I am a Seed

When injury, illness or general life calamity strikes us, somewhere amidst the shock, the grief and the resistance, we often find ourselves searching for the why behind the what.

Generations of superstitions revolve around this quest. Humans are hard wired to avoid the open ended uncertainty, modern neuroscience has confirmed this over and over again. And yet, we endlessly search for meaning within the timing and metaphors of why things happen. We assign astrological meaning to the stressors in our lives, as if that is going to change the nature of life life-ing.

Interestingly, it’s common in the navigation of long term healing to require some sort of shock that sparks the healing process to re-ignite. This can be the timely insertion of an acupuncture needle, the right therapeutic touch at the right moment, and even other injuries or trauma’s that wake up our inflammatory response and get the energy flowing all over again. Sometimes injury or illness at random actually ends up being really important to the big picture transformation, especially in cases where something has stagnated.

In the past few weeks, a close family member has encountered a significant health crisis, on the same day I developed an acute condition that forced me into a tailspin between hospital visits and being bedridden in pain. The eventual acute treatment for myself was the spark that jolted me back into processing a long past trauma. In a nutshell, the past few weeks have stirred up quite a lot to sit with, and I’m all at once struck by the paradox of random events and the search for meaning within them.

Yes, random things can happen - but major health events within days of each other, that asked me to navigate boundaries, caretaking (of myself and others), shifting relational dynamics and the ongoing demands of showing up in the world all came with their own underlying meanings and metaphors.

When these random but not-random tailspin events co-occur, it often feels like, for me, that the Universe is shuffling their cards. Just when you think things are balancing out, or you’ve got a handle on things, or you’re making “progress”.. the playing table is wiped clean and a new hand is dealt.

Being faced with the inconveniences and the adversities of life asks us to build a diverse tool box. We don’t always know what life is conditioning us for, until we have to reach into that tool box and see what we have to work with. For myself, I’ve noticed more and more that there is often something in that box that I didn’t expect to have, that fits exactly right to the situation I’m in.

In my case, these past few weeks, the tools that came the most handy were creating more space in my schedule (thank you to the clients who were more than understanding and accommodating!), connecting with external resources like my therapist, family and my husband, prioritizing my week’s to best use what capacity I had on things that really were important (and being compassionately clear with myself on what priorities were!), a few extra lil treats to boost my enjoyment of life, a few extra moments to cry, rage, sleep, lay in bed, trust my body.., journalling when I could, reading when I could, resting whenever possible, moving once it felt okay to.

I’ve done a lot of work with myself, and had a lot of work done on me. I’ve faced a number of injuries/illnesses from minor to major, and while lots has come up to process with recent events, I was able to allow myself the grace to be in the zoomed in, pressurized moments as well as zoom out into a bigger picture perspective.

I think this might be why I’ve come to value the skill of awareness. Awareness allows us choice, and it allows us access to perspective. It’s can be a limited resource when we are in acute or chronic stress, but once developed, it’s a skill not easily lost.

A practice of awareness, of introspection and witnessing ourselves in hindsight, presence and in foresight, can help us find meaning just as much as it can help us in facing lack of meaning. Not in a re-hashing everything that’s happened to us kind of way, but in recognition of how we’ve faced adversity and what that means to us in different phases of existence.

One of the big reminders for me lately has been the age old statement of “life can change in an instant”. That deck of cards can be shuffled at any time, and as much as we are seated at the table, we don’t always get to pick the game that’s dealt. Which begs the question - is there meaning to any of it? Bear with me on this one.. if life can change, even end, at any moment - what the hell are we all working so damn confidently towards? Perhaps this is my quarter or third life crisis - in which I face that human conundrum of the meaning of life altogether.

Perhaps the meaning of life is that we make meaning of it.

Sometimes meaning is that existence is a loud, obvious, nagging, non-negotiable question and answer of presence. Bodies do weird things, and it doesn’t always make sense. Healthy people face uncertainty and no amount of prevention can stem the flow of fate.

Pain, illness, grief, injury all bring us into ourselves as equally as shock, fear and overwhelm can remove us from ourselves. There is medicine in both those things. In this era of regulation trends, we’ve forgotten the function behind our body’s non-negotiable response to stress. To be shocked or overwhelmed to the point of feeling dislodged from oneself, or fractured within ones self, is by design protective.

What changes if we view that dislodging as a form of expansion?

Likewise, what shifts when we seep into the space created by the fracturing?

For me, it was spending a day in bed in complete surrender to my pain - tears included (because honestly, crying was one of the few things that eased some discomfort), cancelling huge chunks of my perfectly curated schedule (if you know me, you know I despair having to rework my schedule!!) and allowing myself to steep in some of the themes and resonances that were triggered in present acute-ness linking to layers of past traumas.

Meaning aside, sometimes we just have to be in it and let it work on us, rather than the other way around.

The sparks and shocks of life’s trauma can serve as the initiation for our growth. Some might argue “growth”, in the shape of evolution and maturation, is not possible without some form of that initiation - nor is it one any of us can likely avoid.

Our search for meaning is born out of our search for certainty. For sure-footedness in the quaking territories of life. Life is destined to shape us and change us, and perhaps our meaning is found in that process - whether accepted or toiled against.

From the journal:

I am a seed.

Am I?

This must be what it feels like to expand from oneself in all directions.

Like disassociation - but a breaking open that is required for something new to take root.

It feels like a spinning.

Rooting my consciousness to my body while parts of me burst and spiral outward - upward - like a bean sprout. Reaching for something that might nourish me - fed already by the decay of the past and needing more.

The metabolism of healing is much the same as that of growing.

I feel vulnerable too - not yet hardened to the world I am stretching into.

Fine, thin lines of my roots weave through the dirt and darkness of what has happened, into the world of memory. To reach into the soil of my body is to feel what cannot be seen in the light of day.

Rooting begets rising. What is yet to be reaches through me, coaxed by the rays of the warm summer sun.

No matter how much I grow upwards, outwards from myself, I am forever tethered between worlds: the dark underworld of my roots and the bright upper world of my future.

That’s all for now - thanks for being here!