My update on my health and more in my down-to-earth casual, no doubt “out of the box” ‘road less traveled’ this way style on a casual early evening, work day complete and mellow relaxed go-with-the-flow in autonomic nervous system (ANS) calming downtime. Mindfulness to the calm disengagement of flight, fight, freeze or fawn. The four F’s well understood in the language of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD).

I also very much believe and have experienced how helpful to any healing/recovery process it is to incorporate our challenge into the over-all living of our lives. It is important to do whatever one can do and to not stop one’s life in waiting for full recovery. There is indeed “A Time For Everything”  –Ecclesiastes NIV Bible (below). This time for everything cannot be measured as each separate.

Some days, now, still, but not in as big a way as almost 2 months ago now, my autoimmune recovery and my complex grief process will mean an interruption to what would otherwise be my schedule on an average day. This can happen. It’s important to radically accept that. It is also very helpful, to rest, meditate, take naps as I can, to be able to keep balancing the autoimmune recovery with my grieving. And to also balance it with living my life on-going challenges and all.

What does that mean? Look like? Living Through things of any time?

It’s slowly increasing what I can do within a framework of built in rest, grief, processing time that is set aside a part from the hours I work with clients. For over a month, as I was bed-ridden and immobile it meant listening to an audiobook, or dictating my book ideas etc. into an app on one of my phones. Thinking. Feeling. Grieving. What I could do, including a few YouTube videos and other Podcast Videos while flat on my back.

Why, you might wonder? I can be stubborn, being a scorpio and all. More importantly, however, what is positive for one’s spirit and one’s soul and the healing/grieving process, as I’ve experienced it, is to do whatever one can and not surrender entirely to mental, physical, spiritual health challenges individually or collectively. Waiting to be able to do what I usually could do or to do more again was too black and white for me. I believe it is so important and helpful to overall autoimmune recovery and any grief process to carry on if even in some small way every day.

That’s what I’ve done. That’s what, I think has helped me to be more often than not fairly upbeat even in the dark times, if you can relate to that dichotomy.

Energy flows where attention goes. Motion in stillness. Purpose in whatever is. Energy flows where attention goes.

I am talking about having gratitude even in the midst of somatic flashbacks triggered to that deeper aspect of a piece of (narc mother) work to process and heal even more and the deep pain of complex grief. I learned well many years ago in my recovery from BPD and sexual abuse and so much recovery from having had a Narcissistic dysfunctional Family of Origin (now understood as CPTSD) how to flow in to the pain and out of the pain. Into the pit of the grief and back out of the pit of grief.

A Christian Reference – It can have meaning outside of Christianity too:

Ecclesiastes 3 New International Version (NIV)

A Time for Everything

3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.[b]

16 And I saw something else under the sun:

In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.

17 I said to myself,

“God will bring into judgment
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed.”

18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”

22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

“A time for everything” trusting in that I walk by faith knowing that there is so much more known in and of my situation and challenges now, than I can possibly know. This is the way to metaphorically, in my case, “…fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of long distance run” (Rudyard Kipling) In which the “unforgiving minute” is widely interpreted to mean, destiny.

The paradoxical balancing of the yin and the yang of finding meaning and a piece or more, depending, of one’s resources at any given time to be all you can be – giving it your best – even if that may be the smallest of courageous fortitude in the smallest of accomplishments. Just this act of doing, something, nurtures one’s self and soul and provides palpable lived hope. Not just set aside absent far-off when everything can be “perfect” kind of “hope’.

After all, in this life, for us human beings, nothing is about perfection. An attitude of gratitude with the strength of vulnerability to dare greatly, even when that meant could I reach and grab the television remote or the phone to turn on the Bose dock to listen to an audiobook. It is being fully present, with mindful radical acceptance and a healthy faithful surrender to that which is not possible that makes that which is possible a must-do kind of thing.

With an emphasis on the importance of having and maintaining an attitude of gratitude generally in life, with balance, and even more so when in a process of healing again and/or more, I walk my talk.

I am grateful for the challenges. Grateful to God. Grateful to how much I have learned from many hardships and multiples of many a wilderness and/or long dark nights of the soul. It is true, that which does not kill us, can and does make us stronger, if we are open to flowing with that.

Surrender to the destiny of any unforgiving situation, one moment at a time. All is already known and has purpose, our challenge and opportunity is but to keep awakening to that as we grow letting go of the vast that is not all revealed. Much will be revealed for those you seek, as it is truly sought and one is open and ready for it.

© A.J. Mahari, June 21, 2019 – Blog and Video – all rights reserved. (Except noted sourced quotes)