A Healing Crisis

I planned to get this blog site up six months ago, but circumstances prevented that from happening. In those months I completely retired, started an energetic exercise program, began hospital volunteering, and engaged in a committed relationship (for the first time in many years). And I ended up in the hospital physically and emotionally broken the first week of the new year.

What happened? You may wonder, as I did.

The best answer I have echoes from my now deceased healer, Terry: a healing crisis.

“We’re going to admit you.” I heard those words in disbelief.

“What?!” I interjected, while thoughts raced. This is what happens to John; he gets admitted and I handle everything. “Wait,” I tell the young doctor, “You need to hold my hand.”

He obliges and continues to tell me what and why, but I am full on into identification with my young adult son who had more emergency hospitalizations in the last ten years of his life than I could tally. I had never been hospitalized other than for childbirth or scheduled procedures, the last of which was to give John a kidney.

During the decade of his illness, I had plenty of time to do my “anticipatory grieving.” I took the time after his death to do my griefwork. I wrote another book. I plunged into marketing a new transplant center. After three and a half years, I thought I was “handling” it all pretty well.

Then all December I kept feeling an energy drain. PTSD-filled dreams disturbed my sleep. My new life was taking me away from the hidden sanctuary of grief which I’d been holding sacred. I couldn’t maintain it and also go forward with my life. Energetically I was a mess. Physically I had a persistent cough. I got a bad virus. I hurt my back and took steroids as prescribed for it. And suddenly I ended up in the emergency room on sepsis protocol with pneumonia.

Eerily I was now in my son’s place. For so many years I agonized over his suffering, feeling it in my own body and desperately trying to alleviate it – and never being able to. That has been the lingering regret.

That day, lying uncomfortably in my hospital bed, tethered by leads and IV lines, I knew there was nothing more I could have done for John. We each have to lie in our own bed.

The first morning home in my own bed, I woke wanting only to go back into the darkness. My daughter was telling me I needed to eat, take my antibiotic. “Give me a minute. Bad PTSD,” I said, my hands shaking, my heart pounding, wanting desperately to join John.

Sunlight streaming in hit my closed eyelids and I saw a landscape of gold. “I’m in every sunset you see,” I heard my son say. And then another voice: it’s not your time to cross over.

Somehow, with more conscious fortitude than I thought possible, I managed to tell my daughter that I was ready to eat and take my medicine.

The days of healing have been slow. There is more tentativeness, less driven-ness, maybe more hope, or at least peace. There are no secret chambers of sucking grief, the energy leak is abated. The healing crisis over.

My healing crisis was emotional, rooted in grief and PTSD, and it manifested in physical illness. Others can result from a detoxing process or physical stimuli, often through alternative and complimentary therapies, but all seem to follow the axiom that symptoms will get worse before they get better.

Have you experienced a healing crisis? Want to talk about it?