Our Approach
The purpose of this space is simple: to sit with the extreme challenge of not feeling well and find in it whatever hidden richness might be available.
Of course...let's not pretend this is anything but an incredibly challenging path. We're not in the business of Pollyanna platitudes here: this work often involves coming to terms with incredible loss: of dreams, capacities, sense of self. And..all that is tough. There's no getting around it. To make matters worse, these losses can lead to feeling exiled from the main flow and values of the world around us. If your friends are posting mountain-top selfies on Instagram, it might not feel great to post a photo of your own view...from a hospital bed or the couch that's replaced your gym. A social world which values performance and visible success just ain't so well-equipped to support someone experiencing difficulties in their health....
Our Approach
So this is a space dedicated to offering its own little culture that does meet you in the reality of your situation. And it's a space to explore what new possibilities might be around the corner for you...even if it's difficult to imagine walking to the corner. My role is to meet you with a clear-eyed understanding of the reality you live - without running from, minimizing or catastrophizing it. As someone who has lived with Lyme Disease for many years, I know the territory.
Grief & Hope
Much of this space is dedicated to building a deeper relationship with grief and hope. This is a big part of how we hold open a space for mental and emotional wellbeing, even if physical wellbeing is wobbling.
In the ordinary way of living, grief and hope might alternate. Hope might be a bright light of optimism that in the end, all will be well. And grief might be a falling into darkness…with light extinguished for a while in the depth of pain…until a gradual return to fullness of life. Of course, chronic illness changes the game. Hope might come in quick bursts - a new medicine! A new surgery! - But if this optimism doesn’t bear fruit in the way we might long for…if the new medication doesn’t help or the surgery gives us mixed results…we’re forcefully invited to build a new relationship with hope - and its shadow: hopelessness.
Likewise, chronic illness doesn’t give us a single thing to grieve. In this one sense, illness gives us an abundance…an endless list of things to grieve. We may lose friends, fitness, beauty, vitality, hiking, playing violin… a sense of contribution and mattering in the world… a process of loss like dominos falling one by one. All of this is a lot to meet. But it can be met. Francis Weller calls grief a skill we need to learn. We use this space to practice this skill - in the face of all that chronic illness costs us.
One aim of these sessions is to invoke the wisdom and support of ancient traditions. For the most part it seems, the cultures that came before iphones and instagram were better prepared to support, nourish and initiate people experiencing illness. These old cultures were more aligned to nature. One of their symbols was the moon...
So consider that the moon hangs above us in this virtual space. In the good old days, a person might wander away from the known and familiar ground of the campfire - out into darkness. In the days before street lights, it was the moon that provided light in the darkness. Walking through a dark forest, with glowing eyes peering out from the night, branches cracking in the distance...death would be present as a possibility then. So the moon becomes a symbol of the courage it takes to not just walk in the dark, but be transformed by it. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil."
Chinese legend suggests that there's a rabbit on the moon continually mixing up herbal elixirs. So - moon as medicine. Other older cultures have pinned magical ceremonies to the moon: its cycles of transformation remind us that everything in the universe is constantly changing. Identifying with "I am sick" risks the possibility of getting stuck. The moon's shapeshifting in the sky reminds us that everything has a season - "this too shall pass". In the ancient religions, the phases of the moon - new moon through dark moon - reflected phases of possibility and death in one's own life. This kind of attunement points us toward more gracefully moving with currents of growth and loss - life, death and rebirth. There was also though, the tradition of "drawing down the moon"...which is to say magic. And this points us to another possibility: of shaking loose from a sense of final victimhood in illness, and finding instead some way of agency in it all. When we aren't victims of the darkness, the way opens to transforming within it.
As a symbol of change, the moon confronts us with uncertainty. Sometimes things fall apart. A great storm can blow through our lives and - in a matter of a few seconds - crumble to dust what was reliable in our lives. The kind of person who can walk in moonlit darkness might learn to face these changes and the terrible uncertainty they inspire with courage and openness. Then too, that same uncertainty can become a gate to something new - a life with more magic and authenticity than what came before. So - the moon is a good companion in the voyage through sickness.
Dark Initiation
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. - Carl JungThese sessions aim to offer a tiny culture in which to explore two kinds of healing. The ordinary kind of - of pills and surgeries and hope for physical recovery - is very much still on the table. We're here to hear about the hope and the medical gaslighting, the progress and setbacks. But the deeper purpose here is to explore a more radical understanding of healing. What if...the sickness is not something inflicted randomly and meaninglessly? What if there are other possibilities at hand...what if there's an opportunity here that is more difficult and scarier than the dream of returning fully to your old life? What if sickness is a season in which you could shape-shift into a new life...one that may involve sacrifice of what was, but also be more alive and beautiful and connected than what came before?
No one would choose sickness. Not with our ordinary minds anyway. But if it's here, it's here. So. We explore here the possibility of sitting in the graveyard of all that may be lost...and finding within yourself the capacity to spin into existence something new and beautiful. Maybe mountain-climbing and sky-diving is out of reach now. But maybe too, this new experience offers the chance to be more authentic, more generous, more in touch with your heart and the richness of your relationships. Maybe a forced break from the forward momentum of your life invites discovering what is most meaningful to you, so that concentrating your energy there leads to a new life in which heartfelt devotion sits at the center. Maybe, in slowing down, you discover the beauty of stillness, silence, the poetry of your own soul. Many maybes - all preferable to staying locked in fixation on what's been lost.
As a symbol of change, the moon confronts us with uncertainty. Sometimes things fall apart. A great storm can blow through our lives and - in a matter of a few seconds - crumble to dust what was reliable in our lives. The kind of person who can walk in moonlit darkness might learn to face these changes and the terrible uncertainty they inspire with courage and openness. Then too, that same uncertainty can become a gate to something new - a life with more magic and authenticity than what came before. So - the moon is a good companion in the voyage through sickness.
