The broken heart

In the past two months, havoc has broken out around me.  My partner fell and broke his hip, requiring surgery and months of rehab.  At the same time, I got really ill with the flu.  And then we found out that my step-son had been brutally murdered.  My neighbor, an elderly widow, called me desperately one night because she had fallen in the yard and couldn't get her legs under her to stand up.  I found one of my house-call clients wandering around her house, incoherent and severely hypoxic, and had to get her to the hospital.

In the midst of all this, I found out by accident that I have high blood pressure, and this led to testing of my blood and heart, and of course all the things I don't want to hear about:  abnormal test results, abnormal EKG.  It turns out that everyone in my family, even my slender, exercise-obsessed sister, has high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  It's just genetic.

I was scolded into losing weight (even though I eat well and not excessively) and into taking a blood-pressure medicine, and made to feel very bad about a lot of things that I really have no control over.  I have a nearly pathological fear of being scolded, and my doctor took advantage of that to bully me into a state of fear, even though in reality I was feeling just fine and I'm pretty fit despite carrying some extra weight.

Bodyworkers had been identifying something very stuck around my heart as well -- fascia?  emotional blockage?  We couldn't identify it.  But coming up this summer, three very large events are headed this way:  my youngest child graduating from high school; my youngest daughter getting married; and my trans-son getting his top surgery, all in the space of three weeks.  Thoughts of my late ex-husband keep burbling up, because he can't be here to participate in the joyous and profound changes in our family.  I have been feeling a lot of guilt surrounding his death, because I felt as if he died of a broken heart (from our difficult divorce).

I have been doing my best to "let go and let God", reveling in the scent of the fruit trees flowering, the new growth of spring, the diverting fun of irrigation, but I could not shake that feeling of somehow being unable to fully enjoy my life anymore.  Yesterday, though, with all of this STUFF, I went to my counselor, and he took me into a profound meditation that he called "Let's Die a little". He had me relax while he spoke about me as if in a eulogy, and I was allowed to just drift and connect with the spirit part of myself.

The most amazing thing happened.  I was truly able to see and profoundly feel that the physical incarnation of me is just the smallest thing.  This person who cares for her children, who is a therapist, who gardens, who worries about being alone, who has pets and a house and bills and the thousand other things... she is tiny; she needs and deserves protection, compassion, unconditional love and nonjudgement.  Through the meditation, I was able to surround my small self with the universal love and connectedness of my dream-self/spirit-self.  For the rest of the day, I felt so happy, connected, and as if I had found the "right" medicine for my soul.  My body felt lighter, as if the load of living had been lifted, because I recognized that very little if any of what bothers "small-me" matters at all.

The archetype of the Wounded Healer is a common one among people who care for others as I do.  And most recently, when I meditated on my own broken heart, I saw hundreds and thousands of butterflies emerging from the break.  I believe there is great power in this, even if I do not fully understand the vision yet.

What I do know is that transformation is possible through the power of what we tell ourselves, what we tell others about ourselves, and how deeply we allow ourselves to let go of this small world and embrace the Universe.