Strange connections

So my new chiropractor has all these new agey methods that he uses for adjustment and whole-body wellness and all that wonderful stuff. Instead of contorting your body all around and eliciting those alarming-yet-satisfying popping noises from your joints, he just has you lie face-down on the table and holds something akin to a hand-held jackhammer to different points on your spine. It doesn't hurt most of the time, thank goodness. Another thing he has you do is sit with your arm out in front of you, and try to press it down while you do silly things with your other body parts, like turning your head to the left or right, sticking your tongue out, holding your hand to your forehead, etc. (Oddly enough, sticking my tongue out to the left makes my arm suddenly weaker and he can push it down with his little pinky.)

Now I'm all for the whole body-mind-emotions integrated wellness approach to health care, but I kind of miss those alarming-yet-satisfying pops. And the improvement I'm feeling, if any, is really pretty gradual and I was hoping for something a little more instant-gratification. So I'm reserving judgement until I've been going for a couple months. But something happened last week that got me thinking about, oh, all kinds of things.

I was mentioning to him that a spot on my neck was tense and tender yet again. It feels better whenever he's done with me, but by the next appointment it's back again. So he had me sit up and did some of those arm things touching different accupuncture points on my body. Then he started asking about things in my life that might be bothering me, going through a list of typical stressors - money, relationship, spirituality, friendship, family... All this time after each category he pressed on my arm, and I resisted, and it hadn't done much of anything until he got to motherhood, and suddenly I couldn't keep that arm up no matter how hard I tensed it up.

So he started through another list of possible stressors centering around motherhood, like discipline, anger, development worries, etc. Once again I was able to resist right up until he started talking about my pregnancy. We talked a couple more minutes and I finally was able to articulate that I'm scared spitless about having two children.

No big shocker there, it's probably something that everyone ponders and worries about while expecting their second. But it made me think about when I said here that I wish I were less ambiguous about this baby. And it made me realize that my biggest fear is that my depression, which is manageable now, is going to come out of hiding and take me out at the knees once I have two intensely need-based relationships sucking at me every second of every day.

I'm still reserving judgement on the chiropractor. But even if he does nothing else to help me, I'm very grateful to him for helping me to clarify my feelings on this topic, so I can hopefully address them.

Going Home

Our family goes to an island in the Georgian Bay for a week's vacation every summer since we moved to Pittsburgh. I wrote this on the way home last summer, and just found it in my little red notebook.

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The leaving makes the time there more real.

As we slice through the water but leave no trace, the mark is instead on me. My eyes try to drink in the essence of sky and rocks, windswept trees and water, but they change before me even as I look -- becoming straighter, tamer, thicker, as if we are stepping back from the edge of the world and returning to the sheltering arms of real life. But my mind like a compass is unerringly turned back, toward the island.

It is not a place but a Place. The archetype of Earh, Sky and Water clashing and blending in equal parts. You can't help but feel it. It gets under your skin, in your blood. But more wondrous and devastating is this: It gets into your heart. It gets into your heart, so that every beat whispers of wind in pines and the kiss of water on stone, and every leave-taking is really a promise to go back.


Georgian Bay, July 2007

Happy New Year

I've been extraordinarily self-absorbed lately, just kind of pulling into the shell and ignoring the outside world. A combination of the pregnancy and having a cold. But here's what's been on my mind lately:

1. Hoping my friend Cheryl, who kicked her leukemia last year, continues to improve and get her life back this year.
2. Really really REALLY wanting to at least start on my forest garden this year. Or at least draw up the landscape plan.
3. Wishing I felt a little more excited and less ambiguous about this pregnancy. But it's probably that I just have no energy to be excited.
4. Enjoying time with the dajadaddy and dajamou for an at-home vacation.
5. Missing my family and friends in Portland.