My Back

I wrote a piece a few weeks ago about a piece of the puzzle. I wrote, in the “You’re I, And I Am You, And The Only Map You Need is Love” piece, about this piece of the puzzle that is big while it is small. Big, in that it is dense and full and weighted. Small in that it is just this tiny last piece of a vast and complex whole.
 
A last bit of the whole to fill the hole.  
 
It’s the essential part, the root, the beginning. It’s small in size, like the size when you put your thumb and pointer finger together and make a circle. It’s that size. But it’s big. 
 
It’s the size of a vertebra, yet as big as the all of me.
 
But let’s talk about my back. 
 
I have this thing with my back. It’s called spondylolisthesis. My photo with this writing kinda sums it up. It is the slip of an upper vertebra slipping off a lower one, in my case, L5 and S1.  It happened either when I was 12 and fractured my spine or I was born with a fractured spine. Either Or. The doctors don’t know and it really doesn’t matter when. It matters that it is. This fracture in my spine (the Spondylolysis) that causes the slippage (the Spondylolisthesis).  The fracture creates an instability. And a continued slipping at times over this so many years.
 
Anyway, this spine. One of the reasons why the Drs thought I fractured my spine when I was 12 was because that’s when it started bothering me. But it could have just been that this is when it started bothering me but it happened much earlier. 


I have been managing my spine for 50 years now. Lately it’s been awful.
 
There are other times that it has been awful.  When it’s awful it hurts to stand.  And sleep. Those things mostly. Standing and sleeping. Oh, and walking. Walking fucking kills me.
 
When my spine is bad, I am in pain. Or I can’t feel my legs. Or feet. Mostly my left one. This has happened before. And then I manage it, and often it’s ok, and then it’s not and I manage it again. 
 
But this time, this last rendition of my unstable spine thing that I have, the pain has shifted to the right side. This is new information which means I need more information. 
 
When you have an injury (or spine defect from birth) for your entire life that you discovered 50 years ago, and in all that time the transfer of pain from the spine to the leg went down the left side…and now, at year 50, of my 62 years on this earth, the pain runs right …well…this is new information.
 
And so I need more information.
 
This is going to be a long, and dense, piece. And (just so you know where we’re going here) we will end up back at the missing puzzle piece.  
 
So I had a new Xray taken by my (when I broke my foot and when I tore my meniscus) Orthopedic Surgeon that I love because his goal is always to avoid surgery if we can and he referred me for 12 weeks of PT, which is like the very best thing ever!  And he also referred me to a neurosurgeon because “this is a pretty bad Spondi” and well, you know, this is where my spinal cord lives. 
 
And I called my son, because, well, you know, he is this gifted Postural Alignment Practitioner and Somatic Experiencing Therapist and Healer.  And I went to my most favorite Chiropractor to look at my Xray again and he checked my feet, which I can’t feel, and now I have a program in place to work on nerve regeneration and spinal mobility in that unmovable spot.
 
So…
 
This structural instability that is my spine. This structural instability while certainly a structural trauma, is, I truly believe, the physical manifestation of the lack of safety that I feel.  Both. Because while it is a structural injury (from birth or after), it is also the space/place, where this last, deep and challenging but we’ve got to heal this shit trauma, piece lives. 
 
My trauma settled into this space. This is where it found its home. Or it found a home and my body, in all its infinite and intuitive wisdom, circled round these emotions and formed their home. Either Or. And it really doesn’t matter how. It matters that it is.
 
And I know that this is.  
 
How do I know this? Because every time I do the physical work to help stabilize my spine and alleviate the pain, every time I do these somatic and PT and alignment exercise movements, I cry. 
 
This is Somatic Therapy in its truest form.  Release the physical and the emotions are set free.  But not until I feel them. A lot. 
 
It would be easier if the emotions released quickly through the trauma space in the body out into the air to heal with the universe. But no, first I get to feel them. And process them. Wade through them. Perhaps pick up pieces of information but not always. And heal them. I get to heal them. 
 
This is hard. 
 
Which makes it hard sometimes to do the Somatic and PT and alignment exercise movements because I don’t want to feel the deep feeling emotions that come out. I don’t want to feel them and heal them. 
 
They hurt.
 
And I’m tired.
 
So back to the beginning of this piece and the solving of the last piece of the puzzle piece that is the size of my vertebra but heavy and soupy, dark and concentrated.
 
The Universe, in all her glory coupled with this beautiful sense of (compassionate) humor I know she has, she re-misaligned the misalignment of my spine so that the pain, it is so really bad that I can’t function through it. So I have to heal it . Which means I have to heal the emotional piece, that last piece of the piece that is the size of my vertebra but big.
 
I have to do the physical work because we are not messing around now. I don’t have feeling in my feet. This is bad. And so I can’t escape the physical work which means I can’t escape the feelings. That’s how this work works.
 
So, here I am, with my back that is my Achillis Heal and also my Savings Grace. Because without its pain message, I could choose to ignore this last small piece. That is so fucking big and sits, just the right size, inside my misaligned spine.
 
Without this pain, I could maybe ignore this. But I can’t
 
And so I do it. Because I am brave.