Pink Moon (Part Five): Coming Out of the Dark

Coming out of the dark, I finally see the light now--it's shining on me.
Coming out of the dark, I know the love that saved me--you're sharing with me.

I am, after days of sliding from drugged sleep to pained stupor and back, finally coming out of the mental cobwebs of the past week. I am nowhere near done recuperating from surgery but today the pieces starting floating together and I could finally see what it was all about. This experience, as a whole, is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I haven't unpacked it all yet, and still I am filled with this great sense of becoming. This will be one of the events that shapes my life's course, one of the first of that life's challenges that I've met with a sense of my own heroic worth, and the basis for a new understanding of compassion that includes myself.

I was terrified at the idea of going into surgery. I cannot think of anything in life that felt scarier than checking myself into the hospital, half-informed on what would happen by some Google searching. My previous experiences with inadequate anesthesia and pain control gave my squirrely mind plenty of fodder for fueling that terror.

I would wake up in the middle of surgery with a tube down my throat.

I would die and be forced to leave my son.

I would be so out of my own brainpan that I'd say something embarrassing, hurtful, or ungrateful to a staff member.

Mostly, though, I was facing the amorphous dark monster of being completely, absolutely, without question, out of control of the situation.

I'd had a lot of insight, being in the midst of my Temple of the Twelve studies' Pink Month, that I needed to place myself into the care of others and trust that they would protect me, heal me, and help me through my fears. I started asking for what I needed. My family, my friends, my neighbors, random strangers I met in the days before my hospitalization--I was asking them to think good thoughts, pray, send light for me. At the hospital, I said, more than once, "I am so scared. Please help me get through this." And you know what happened when I did that? I experienced the cradling power of perfect love and compassion. I asked for what I needed, allowed myself to be both emotionally and physically vulnerable, and opened myself to receiving love.

My mom has this philosophy that everyone loves to hear their name and, as a sub-point to that idea, that everyone leaps at the chance to be needed. I've always believed that, at essence, but being in the hospital I got to experience it. Complete strangers transformed, at the admission of my terror, into glowing embodiments of the Divine. There was a palpable energy shift when they realized that their day-to-day work was intersecting, that moment, with my worst-case scenario. Everyone I met became a hero to my cause, a hand of the Goddess upon my hair.

( The hospital, the surgeries, and being back home... )

Saturday, I tried to do too much. I wanted to be present, to be helpful in whatever limited way I could, and so I gave up on taking my pain pills and spent a majority of the day up and around, or at least propped upright on the couch. Sunday morning, the effects of that were obvious when my wound showed itself to have been pulled open a bit in the night, reversing its earlier healing trend. So today, for Lammas, I feel like I finally put it all together. I finally came out of the dark about what it was that this experience had been all about. Yes, it is without a doubt about the selfless good and heroic compassion that exists in those around me. And yes, it is about facing those things that I fear and trusting that somehow, after the upheaval, that things will be okay. I'm also finally seeing that it is about being compassionate to myself. I took my pain pills and I went to bed. They weren't working particularly well. I finally asked myself what I needed, what I could do to feel better. It took some doing, but within a couple hours Daniel had gamely shampooed my hair in the kitchen sink (first bathing in a week!!) and I'd sat in a couple inches of water in the tub and shaved my legs. I put on some healing aromatherapy oils and pulled on the comfort of a t-shirt and pair of soccer shorts from Daniel's dresser. Hair dry and feeling human, full of bread from the Farmer's Market, I curled up into bed and slept, cocooned, all afternoon. I gave myself permission to extend my compassion to myself.

Graeme and his father enjoyed their day together. The world did not stop spinning. Nobody thought I was being selfish or uncaring. The only thing that happened when I was compassionate to myself was that I got better. I woke up and knew that I was on the path towards complete healing. The calm, loving voice of the Goddess, of Me, said with contented happiness, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

~*~

Truly, your love, support, and encouragement pulled me out of the dark. It allowed me to get the help I needed and to face something that felt impossible. Thank you for being there, for caring, and for being compassionate to me before I was ever able to extend similar compassion to myself. You are the face of the divine in the world. {{{hugs}}}