Bolder, gentler, slower movin’, hip swirlin’, clearer, delight-filled me.

(Many of you have asked how this whole concussion experience has changed me.  Here you go. I hope this resonates with you, encourages you, uplifts you, and empowers you to live with a deeper sense of delight, compassion,and connection in your everyday life.  It’s a long one, so get a cup of tea and enjoy…)

Many of you know that I fell at the end of January. I stepped on to a treadmill that I thought wasn’t moving, but it was. It threw me off and a crash, boom, smack later, I was down with a concussion. Through the whole ordeal of the last few months, I’ve learned A LOT about brain injuries. But what I’ve really learned (and embodied, and struggled with, and surrendered into) is this:

As Rumi says, “the cure for the pain is the pain.” I get it. The cure for the the dizziness WAS the dizziness.

I needed things to be swirled around, shaken up and mixed up in order to see, surrender, lighten up, and embrace my life and its treasures with a greater sense of delight, deep compassion, and true connection.

As serendipitously things often happen, while I was right in the thick of this brain injury, David Mercier sent me his book, “A Beautiful Medicine.”  It is still by my bedside.

David  has been an acupuncturist for thirty years on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  But he wasn’t always an acupuncturist.  He used to be a Buddhist monk.  A young David sold everything and set off to Sri Lanka to be a monk.  Ironically enough, whenever he meditated, he got a blaring ache in the middle of his forehead.  And as I’ve shared with many of you about his journey, um, what’s a Buddhist monk in training supposed to do all day?  Meditate!  After years of suffering and with his health failing, he returned to the States. And what unfolded is a story to read – how he healed and how, now, he has spent the last 30 years helping people through acupuncture and coaching (32,000 sessions!)

His story totally inspired me. Once I could actually handle reading again, I’d read a few pages of his glorious book.  One of the lines from his book continues to speak to me again and again: “the symptoms are messengers.”  They aren’t something to be resisted, pushed away, or gotten rid of.

How radical!  Actually BEFRIEND our symptoms?!  Believe that they are pointing us in the direction of our healing?!

David’s poetic words and stories encouraged me to put my Buddhist meditation in to practice: embrace the dizziness. Befriend it.

So I did.

I thought I had lived a pretty awake like before the injury. No, not perfectly (is there ever such thing?!). But truly, I felt even before this injury that, like Thomas Merton, my desire to deeply listen to the Divine within me and more deeply align myself with the Divine did/does in fact please the Divine.

But as we know, there are always layers to peel away. Layers of fear, old habits, old beliefs, old voices in our head that no longer serve us. And that all came up when I fell.

“The fall” was/is an opportunity for me to totally surrender to the medicine of dizziness. To allow things to be shaken up, spinning around, and unsettled. To rest. To receive the help of others (how hard is that for all of us?!). To reorient my life around what deeply matters most.

I found that if I resisted and tried to force my body (and brain!) to do something it couldn’t do, I suffered. Instead…instead if I just embraced, even befriended, the dizziness, I didn’t suffer. Nothing externally changed. The reality was I had to go slower, move slower, and rest. BUT I was content. I was at ease.

And what is happening now? A new boldness has emerged. A renewed vivaciousness for life has emerged. A new deeeeep appreciation for the gifts in my everyday life has emerged.

I make time to heal — heal my head, hold my daughter and her skinned knees from a fall on the concrete, listen to my son share something that is troubling him.

I make time to love — love the person I am with, drop the “to do”, and embrace what is most important.

I delight in the simplest of things – the way my daughter pronounces her “r’s”, tells me she “loves the feel of me,” and the way my son, now six years old, pauses to ask me about my day and plays jokes and started up his own detective agency, complete with business cards!

I have more compassion. Compassion for my body’s limitations – like in Zumba — I just can’t do the turns and jumps. Rather than “shoulding” my body into doing them, I give some shake to my hips instead while the class does its turns. I have more compassion for the needs of my kiddos – the everyday ways they need me to cut their food, hold their hurts, and bathe their bodies. I have more compassion and gratitude for my husband, Brian, and all the ways he silently cares for me and adores me. I have more patience with others and compassion for their need to be heard, held, and accompanied.

I appreciate my connections. So many people rallied to care for us – go grocery shopping, bring us meals, call us, help out with home repairs (did I mention in all this we had a toilet flood and we are still dealing with repairs?!). I reminded of how we all need each other — and this sense of interconnectedness brings tears to my eyes.

I get frustrated. I get angry. I get totally annoyed. But I find that I am just, well, more awake. Softer, slower, bolder, more empowered, more aware of my power, and more aware of the power of surrendering to whatever is happening in this very moment.

I am more aware of how our brokenness heals us.

This is the gift of falling.

Here is a poem I wrote last night about where I am now…

The Gift of the Fall
By Lisa A. McCrohan

Lookin’ up
lookin’ real
lovin’ every swirl and twirl
and dance of dizziness

yes, even the dizziness.

Lookin’ right here
lookin’ at him
lookin’ at her
lookin’ at Brian watching me be

me
however I am
whatever I need.

Lovin’ the bold beat of my heart
lovin’ the deep clarity of my eyes
lovin’ the sweet swirls of my hips
and the tenderness of my lips.

Makin’ time for love
makin’ time for rest
makin’ time to let it all be

lettin’ all that healing soak in

just being right here
laying next to my baby
softly drifting off to sleep
with work to do but I let it be.

Lovin’ even the gift of uncertainty
lovin’ the path of doing just the
next right thing

which is laying here
with my hand on your heart –
Listening.
Listening.

Lisa A. McCrohan, © 2013

———–
Merton’s Prayer

* MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

– Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”
© Abbey of Gethsemani

——————–

If you find yourself suffering, in pain, in any way, can you embrace it? Can you allow it all just to be?  Sounds CRAZY!  I know.  But can you offer yourself an ounce compassion?  Can you stop for one moment and hit the “pause” button on resisting, trying to make it “go away,” change it, shift it, manipulate it?  Just for a moment.  Can you fathom the belief: “if I could possibly fathom befriending whatever is in pain in me, that I will suffer less???”

I’m totally beside you, dear ones!

And if you are on the up-and-up, can you count your blessings?  Can you look back and see how the divine – or whatever  name you use – had a lovely hand in making something beautiful out of the unexpected pain??

THANK YOU to all of you who desire to live with delight, compassion, and connection in your everyday life.  Thank you for sharing your words of such sweet kindness when something I write resonates with you – and for sharing these words of encouragement and hope and inspiration with your clients, patients, friends, and dear ones.  Truly this is how we help to heal this world.