I’ve spent some time thinking about what I wrote – “thinking that my body is betraying me”. I’m not sure that’s exactly what I meant. I think what I mean to say is that we think we have time, lots of time and we also think that we have control over our bodies.
Do we have control over what our bodies do? Now I realize for those who know me that this sounds contrary to what I have said in all of the energy healing and work that I do. Indeed, I have learned that there are many things that we can do to help ourselves heal and keep well, but do we really have control over what ultimately is going on?
I’m looking back over my life and asking myself if I looked after my body or if I just truly took it for granted. For most of my life, I was healthy and took that mostly for granted. Oh yeah, I can count so many times that I had little fits of fitness and exercise, weight loss, eating as the experts suggested, but for the most part, I just assumed that I was okay.
I’m looking back at the times of my life that maybe I questioned this perfect health …………
The first time (and I’m not really sure if this is appropriate to this story but then I realized that it’s my story and I can tell it anyway I want to) was when I was about six or seven. My brother was four or five and one day he woke up and he couldn’t walk! This went on for weeks. Many doctors came to the house but found no reason for this and couldn’t seem to help him. I remember my mother was so dreadfully worried and now I realize that this happened in the 1950’s and she must have been worried about polio. Living through this pandemic has given us an idea of what those times were like. Then one day, he walked and it was over. It wasn’t that long ago that I thought about this and it occurred to me that my mother had remarried in that year (my birth father died in an accident when I was three). Maybe this was my brother’s mind keeping him close to my mom. So, do we have control over our bodies?
Even though there have been many times in my life that I had accidents, sickness and various ailments, I still really thought that I could make my body do what I wanted it to. I decided to do a triathlon at fifty-five years of age when I was truly unhealthy, heavy, smoking, late, long hours, eating as I chose. I just put my mind to it and did it. I stopped smoking, trained, ate healthy and good things happened. That’s how it works – right? Since that time, I have run and exercised in fits and spurts and still I assumed I had time to do whatever I wanted to do.
And then I had a heart attack! Even the day after the attack, when the nurse told me that this was the ‘big one’ and I was lucky, I still just assumed I was going to be okay. Six or seven months later my cardiologist told me that I could do light running if I wanted to. I have to admit that I was so scared to, Someone once told me that it’s called being a cardiac cripple. I also think that I still assumed I had time.
This is like walking into some kind of a brick wall! Oh no, maybe I don’t have time! This cancer growing in me has been there when I just blindly went along assuming I had time. It’s the most scary thing and every day I just keep on trying to accept this and gather the strength to accept what happens next. Some days are better than others for sure.
