Grief Protuberances, Bulged Disks, and the Wicked Fairy
After Liko was born, I was in terrible pain. Sciatica, or something like it, made every step shoot sparks up and down my legs, up to my shoulders. I got a referral to go see a physical therapist. She told me that I didn't have sciatica, but rather I had an old injury, a bulged disc, that loosy-goosy pregnancy hormones had flared up. She was working with me, helping me stretch my back and build up supportive muscles over the next few weeks, when one day, when Liko was about 6 weeks old, I couldn't get out of bed. My knees had totally given out. Every step was agony, my knees felt like the bone was grinding on bone. My legs shook and I wanted to cry. Even lying down, if my leg bent the wrong way or anything brushed against my skin, I wanted to scream. She said to just get into a painless position for 24 hours, and then come see her right away. Good thing tiny babies are happy to stay in bed all day and nurse anyway, and the big girls, 5 and 8, could fend for themselves a little, cheerfully foraging through boxes of granola bars and juice boxes and ice cream cartons.
The next day I called.
Come on over, said the physical therapist.
I don't think I can make it up your two flights of stairs, I said. My knees-- I can't stand it.
Your knees are fine, she told me.
Rude, I thought. My knees hurt so badly I've been immobile for 24 hours. My back doesn't hurt.
Nope, she said. You have a back injury. Your knees are fine.
Irritated, I went over to her second story apartment/physical therapy office. Step-step, step-step-- every stair was screeching pain, and I had to hang onto the banister at each two-foot, one step shuffle.
She looked me over. How's your back, she asked. Completely fine, I insisted. 0 on the pain scale. But my knees, I'm at an 8! I explained that the same thing had happened ages ago when I lived in Japan. This had nothing to do with my back. She indulged me, tapped at my knees, which rang with pain like a sung bell.
Come stand over here, she ordered. I hobbled over to the wall.
Good, she said. Now put this foot here, slightly-- and this-- now put your arm here-- good, hold that. Now, shift your rib cage to the left, towards the wall. Yep!
I followed her odd instructions. And the grinding, sparking, immobilizing knee pain went sparking and skittering away, up my legs, through my pelvic bone, and right, throbbingly, into the small of my back.
You, she said, have a back injury. She may have had a slight I told you so twinkle. She was a twinkly person.
I could not believe it. I bent my legs, took some goose steps. The knee pain was utterly gone. Instead, the old familiar lower back ache thrummed, where it had always been. She had me stretch my back, and ouch! It twinged, like a day of heavy lifting in the garden, dull and sparking. My eyes watered. But my knees, soft as feathers.
I was awed. How on earth had she done that? She shrugged, explained that injuries can radiate pain to other places. You have to find the real injury, to put the pain back where the injury actually is. Then you can heal it. Simple.
Huh. Simple!
Today, I'm thinking about grief.
When it sublimates, when you time it out, when you forget it. When it started so long ago that you're not even sure that it really happened. When you tell yourself you've moved on, you're over it. When it's a joke or a byline or a footnote or something that seems like it happened to someone else. When it's an unwelcome shadow guest, the 13th fairy, uninvited to the feast, unhonored, unnamed.
Then it sends out thorny runners. It sends up emissions. It burbles, sulfurously, to the muddy surface of your life. It arrives angry, maleficent, roaring at the feast-halls doors, bestowing curses and spoilt blessings. It transforms itself into terrible shapes, emerging here as disease, here as pestilence, here as war, here as famine. One after another, it shape-shifts. You battle it, because you have to. The beasts assail the gate. The neverending parade of monsters wear you out, use you up. You may quell one, drown it or dessicate it or banish it or behead it. But more burble up, gallumphing as they come, and sending out more runners, creeping into the cracks, threatening to shake everything apart from the foundations up.
But the grief itself, the old wound, is numb and dormant. What grief? We have forgotten all about her, we've all these other bigger things to deal with!
How do we see through the noise and clamor of the runners of grief, the terrifying emissaries in their nightmare masks, and travel to the broken soft heart of it? How do we allow all the pain to rush back to its point of origin, to be held within that one wound? It seems impossible that so much pain can be held within the confines of one heart.
I don't know.
I suspect that naming is the map and the wand and the spell. Spelling and wording and magic have always been the same thing. I suspect, but I'm not totally confident, that naming the grief what it is will recall all those other malignant tendrils. The monsters reduced and recalled, the thorns retreating, the hollow armor crumpling.
This is sadness. This is pain. This is grief.
It is unarmored. It is soft, and has no terrible power. Only fear, and shock, and sadness. The shock keeps zapping it, defenseless.
It's a boring vigil to keep, at the heart of grief. Murmuring its name, over and over. "You are sadness. You are sadness." If you grow restless and try to say the wake is over too soon, that you have more important things to do, that it has been long enough, that it doesn't matter anyway, the thorns begin to grow up the walls and the pointed shadows grow and flicker with malignant fire.
