Hey y’all. It’s been a while since last we spoke. There’s a lot that has happened in my life. Some good. Some decidedly not so good. Such is life, eh? I struggled for a long time about whether I wanted to share any of this publicly. I started and stopped writing multiple blogs along the way. I just couldn’t bring myself to lay everything out in the open about what has been happening in the last eight months. The first time I wrote out that it had been eight months since I let anyone in on things, I shuddered. I’m not an open book by any means, but I’m also typically not that closed off.
I realized that not only was I cutting myself off from potential hurt from others not understanding, but I was also denying myself potential support. Additionally, I had to deal with some internalized stigma around being an energy worker and not being able to control what has been happening.
So no more vague nonsense. Since late November of last year, I have been in steadily increasing amounts of pain. During the holidays, it got to a degree that I could no longer ignore. I stopped working out, riding my bike, and spending time outside because of the amount of pain I was almost constantly in. I now suspect that I know what the culprit of all this pain is, but I have no official diagnosis yet. I just had an appointment with a rheumatologist who will hopefully identify what on earth is wrong.
What does that mean? Well, my joints and the muscles around them hurt like someone is regularly stabbing me with something dull just trying to bore directly into my joint sockets. When this pain lasts for too long, the muscles around those joints harden like rocks and hurt like bruises when touched. Super fun, right? This is not limited to my lower body. I also experience this discomfort in my shoulders, back, and neck. It isn’t as noticeable in these areas because I can just not pick up heavy things, or bend awkwardly, or turn my head too fast. Except when I forget that I shouldn’t do these things and wind up wanting to screech because I did the thing I ought not to have done.
It took months for me to allow myself to entertain the idea that this wasn’t temporary discomfort that would resolve itself. During that time, I berated myself for not being able to energetically move the perception of the pain out of my body and I denied myself mobility aids to help me move more easily. I was miserable pretty much all the time. I tried to hide from anyone, other than my wife, how uncomfortable I was moving around in public.
I first got a foldable walking stick. My vanity prevented me from getting a cane right away. I just couldn’t bear the thought that I needed an actual cane to move around, so I tried a walking stick. It helped, but not fully. I couldn’t disperse enough weight to fully move around without winding up just as tired as if I hadn’t been using it at all. About a month later, I finally broke down and got a foldable cane. (Again, I keep trying to hide my need for mobility assistance. Yikes.) The cane better dispersed my weight so that I could move with more ease. I found, however, that my gait was starting to get a little bit funky from constantly leaning to one side or the other. Switching the cane from one hand to another every time one leg or shoulder started to hurt more was tedious and tiresome. Fast forward one more time to last week and, after much research, I finally got some inexpensive forearm crutches. Yes, they are still foldable (listen, I have to at least feel like I could hide them if I wanted to) but they are also PINK. I need, what is called, an ambulatory mobility aid. That just means that I don’t need it all the time, but I do in certain situations and on bad days.
I glossed over my internalized judgment about energy work. There are those energy workers who claim that it is the be all end all of cures. They believe, and proudly proclaim, that energy healing is all you need to be whole. That’s not at all how I feel and honestly, it took me developing a disability to fully own and embody that fact. Energy work is not a replacement for your doctors, for your therapist, for your interpersonal relationships. It’s a supplement. It’s a support. In recent days, I’ve become very well acquainted with braces for different parts of my body. Energy work is more like a brace than THE CURE. The point of the brace is to support a part of you that isn’t functioning in the way that you need it to, or it’s hurting and needs a little something extra for you to accomplish your goals.
Braces are meant to be used in addition to medications your doctor prescribes, workouts that you might get assigned by a physical therapist to strengthen the muscles so that you can stop wearing the brace as much. It is meant to be a tool that you can use when you are in need and the other things that normally help aren’t working. They aren’t meant, aside from extreme cases where that is the prescribed most beneficial intervention, to be the forever answer to all your problems.
Energy work is similar. Sometimes we need an extra hand to put ourselves back into energetic balance. Sometimes we need to learn new tools to help us navigate our lives and balance our energy ourselves. Sometimes, we need to look at what past life lessons might be shaping the way we interact with the world right now.
Like any good therapist, or doctor, the goal of an energy worker/psychic/intuitive healer should be to provide support and education so that you can live your best life in service of your Highest Good. It’s my goal, at the end of the day, to work myself out of a job.
Stay tuned for next month’s post: What is Energy Work and How Does It Benefit Me?