Written in Writing Group on January 2:<\/p>\n
Back in July I caught my foot in the electric cord to my fan and fell on my side hurting my hip and doing something to my ribs so they continue to hurt.\u00a0 <\/span>It has been getting very gradually better.\u00a0 <\/span>Then, a couple of weeks ago I knocked a bottle off the counter, grabbed for it, and did something to my pectoral muscles tho I didn\u2019t feel it for a day and a half.\u00a0 <\/span>Then it hurt like bloody hell, which means 10 on a scale of 10.\u00a0 <\/span>Fortunately, it didn\u2019t last very long at that level, but it would hurt whenever I reached for something or picked something up.\u00a0 <\/span>Made it very difficult to use my arms for things like dressing and undressing.\u00a0 <\/span>Elisabeth Kubler-Ross<\/a> says if you don\u2019t learn from something you will get hit with something worse.\u00a0 <\/span>So what am I failing to learn from these injuries?<\/p>\n
I used to self-mutilate, I cut myself with razor blades for a period of about 6 years in my 20\u2019s.\u00a0 <\/span>Ellen Bass<\/a> says that can be a result of childhood sexual abuse, but later I learned that it made much more sense as a result of trauma.\u00a0 <\/span>Jacqueline Winspear<\/a> says of soldiers traumatized during World War I that they would injure themselves as if to make visible the wounds to their souls.<\/p>\n
I always felt that my pain wasn\u2019t visible because it was inner emotional pain instead of external pain like living in poverty, or starving, or being beaten.\u00a0 <\/span>So what was the point of injuring my ribs?\u00a0 <\/span>A friend who knows about Chinese medicine said that the lungs represent grief.\u00a0 <\/span>Breathing deeply comes up against constricted ribs, coughing still hurts badly in the center of my upper chest.\u00a0 <\/span>I know that I have grief that is hard to feel because it\u2019s not grief for something I had and lost, but grief for something I should have had and never got.\u00a0 <\/span>And in fact, I had no idea of what I hadn\u2019t gotten until my most recent therapist started giving me lots of positive detailed feedback.\u00a0 <\/span>At first I wanted more, and then it became painful and Erica introduced me to Francis Weller<\/a> who\u2019s done a lot of work on grief.\u00a0 <\/span>Sitting here writing, I think maybe that\u2019s it.\u00a0 <\/span>I realize that the last few days I\u2019ve been feeling very sad.\u00a0 <\/span>Not depressed, sad, along with a quality of despair that I haven\u2019t felt before.\u00a0 <\/span>I just want it to be over.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m so tired I can barely function.<\/p>\n
I also read something I wrote in the last month about being able to love the one in me who\u2019s angry at me for hurting myself.\u00a0 <\/span>Is hurting myself also an expression of being angry at myself?<\/p>\n
More to do…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
[After I read this, Judith says:]
\nLet my grief write itself.\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>ask Are you able to speak?
\nsad = mudflats, tide out.<\/p>\nBut I didn’t follow Judith’s ideas. \u00a0I realize I had just been through Christmas week when I didn’t talk to my therapist at all. This leaves me feeling very alone. Also that the fall that injured my ribs happened after my thyroid dropped significantly<\/a>. So a lot of different things have been affecting my emotions and the clarity of my brain. It’s too easy to avoid grief. I want to write about it in the next writing group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Written in Writing Group on January 2: Back in July I caught my foot in the electric cord to my fan and fell on my side hurting my hip and doing something to my ribs so they continue to hurt.\u00a0 … Continue reading