For the past eight months I have been focused on little other than straightening my spine with twice weekly chiropractic and 24/7 Physical Therapy (aka Present Moment Movement). The Modus Operandi now is Nerve Regeneration, Expansion, and Strength Building, without triggering spasticity. The challenge of this process has brought into stark relief the reality that the nerves on the left side of my body have for some significant length of time been shutting down like the lights in a decommissioned airport, rendering my muscles disabled, my spine reluctantly acquiescing to gravity’s seduction.
And it has not only been a matter of withstanding the physical gravity that keeps us tethered to Earth, although bearing up against this is a challenge in its own right. I am speaking too of spiritual gravity, of The Black Hole that threatened to swallow me when, in 2016, I realized that no amount of compromise or surrender was going to bring back the husband I had thought to spend the rest of this life with; The Hole into which I almost fell when I lost my daughters’ hearts and minds in 2017; The Hole I thought I had outrun when in 2019 the divorce finalized and I bought my dream house, only to find it is leaking and falling down; The Hole to which I finally succumbed in 2020, when I made a concerted effort to end my experience in this particular body; The Hole that eventually sucked up every part of who I used to be and left a collapsing shell to die.
Or to be reborn.
There is no question now about my diagnosis. I have MS induced scoliosis and it has been progressing for decades.
Anyone who has been living with an unidentified disease for years understands the peculiar relief of diagnosis, no matter how alarming. Any diagnosis is better than the total absence of answers to an endless list of invisible questions, the inevitable questioning of ones sanity by others, and eventually by oneself.
I spent twenty exhausting years trying to keep up with my now-ex-husband (XDH), homeschooling, gardening, keeping a home, and everything else that goes along with raising artistic children in suburban America. With no obvious reason for my chronic fatigue and pain, I pushed through until I couldn’t anymore. In Spring 2015 my health became sufficiently worrisome that at the behest of my physician I held several family meetings on the matter, expressing my concernment and sharing the realization that commitment to self care must become a top priority for me. I detailed the physical, mental and emotional stressors within our family and household which were contributing to my stress levels. I explained what “making Mom’s health a priority” would look like; that it would require more kindness between siblings, more equanimity, more peace, and an increased attitude of cooperation. I began setting boundaries and sticking to them. I was, for the first time in decades, placing my own needs ahead of others.
This was not well received.
As a survival mechanism, I learned to separate my energy from my then-husband and daughters as necessary. I leaned into myself. I stopped compromising just to keep the peace. I danced, I sang, I laughed till I fell down. I took walks on the beach, went back to the gym, had fun with fashion, took myself on dates, made friends with people XDH did not approve of. I learned to say “No” without apologizing. I began to see the reality of my own self worth.
This was not well received.
In October of 2016, while trying various workouts with my then-14 year old daughter I discovered Pure Barre and found in this workout a source of embodied empowerment that would begin to heal both my body and my nervous system from the inside out, putting (what I did not know at the time was) MS into remission. I experienced a renewed passion for life, a Jois de vivre, an independence of body and spirit that had evaded me since 1995, the year I got whiplash and met XDH.
My Wild Woman was literally breathed back to life during the hour a day I spent fire breathing and pushing every muscle in my body to it’s absolute limit, proving to myself the Pure Barre mantra: “You are stronger than you think.”
During the first few weeks of Pure Barre I began to hear Wild Woman singing over my bones. She sang to me of passion, she sang to me of my Inner Goddess, she sang to me of the dreams I had for my marriage, for my children, for myself. Wild Woman sang to me of the she-wolf all women carry within us, aching to howl freely at the moon after too many years of over-domestication.
When Wild Woman sings over your bones in this way, you have no choice but to howl for she will destroy whatever she must to free your soul from the prison you have crafted out of your dreams.
So I howled.
This was not well received.
What I did not comprehend until now is that Wild Woman forced me to dance and sing and howl not only to save my spirit, but also my body. For it turns out that dancing, singing and howling are what put the MS (I did not know I had) into remission, what unleashed the tide of Kundalini as it opened my ribcage and lifted my body off my spine, allowing me to experience myself once again as an Energy Body, as a song, a dance, a three dimensional expression of Universal Vibrations.
