small detail of every feeling you felt, not just the deep physical suffering, but going over the things that were the most traumatic that you had no choice but to go through, the things that were demeaning, scary and hard. Calling an ambulance, again, explaining what is happening to you, again. Sitting in a waiting room and seeing other patients being treated while feeling like a naughty child when you can barely keep yourself upright. I felt like I was being dragged into another dimension to everybody around me. My suffering was somehow invalid until a doctor could validate it and there was a lesson in that itself. Seeing the difference in response when you need to be pushed in a wheelchair when there is a nurse who has seen your results and the one that hasn’t. You are either somebody with a serious mental health problem, or you are somebody who really struggled to get from one place to another; I was the latter whilst becoming the former. It was a crash course in learning how to accept judgement. I was having to swallow being perceived as a complete time waster, but knowing if they could just spend a minute inside my body they would absolutely know that something was very wrong. I had always trusted life’s timing, but I found myself pushing against the tide instead of trusting the flow. But my survival instinct had kicked in. I wanted to live, when I felt I was going to die.
It all started in March 2020, just before the very first lock down. It came on with an intense burning and tightening feeling in my lungs that felt very sinister. The new covid virus was all in the news, so I was baffled but relieved that I seemed to be the only one affected by it considering how many people I’d been in close contact with. My son had a short bout of the flu running up to it with a lack of taste and smell – a symptom that became recognised later. It dawned on me that the last time I had been to see my doctor in 2019 it was discovered that I had extremely low vitamin D levels and slightly low ferretin, and I had done little about it, and we’d again been through the darker months, so at that point I started popping supplements and making changes to my diet. The government was telling us not to overwhelm the hospitals but I was concerned about the intensity of the waves of burning. I answered the questionnaire on the NHS website, but guidelines were to stay home, and there was no covid test offered to me. Two lots of antibiotics from the GP, and still this intense burning came in waves and went on for weeks, then when the waves did finally end, I felt something was happening with my heart and the A&E visits began. It was the start of a rapid downward spiral and a snowballing of events. August my family funded private tests as it had begun to feel impossible to even walk my dog. I was on a beta blocker by now and even though it had eased my episodes of tachycardia there was real pain and struggle, I now felt like my chest was being crushed every time I walked, plus what felt like a surging of blood into my left arm and a tightening into my neck and base of skull. September 2020 I was completely unable to care for myself and I had to leave my home to be cared for by my family. It was like being trapped in my body. I felt I was suffocating, but not in a way that could be resolved by taking deep breaths in fact the more stress I put on my lungs the worse it felt, so I could do little but lay still. My SATs were normal, I felt extreme pressure in my chest, neck, jaw, head, shoulder, left arm, sometimes right, and a buzzing all over my body. My chest and upper back felt like pins and needles were running through them and a feeling of being fragmented. I was certain from what I was feeling the damage to my vessels was exactly where all the burning began back in March. I was feeling it and living with it but I couldn’t prove it with scans, blood tests, ECG’s. Death felt like a kinder option and every time I heard the trains go over the level crossing I contemplated being on the tracks, but my overwhelming will was to live and have my old life back with my son. By this point I had become so irrational feeling I couldn’t prove what was happening to me, My family were at a loss at what else to do for me. They did everything they possibly could and I caused them a lot of distress too. I began pursuing the hospitals for an impossible pulmonary right heart catheterisation and even refused to leave the hospital. In hindsight I wish I could change that, but at the time I lay there feeling it was my last chance at life and that was very real and horrific ordeal for me. As December went on my physical symptoms were becoming much more bearable but I was to terrorised to acknowledge that for what it was. It was time to get up and start taking things slow, but instead I used that strength to sit in a hospital waiting room again and again and again… and so they intervened, and the final 6 weeks of my recovery were spent in a psychiatric hospital; a place I look back on with a strange fondness. The kind nurses, the doctor who had listened to my sister explain who I was prior to this illness and just how unwell I had been and what affect that had on me. The doctor handed me a long covid list of symptoms around the time I realised I really was healing, it was an umberella term I was not willing to accept until I knew I was going to be okay. At the end of January 2021 I was home. I’d also just finished a two week quarantine after testing positive with the virus which barely touched the sides in comparison to what I’d been through in the previous nine months.
February 2021 snow came and I stepped into my garden one evening and stood barefoot in the snow looking up at the moon and feeling so alive. I hadn’t enjoyed being outdoors for six months and it felt brand new. I couldn’t believe what I’d endured was over. I was in awe of just how amazing the cells in our bodies were and if anybody even doubted what I’d been through, I didn’t care at that point, as long as it was over. I even brushed over it when I had a follow up call from the mental health team and they mentioned a functional disorder, I just thanked them and let it go. I wasn’t about to start trying to change peoples perceptions anymore. I just wanted to get on with life and try and move beyond my ordeal and begin what felt like my second shot at life.