But name it, again and again. And it can grow, slowly from a seeping black wound, to a scar. And still then, always tender, ever after. Never say, "it is nothing, it doesn't matter." Allow the hurt place to always be what it is. Sadness, sadness, sadness. Always give it its true and proper name. Never take its name from it. Because then it will come seeking you, to rip its name from your mouth.
You will build up your strength around it, not against it. With it, not in spite of it.
Grief is the strange injured fairy godmother at the gate. When she knocks in the storm, lay her golden plate, and ease her comfort, and make her a soft and gentle room in your house. Her blessing will be true sleep, and a softness with yourself. We are all here with grief, we are all the wounded thing looking for a name.
The next day I called.
Come on over, said the physical therapist.
I don't think I can make it up your two flights of stairs, I said. My knees-- I can't stand it.
Your knees are fine, she told me.
Rude, I thought. My knees hurt so badly I've been immobile for 24 hours. My back doesn't hurt.
Nope, she said. You have a back injury. Your knees are fine.
Irritated, I went over to her second story apartment/physical therapy office. Step-step, step-step-- every stair was screeching pain, and I had to hang onto the banister at each two-foot, one step shuffle.
She looked me over. How's your back, she asked. Completely fine, I insisted. 0 on the pain scale. But my knees, I'm at an 8! I explained that the same thing had happened ages ago when I lived in Japan. This had nothing to do with my back. She indulged me, tapped at my knees, which rang with pain like a sung bell.
Come stand over here, she ordered. I hobbled over to the wall.
Good, she said. Now put this foot here, slightly-- and this-- now put your arm here-- good, hold that. Now, shift your rib cage to the left, towards the wall. Yep!
I followed her odd instructions. And the grinding, sparking, immobilizing knee pain went sparking and skittering away, up my legs, through my pelvic bone, and right, throbbingly, into the small of my back.
You, she said, have a back injury. She may have had a slight I told you so twinkle. She was a twinkly person.
I could not believe it. I bent my legs, took some goose steps. The knee pain was utterly gone. Instead, the old familiar lower back ache thrummed, where it had always been. She had me stretch my back, and ouch! It twinged, like a day of heavy lifting in the garden, dull and sparking. My eyes watered. But my knees, soft as feathers.
I was awed. How on earth had she done that? She shrugged, explained that injuries can radiate pain to other places. You have to find the real injury, to put the pain back where the injury actually is. Then you can heal it. Simple.
Huh. Simple!
Today, I'm thinking about grief.
When it sublimates, when you time it out, when you forget it. When it started so long ago that you're not even sure that it really happened. When you tell yourself you've moved on, you're over it. When it's a joke or a byline or a footnote or something that seems like it happened to someone else. When it's an unwelcome shadow guest, the 13th fairy, uninvited to the feast, unhonored, unnamed.
Then it sends out thorny runners. It sends up emissions. It burbles, sulfurously, to the muddy surface of your life. It arrives angry, maleficent, roaring at the feast-halls doors, bestowing curses and spoilt blessings. It transforms itself into terrible shapes, emerging here as disease, here as pestilence, here as war, here as famine. One after another, it shape-shifts. You battle it, because you have to. The beasts assail the gate. The neverending parade of monsters wear you out, use you up. You may quell one, drown it or dessicate it or banish it or behead it. But more burble up, gallumphing as they come, and sending out more runners, creeping into the cracks, threatening to shake everything apart from the foundations up.
But the grief itself, the old wound, is numb and dormant. What grief? We have forgotten all about her, we've all these other bigger things to deal with!
How do we see through the noise and clamor of the runners of grief, the terrifying emissaries in their nightmare masks, and travel to the broken soft heart of it? How do we allow all the pain to rush back to its point of origin, to be held within that one wound? It seems impossible that so much pain can be held within the confines of one heart.
I don't know.
I suspect that naming is the map and the wand and the spell. Spelling and wording and magic have always been the same thing. I suspect, but I'm not totally confident, that naming the grief what it is will recall all those other malignant tendrils. The monsters reduced and recalled, the thorns retreating, the hollow armor crumpling.
This is sadness. This is pain. This is grief.
It is unarmored. It is soft, and has no terrible power. Only fear, and shock, and sadness. The shock keeps zapping it, defenseless.
It's a boring vigil to keep, at the heart of grief. Murmuring its name, over and over. "You are sadness. You are sadness." If you grow restless and try to say the wake is over too soon, that you have more important things to do, that it has been long enough, that it doesn't matter anyway, the thorns begin to grow up the walls and the pointed shadows grow and flicker with malignant fire.
But name it, again and again. And it can grow, slowly from a seeping black wound, to a scar. And still then, always tender, ever after. Never say, "it is nothing, it doesn't matter." Allow the hurt place to always be what it is. Sadness, sadness, sadness. Always give it its true and proper name. Never take its name from it. Because then it will come seeking you, to rip its name from your mouth.
You will build up your strength around it, not against it. With it, not in spite of it.
Grief is the strange injured fairy godmother at the gate. When she knocks in the storm, lay her golden plate, and ease her comfort, and make her a soft and gentle room in your house. Her blessing will be true sleep, and a softness with yourself. We are all here with grief, we are all the wounded thing looking for a name.
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