What kind of lessons have I learned lately? What an apropos question. I am sitting down to write tonight to ruminate on how I’ve been feeling lately. Suddenly,I feel very self-conscious about writing, as it occurs to me that someone else might actually ready it. There are people out there, peeking into the corners of my mind, and my self, right along with me. I guess that’s ok, though. It’s kind of nice, even. A few years, or even just months ago, it might have felt more daunting to think about than it does now. Now, it’s just kind of a passing feeling of fright, even excitement, that someone else is here with me. Now it feels more like having a small alliance of kindred spirits, like how there are always those animal friends in Disney princess movies. If you’re reading this, you might think of yourself as one of those helpful little singing birds in Cinderella, or an inanimate object brought to life like the candlestick with the funny nose in Beauty and the Beast, or Olaf in Frozen.

So here I am, sitting down to write, with a stiff wrist and a dizzy head. This weekend has been tricky. I did a little too much bustling around on Saturday morning and set something off in my head. I felt it come on late morning – overwhelmed, over-stimulated, and then very, very tired. I had to get out though, to run an errand or just get out and get a change of scenery.

It’s that time of year now, a week before Christmas, when I start to realise that all of those ideas I’ve had swimming around in my head for a month actually need to happen now or they will not happen before Christmas. All of a sudden, it’s now or next year. This year though, I think I’m taking it in stride in part because of my sobriety. Trying to have a bit more faith in divine timing, too, because why not. It seems to be working actually, in big and little ways.

Yesterday my reason for going out was to get mulled wine and non-wine at Ikea. Paired that with lunch with the kids and another stop to get some recipe ingredients and suddenly I felt very productive. Husband even took the kids and let me alone to do some shopping, so in my daze-y state, I wandered around the store a bit. I ended up forgetting the mulled wine altogether but I did stumble upon a fully decorated, floor model, 2 meter tree for 5€ and then totally amused my self by carting it home after cramming it into the back of the car. Now, this might seem gratuitous; we already have a fully decorated tree at home. Here’s the thing – since I’ve lived on my own, or perhaps even since I was a little girl, I dreamed about having a kids tree, or a basement tree, when I had a house and a family of my own. Now, because of this timing, this off-day, this forgetting of why I was supposed to be there in the first place and just wandering around, I’ve made this lifelong dream come true, and for only 5€. I didn’t even have to decorate it. It was just all finished, waiting for me to show up and take it home.

Maybe this is the way forward. Maybe I have to accept this new way of functioning. Maybe the dizziness, blankness, ringing is all just telling me to stop, to be in my body, and succumb to a new flow of all of the energy that makes me, me. What if this ringing that I hear in my ears is my body’s alert system that is sounding the alarm that all is just not right. That’s what it feels like when it’s a bad day. On a good day, it’s hard to even remember what the bad days feel like, or maybe I just imagined it. Usually I’m just enjoying feeling more normal, honestly. But on the bad days, the writing helps, as it’s the only way to make sense of my thoughts. Maybe the lesson here is just to keep it simple and lower the bar whenever at all possible – listen to myself, be gentle, do something, even if it’s a small list, and even if I forget something on it.

I have noticed a new symptom, just in the past few days. My hearing is at once getting worse while also getting more sensitive. The other day, I heard the frequency of my laptop. Now, as I sit in my living room by the fireplace, I can hear the cinders singing in the fire, the hot hot heat reaching a humid spot in the wood. For a moment, the ringing in my ears subsides a bit, as my brain tunes into the other sounds, and then it returns. This is also why I’ve taken to listening to classical again while I work, as it takes away the ringing.

So what is this strange sensitivity? I also notice myself different around others, too. I don’t fall into the same patterns of conversation as before. I am more my self, which can sometimes feel awkward, as though I am at once participating and also observing – observing that I am different that before with others, and also participating in a way that feels more true, with that same flinching excitement and fear, which is also accompanied shortly thereafter by a reassuring, self-mothering reaction when I tell myself that actually, it’s ok to feel a little uncomfortable, the ease will come with practice.

My friend Betty and I talk a lot about integration. Well, mostly she reassures me that this is what I’m doing now, that I’ve been doing it, and that I’m doing amazing, sweetie. Before even that, before I even knew what would come after those first few trips back to the US, she lovingly helped me to understand that integration was what I needed to do to feel better in myself. Betty and I met on my first trip back to the US in 10 years, when I went back to see my mother and support her during her first cancer treatment, in July of 2021. She met me during, and helped me through a very intense, transitional time of my life, by being my friend. The idea of hibernation was planted by her in my head, as that was her plan for this winter, as well.

I’m hibernating to allow for the integration of all that I’ve learned in the past year and a half about my self and my relationships with other people, how I interact in the world. This real work takes time, there is no way to rush it. My body is telling me this right now – loud and clear. In the past 18 month I’ve learned more about who I am than in the last 18 years. I have also ironically and painfully learned to accept that I have, in fact, known all along and seemed to have, for most of my life and at least since adolescence, ignored my self to some extent.

Now my task is to integrate all of these parts of my self and to learn to love them, love me, for who I am. I must learn to turn to the outside all of those learned judgements and cruelties I once pulled onto and let into myself. I must push them away, reject them, so that I may just be in my own body, living there with acceptance and love for myself, above all else, because everything else good comes from me being good in and with myself. Does that mean I have to tell all of my secrets? No, but it does mean that I have to be okay with them. I have to look at them in myself and continue to unpack them with the delicacy and love of a best friend. I can also protect my heart, from being broken, like a mother to an innocent child, not yet aware of the world beyond their loving bond.

People say that everything happens for a reason. Do they mean it; do you? Because if this is true, then maybe this is all happening for a reason – to make me slow down and relearn how to be in my body. To be me. Maybe I fell and split my head open right at my third eye, as a few friends have pointed out, so that I would literally split open my consciousness and be forced to see with a spiritual vision. Maybe it’s not just growing but ascension pains. And why not?