Sadly my barefoot in the snow feeling was short lived. I made the big mistake of not following my gut instinct and I had the vaccine in March. I regretted it deeply. Severe body aches, a feeling of dehydration in my head and shortness of breath on day one and two. I felt I had done harm to my delicate new cells. The side effects stopped and I hoped that was it, but two weeks later I had a short burst of strong palpitations out of nowhere, and four weeks, post vaccine, I felt my body was back in 2020. I’d relapsed. I was devastated. This time I was going to trust my body to sort itself out but it was a blow beyond comprehension. Would they look back and decide I had a functional disorder? Would I end up with my medical autonomy taken from me again? I decided to go this one alone. There was no way I would have the second Jab. I thankfully never got to the severity of September 2020 and I was a lot better without any medication. I had enough physical ability to slowly move through it and things have improved as months have gone on. I joined a long covid group and there was some talk of mitochondria in endothelial cells being damaged by spike proteins, but throughout this group were people pretty much dealing with their illness on their own and not getting anywhere in hospitals, giving me confidence in my own understanding of what had happened to me in 2020. I also joined vaccine injury groups and they also talked of spike proteins causing damage, but the science behind this wasn’t being allowed and groups were shutting down and peoples opinions being censored. I however trust the things I read that align with my experience. I could see the similarities in what people were suffering in both groups. I was thankful that my two experiences had the recovery time in between so I could decifer the two and make the decision never to have the vaccine again and to take the very best care of my immune system. I also realise my experience has told me I cannot force people to change their perceptions of what is happening to me or in the world, as much as I may want to, especially if the information they have in front of them says other wise and it doesn’t show everything that is going on.
I will say this about freedom of choice; While I had my medical autonomy taken away from me in December 2020, what if I had been forced to take the vaccine then? I am sure I would not have healed from my first ordeal and I would have been stuck in a spiral, suffering physically and mentally, never knowing that my body was capable of great things.
I will have my barefoot in the snow day again. I have come on leaps and bounds in the past months but I’m not quite there. On the outside I appear pretty normal but I can’t go beyond a walking pace without my symptoms and I still can’t dance beyond a gentle hip shift. Every day is a struggle. This time however I do my very best to choose hope over fear. A game changer.
I’m rhythmic and I’m soulful, though locked up and concealed; a catalogue of 4am musings trapped within this energy field. My body in slow motion; self care no longer just choice, as my mind and body gradually heal the vessel from heart to voice. I’ve been met with misunderstanding and even dubbed insane; Forcing me to pull the trigger of my deepest fear and pain. See the pain of judgement isn’t so, but the fear of it itself, as it cripples and it stifles and it compromises health. Nibbling on the hawthorn berry won’t heal this vein alone. I’m a wild creature needing a voice and a vessel that needs to flow. See nobody even knows me, and why would that be? A perpetual fear of perception greater than fear of losing me? The safe path is a no through road, so in darkness I must fight, as I hear the whispering of healing voice, as it directs me toward my light.
Being an idealist and a dreamer, I know the key to happiness for me, is not just living authentically, but to get out of my head and to live it and share it. The thing is, seeing the world in its completely unbalanced state and waking to the sound of traffic and the busyness of this fake construct and economic system the human race is killing itself in, it can be so easy for me to just swallow myself in my thoughts and try to escape it, only to become more deeply troubled by it.
Balance. I think we can only create balance by starting with ourselves. I can be consumed by all that is happening and continue to live my simplistic life on my own and withdrawn from the world, or I can step out and say, this is who I am and this is how I try and make things better. My brain will always work the same way. I will always look at the problems of the world and come back to one thing. I will always see scarcity and suffering as the cost of this fake monetary entity, where people have forgotten how to love and to share, because they are busy fighting for their own survival in a man made system where success is looked upon in relation to material wealth, when we have this amazing planet that can offer abundance if only we stop raping it and start putting back.
My healing place has been my local nature reserve. It is absolutely brimming with life and I feel like I’m in a different world when I am there. Not so many years ago, this beautiful space was a refuse site; land filled with human waste. For me that place is evidence of how amazing nature is and how quickly it can thrive it we let it and stop the taking. I can be walking through, nibbling on a haw berry I have picked, cast away the single stone and wonder if that will settle into the earth, a burgeoning hawthorn bush brimming with abundance in the space of years. One seed, creating a multitude of berries and the ripple effect of constant supply… if only we let it. As a race this basic connection with earth has been lost, and we all need to reconnect to survive as individuals and collectively.
So here I am, in these troubled times. What seed can I sow? What ripple effect can I create? I can continue to be a one man band doing my own thing in a small way, or maybe I can plant a seed in another mind and so on.. At the moment, my body, my situation, wont allow me to walk into the vanishing wilderness and live a money-less life. I have to walk in both worlds. somehow, some way, everyday working with what I’ve got, and with who I am, and all the guidance I have put before me, I have to keep my connection to simplicity and the earth as much as I can in all this madness. I can feel people scrambling for the light in this darkness. I want to do my bit and shine my little bit of light… as I find it.
melbeing.co.uk 