Healing is not linear

Healing is not linear. 

Being a human is not linear.

The downs are just as important as the up’s.

We are tested when we least expect it.

We get catapulted back into wounds that we thought we healed. 

We ask ourselves, WHY?

These last few weeks, these last few months I have been asking myself that question a lot lately… why.

I feel called to share a bit about what I have been through these last few weeks, months.

I think I have shared this piece before, that these last 5 months, I have been deep in a group program, Trauma to Tantra. 

I felt so drawn to this program, but I had no clue why. In my head, I classified trauma as a high-level event that you survive from. When I was researching this program, many of the previous attendees have survived SA, and other traumatic experiences within their lives. I was a bit confused on why I was so drawn to this class, as thankfully I have not experienced this type of trauma in my life. 

From week 1 this class was HARD; I began to unpack things that I had no clue I was carrying inside of me. Just writing these words brings tears to my eyes. I honestly thought this class was going to bring me more in touch with my sexuality, something that I feel I have always been afraid to allow to be seen. This program did so much more.

This class helped me find trauma that I had experienced deep within me that I never saw as trauma. I simply saw it as part of life. I have always been the girl that looks at the glass as half full. 

As I have shared before, I was sick as a teenager. One day at the age of 15 I woke up with lesions all over my legs, (they looked like bruises), I was in extreme pain and I could not walk. My mom had to carry me out to the car to take me to urgent care. It took some time to figure out what the lesions were, they diagnosed it as erythema nodosum, an autoimmune disorder. What this was, was my body screaming, telling me that my ovaries were in bad shape and I needed surgery pronto. 

It was during this surgery they addressed the issue with my ovaries, and while I was in surgery they uncovered that my appendix was about to burst and addressed that as well. The 1st night in the hospital after that surgery, my blood pressure began to crash and I specifically remember being there, but not being there. Being asleep but being awake. Hearing the doctors, the nurses, hearing my mom so concerned, but not being able to communicate with them. I was not in pain, I honestly felt like I was in a bubble, a cloud maybe. Everything was fuzzy, but yet warm. My mom told me later that they almost lost me that night. 

It was that experience that sent me through years of medical experiences, losing consciousness at school, doctor after doctor, another surgery, doctors telling me at 16 that the only way I would ever have children was if I got pregnant now. May I also say, I barely had my first kiss at this time, sex was not even in my mind. 

I never saw this as trauma, I simply saw this as something that I experienced as I was growing up, and I got through it. This class began me on the journey of finding the imprint of the scars that were on my soul. How the energy of those surgeries were still being carried within me, how I carried myself and the choices I made as an adult because I now had this belief that I was never going to be able to carry children, because that was what a doctor told me. The feeling that I was broken inside. The beating up of myself unintentionally because I could not heal my own wounds, my daughter was now carrying them through her journey with hip dysplasia. I was starting to see so many connections, and honestly it scared me a bit, but it has also given me so much strength. 

I have also shared that during one of my daughter's surgeries, we almost lost her. She lost a lot of blood during a particularly intense hip surgery, and she code blued. I watched her come back to life, and this memory will be ingrained in me forever. I had a lot of anger associated with this event, so mad that God would take my baby away from me, and it took years for me to sit and acknowledge that anger which was transformed into gratitude that God kept her here and she is now a thriving 17-year-old. Again, I never saw this as trauma, I saw this as a life experience. That day did give me PTSD, specifically hearing the beeps of the machine that monitors your blood pressure, your heart rate and your breathing. I remember the surgery following that experience. I was a mess every time that machine beeped, I am sure the nurses thought I was a crazy, overprotective mom that needed to take a chill pill.

Fast forward to these last couple weeks. My healthy 19-year-old, baby-adult son, wakes up with excruciating pain in his stomach. This is the kid that barely gets sick, never had a surgery, just overall healthy. One look at him, I knew something was not right, so at 7 AM he and I went to the ER. They immediately get him in, hook him up to fluids, take him into a CT scan. He is a nervous wreck, again this is the kid that has only seen his sister's medical journey, but never has experienced anything himself. 

CT comes back, an appendicitis, not just an appendicitis, one that is on the verge of bursting. They immediately call for an ambulance to transfer my son to a larger hospital that is able to give him the care that he needs. Life began going so fast again, I went into full mom mode. It does not matter how old your child is, when they need you, you are there. This was all new to him, it was creating fear and anxiety within him, I had one job, to be his rock, to keep him calm, so he can get through this chapter that he was experiencing. 

I rode with him in the ambulance to the larger hospital, a 45-minute ride, 45 minutes for him to have his mind go a mile a minute. 45 minutes for me to not get into my head, but to do everything I could to help keep him calm. That day felt like it was going so fast but yet going so incredibly slow at the same time. I was in mom mode, I was in being a rock mode, my emotions were shut down, I just did what I needed to do. 

We got to the hospital, the prep for surgery began, we needed to run antibiotics before surgery as the infection was pretty vicious. He is in and out, the pain has subsided thanks to the pain medication. Then just like that we are in surgery. I am able to be in pre-op with him. This is a place that I am very accustomed to being, however this was a whole new world. This was emergency surgery. I have never seen the nurses, anesthesiologist, surgeon move so fast, prepping him, he has to sign all the paperwork as he is technically an adult now, even though my man child is almost 20. When I looked in his eyes, I saw my 7-year-old ginger, scared, and thankful at the same time.

