Resetting Broken Bones: On Connection

It's New Years Eve, or Ole Year's Night depending on where you're from. I'm sitting alone in my bedroom and I feel an eerie silence in the air. I'm messaging with some friends and asking how their years went, and I'm thinking about my own 2015. I've already written an emotional post about my own experiences with suffering, and I don't want this post to be about sadness as well, but I do want it to be about things I've experienced this year.  

Have you ever seen a person or an animal that had a broken bone that was not reset, or that was reset poorly? Usually, you can tell by the way the bone still protrudes under the skin, or by a slightly peculiar angle on the limb or shoulder. Usually, the person regains some function, but depending on the proximity to a joint and the way it heals, they may experience pain and some restrictions in motion. When a bone breaks, it must be reset. If the patient waits too long to have it reset, it will start to heal and doctors may have to break the bone again to reset it properly. The best scenario is to immediately have the bone reset, so that healing takes place correctly. What I find remarkable is that healing is spontaneous - we don't have to do anything for the process of healing to start, but if we want to maintain as much function and use out of the body part, we have to be conscious of how it's healing and make sure that the connection of bone to bone is as neat and uninterrupted as possible. 

Source

In my reflections on 2015, I keep coming back to this idea: sometimes, living with an injury feels safer than treating the injury. Sometimes, we favour our broken hearts like broken bones, and instead of resetting them (seeing their brokenness, acknowledging the pain and making an intentional connection with the pieces that remain), we widen the space between this broken area and the rest of our hearts. What we don't always factor in is that healing will happen spontaneously. Like with bones, until the broken pieces of our own heart find like pieces to fuse to, they will continue to replicate. In a broken bone, this might mean painful calcification that restricts movement and function and I think that the same can be said for badly healed broken hearts. 

From what I've seen, if we ignore a broken heart, it tends to heal in calluses. The goal becomes protecting the injured area, not about true mending and meaning making. I think this is a mistake. Resetting a broken heart, as I see it, involves that initial discomfort of looking straight at what hurt you - fully understanding the injury, and then reconnecting the severed piece to some piece inside of you that is still whole, and connected to you. If calcification is what happens to bones, then heart calcification is the overproduction of protective edges that mute and stunt the growth of actual, functional feelings. If all an injury has left us is hurt, or the blunted, bumpy memory of pain we no longer feel with no connection or understanding of who, what, why or when, then I think we have missed a valuable opportunity. 

For me, 2015 was a very emotional year, the kind of year that left me feeling exposed and vulnerable in a way that I never have before. Having said that, it has been my honor to learn so much about people and about myself. I have seen my flaws so blindingly staring me in the face and I have been faced with situations that I never dreamt I would have to deal with, but as I look back on all of it, I intend to make connection, I intend to let those broken pieces reconnect to the pieces of me that are still whole, and I will learn something. Look out in 2016 for my list. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

She Who Perceives the Cries of Suffering in the World.

I watched a Ted talk recently from a woman who has spent several years caring for the dying. The title of this post is based on an idea she raises in her talk about compassion. The desire to truly see others is something I've always held as a special pursuit - one to constantly realign to. In the last five months, I have moved countries (again), and I made the move under some pretty emotional circumstances. The talk reminded me of my saving grace recently: turning outwards instead of staring too long into the things I struggle with.

After about three months of living alone for the first time in years, I felt myself slipping into a suffocating depression. I could not concentrate, I was going to bed anywhere from 7 to 9 pm, (which, if you knew me, you'd know that I've been a historical night owl and this is a sign of trouble) and I was starting to under-perform in my PhD program. I panicked, because I came here to do a PhD. This was the whole point! I struggled also, because I knew that I needed help, all possible kinds of help, and I would have to ask for it, and accept other's kindness. I was the most aware that I've ever been of my need for friends and family, and for the love, conversation and company that they offered me.

I would have these conversations with people who love me, and I would feel guilty because I felt that my cup was empty. I was hungry for their words and their comfort. I needed it, I needed them and I had nothing (or very little) to offer in return. I have never felt poorer in my life. The weeks droned on, and I looked around my life thinking "I AM the weakest link!" I remember sitting on my couch and asking myself "What is the most remarkable thing about you lately?" and my answer was the extent to which, and duration that I am suffering. It was not a good day.

One of the things that I've noticed from working with clients is that the more distressed you are is the less outwardly focused you become. In fact, mental health professionals use the term "high functioning" to describe people who have some mental health issue, but who still manage to develop social skills, hold down a job/go to school and otherwise engage in pleasurable and functional activities. Someone who is "low functioning" usually struggles to engage socially, enjoy pleasurable activities and take care of themselves. For many years, I think I was a "high functioning" depressive - at least "high functioning" in other people's judgment. Secretly though, I was folding the sides of myself inwardly to hide my shame and fear. Not only was I emotionally struggling but I was just so uncomfortably aware of the fact that there was more I needed to be doing. Every year, I kept in contact with fewer friends and I became more convinced that I was a burden to everyone who loved me. This is the Jane who showed up in Texas this summer.

I knew that I needed to address how self-protecting and inwardly focused I had become, but I also knew that my suffering was not gone. I tried to make projections like I always had of the things that I wanted to achieve in my life, but many of them felt like they were for a better version of me, one who was braver and more assured than I was. At one of my lowest points in this very semester I came to an important realization: it would be the real me or it would be over. I wrote this poem to remind myself  that the best way to combat depression is to argue with it, to see it as energy, and to see yourself as a transformer for energy. This meant, in some ways, that the very things that shamed and frightened me were the sources of energy that I would use to build new relationships and to find peace with myself.

When I was making the move, it was important to me that when I got here, I would be involved in my community and that I would see people. One of the most healing experiences in the world is the opportunity to show love. In my quest to see people, to be accepting of and loving towards others, I noticed something that I wasn't at all expecting. Instead of me having the opportunity to be so helpful to so many people like I hoped to be, I saw, I noticed the care and compassion of others towards me. So many people poured into my cup, and the energy I found in gratitude was humbling, to say the least. In other's love for me, I found a special love for myself that I was lacking.

With a full breath of air in my lungs today as I reflect on how much good has been rained down on me, I am once again ready to turn outwards. It's my first blog post in three months and let me be clear: I am taking the energy I find from a moment of gratitude to put something (hopefully!) good into the atmosphere. It doesn't mean I won't have other terrible days, but the wonderful revelation I've had this semester is that some part of compassion must make a complete circle: a compassionate person knows compassion as a giver as well as a receiver. If the goal is to perceive the cries of suffering in the world, then surely you should hear all cries, including your own.

Energy Bars (Things I'm grateful for)
Faith in a loving, gracious God
Family
Friends - old and new, far and near.
Nature
Art
Music
Sadness that moves me forward