It doesn’t matter if your kid is 2 or 20, the goodbye right before surgery, completely tears me up. Every single time. It was at that moment that I began to cry.  So many emotions started coming to the surface. Again, I am thinking back to the class I took, I literally just “healed” my soul from the surgery where my appendix almost burst, and now here I am, as my son was just wheeled back into surgery for a ruptured appendix?! WTH universe?!?!

Surgery was longer than expected. That's my kids for me, I swear they unintentionally get off by making their parents sit in a waiting room staring at a wall waiting for news that they are okay. The surgeon comes out, tells us the severity, that his appendix wasn't where it was supposed to be in his body and that the surgery was successful. I am allowed into post-op to see him. They only allow 1 parent in, so in I go.

There he is, I could tell he is in distress, he's confused, he hurts, he's angry, he's emotional. I just start combing my fingers through his hair, his love language is physical touch like his mama, and I know this would soothe him. I calm him down, and there goes that damn machine. The damn machine that I had to listen to as my daughter was fighting for her life. That beeping triggered me like no tomorrow. My son was having trouble breathing, the nurse told me they had to give him more anesthesia because he is a red head, and he was having trouble coming out of it. I was trying to talk to him, tell him he needs to keep breathing, to take deep breaths, I knew he could hear me, he would take this huge breath in and forget to let it out. All those feelings were bubbling to the top for me, as I was being his rock– the feelings that I feel with the beeping. The feeling of being a patient, being in the bubble. the cloud, all of it. 

It was at that moment when I had a choice. I could let all those feelings take over, or I could work with them, feel them and allow them to leave. I tuned into my body, my intuition. I listened. I knew deep in my soul that he was going to be okay, he was having a hard time, yes, but he would get through it. I had gratitude for the beeping machine, knowing it was that machine that helped save my daughter's life, that that machine in the present moment was reminding my son to breathe. I was thankful that I acted so fast that morning, he didn't want to go to the ER, he said he could fight through it and go to work, my intuition told me to go, go now, and I did. This situation would have been so different if he would have been at work, his appendix would have fully ruptured which shows me how much of a blessing this present moment is. 

We got through recovery; he went into his hospital room. Did I still have my moments, yes. I was hungry, I was exhausted, I had a massive headache that would not go away, I had no supplies with me, no change of clothes, nothing. I remember in the middle of the night, sitting there going, wow I never even brushed my teeth this morning. All of those details were little, I knew we would eventually get to go home, I would shower, change, life would calm down a bit.

And it did, we were able to eventually go home, the recovery journey has not been easy, there was a moment I almost had to take him back to the ER as complications decided to rear its ugly head. But we are here, 9 days post-op, he is healing, I am healing, we are all healing. 

This is what I have figured out these last couple of weeks, healing is not linear. There are things that we experience in life that imprints something in us, that changes us. It's not that all of this “healing” was for nothing because in these last couple of weeks I have had to face a lot of things head on. it's more so that having these feelings, emotions resurface has shown me how much I have grown. It has shown me my strength, even in the moments of self-doubt, the tears (and boy were there a lot of them!), it has shown me my compassion, that all these things that I have “been” through have made me strong enough to conquer what was happening in this present moment. I specifically remember one of the nurses talking to us, right after surgery saying how calm we were, that normally when a kid comes in and this is their 1st experience with a medical trauma the parents are a mess. Perception is reality, from the outside we looked strong, even though there were pieces of me crumbling inside. The crumbing does not make me weak; it shows that I am human, and that I will always have the strength to rebuild, even in the moments when I do not see it.

In some of those moments these last few weeks, I was deep in a little pity party for myself, I was upstairs in my room, I was isolating, I was feeling sorry for myself, I was crying and I was saying “why me”. Life has not been the easiest, these last 18 months have been downright hard. So many “hard” things have happened, some days I do not know how I am still standing. I keep asking for a break, for some good. I was asking, why must my soul, my family keep enduring these trials and tribulations, why is life so “hard”? 

It was at that moment when I realized that this is what my soul signed up for. I am a healer, it is my journey, it is my vulnerability, my compassion, my empathy. It is how I navigate the darkness that helps me help others. I did not choose to be a healer, it chose me. With this path that my soul is taking me on in this lifetime. It was my reminder that within every piece of darkness there is light. In every hard thing, there is something to be thankful for. 

I have a lot of good in my life. Even though these last 18 months have been extremely difficult, they have also birthed so many beautiful things.  It's these moments that help when the hard is here. Life is a series of thousands of tiny miracles, it's up to all to bask in all the little things, because it's the little things that create the big things. 

I am ending with two quotes, because they both called to me:

“The healer’s gift is her own wound. It’s the source of empathy and true understanding of compassion and forgiving. To heal thyself, embrace your wound as your sacred teacher”-- Brooke Lillith

“A healer is someone who seeks to be the light that she wished she had in her darkest moments” Vironika Tugalevawords

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for being a part of this journey with me.

Xo, Gina Marie