Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. But we are still standing, most of the time! Always surviving, sometimes thriving! According to the WordPress records, I haven’t left an update since June 30, 2022…uh, can you agree that was a quantum lifetime ago?
Next month will be ten years since Vernon’s accident. My, how life has changed our family since then! Still, life keeps throwing punches, as you can surely relate. So we learn to bob and weave until it feels natural, I guess. Some might even call it a dance. Sometimes its graceful, sometimes it’s just awkwardly moving. The point is, we are moving. As much as there may be a post-traumatic stress response, there is also the opportunity for post-traumatic growth. Two sides of the same coin…or rather, two partners in the same dance. If done well…it’s entertaining for others and keeps the dancers in shape.
I think I did as best as I was able with my family those early years, but I was also a different version of myself then. I was younger, for one thing. But no matter how hard a parent tries to keep things “normal’ for their kids, they can’t really know how things will affect the children. Some of these traumas take years to surface again. In Justine’s case, hers began to show up in about fourth grade. She’s finishing up 8th now. Of course lots of these kids struggle, the Pandemic came at a crucial time for the adolescents. Anyway…one thing I thought might bring some healing for her is a trip back to England. She had always resonated with the idea of being English, even though she couldn’t actually remember what it’s like there. Though she, her brother, and her dad were born there, we moved to the states shortly after she turned two, so the memories are only served up by photos and stories.
So finally, I updated her passport and began to imagine a plan. It took about ten months from conception to getting on an airplane…the truth is, I wasn’t sure where the money would come from or if Justine would feel stable enough to make such a trip. It became a big goal, something to keep us both motivated toward. Eventually, after checking in with my friends and family there, I bought the tickets. We were committed to the vision now. A few months later, I realized how anxious the idea of traveling everywhere on a set schedule of trains and coaches was doing me in. So I rented a car. That brought its own brief anxiety, but once everything was locked in on this side, we took the flight, trusting everything would be okay on that end.
And as the Irish blessing says, the road DID rise up to meet us. It didn’t take me long to re-acclimate to British roads. Fortunately we were given an upgraded car, which was amazing and made us feel rich and safe. The GPS was our godsend and so, it turned out, was the selection of radio stations and excellent speakers. We drove deep into the night, with the brights as our guide through narrow hedgerows most of the time. When I’d turn on the brights, Justine would say (smiling): “This is like a horror movie!” Truly, it was eerie and bizarre. But body memory kicked in, and I was able to get us through a ten-day road trip, with all sorts of weather, including SNOW. Luxurious seat warmers were just the cherry on top. (Or should I say bottom?) Justine loves experiencing snow, and this was in the county that her father lived when Maki was born. It was a little kiss from the land that we hadn’t expected.
Now, heres the thing about England: it is a deeply layered, vibrant story inside my DNA as well as my lived experience. I am something like 94% English genetically, and I know this ancestral history is important to Justine too, especially as she was born there. I have visited the country so many times since I was about her age. Even then and through the years, I would say: “This is the only place I never can get lost.” I hoped Justine would have a sense of that for herself once we arrived. And truly, I think she did. She said as much…not about getting lost, but about feeling at home. I was so grateful, and it was a lovely thing to embody together as we drove sooooo many hours through countryside of the green and pleasant land. It rained quite a lot, but it was worth it for all the green fields…and horror-story roads. We were an ancestral slumber party on wheels expecting healing support and soaking it up wherever it reared its loving head. (I don’t know how else to phrase it yet.) I may speak for myself, but I felt we were supported at every turn, though friends, through memory, new experiences together, and wordless grief. Me, being reminded of my life story, threaded in the land. With or with out Vernon and children. And Justine, sensing for the first time, making sense of her unconscious past: new smells, tastes, sounds, views. She soaked it all up like the potent medicine it is at it’s best. The body remembers. It didn’t matter if it was grey, wet, and cold. Old church graveyards are much better for photo-shoots when the weather is awful. What would England be without its rain? This is what makes its sparkle so special.
I guess I’ll just photo-dump at this point as there are too many moments to tie into this tapestry…and I still haven’t processed it all yet. The point is…it was great. It was healing. It was activating. It was better than imagined. We saw family, we saw friends. We let three rounds of the leftover ashes fly in the wind or float on the waters: in Cornwall: the Merry Maidens stone circle of Penzance, the Jurassic Coastline at Charminster Beach, where 200 million year old fossils wash up for the taking, and the River Thames in Buckinghamshire…where I released the last of them, and some grief around the marriage before he was hurt. Wooosh! What a road trip. What a satisfying circle.
These were our stops over ten days:
London Heathrow to: Exeter, Devon—Penzance, Cornwall—Poole/Bournemouth, Dorset— Bourne End/Buckinghamshire—Reading,Berkshire—Oxford, Oxforshire—London, Buckinghamshire— and back to Heathrow Airport in our awesome Mercedes.
Now we are home again and happy to be here. That was the most special trip ever. No regrets. I know I did good.
Well, if you got this far, you got the gist! We both had the trip of our lives. We were so happy to connect with older parts of ourselves. This trip was a big deal and I expect we will continue to notice its benefits as time goes on. The Best. 10 out of 10. Would highly recommend.
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” —Albert Camus
Painting by me.
May 23rd, 2022 was the 8 year anniversary of Vernon’s accident-iversary. I’ve always tried to mark the passage, but I I didn’t really know how to do it this year. I mean…how long do we need to mark each event in a year? At this point, it can seem so excessive. Eight doesn’t feel satisfactorily significant as a memorial number and we had a lot of other things going on. Maki moved out on his own (with roommates) to LA in May, and Justine and I will soon be moving as well. I wondered if it would be easier to just let it pass this time. But sometimes when you let go of the story, things are allowed to come in on their own…which ultimately, can feel even more special and expectation-free.
On the evening of the 22nd, still without a plan, I noticed a jade-green chrysalis over our front door…and then another…and another. I’d never seen these around our home before. I called Justine down to share the wonder of it all, and soon we had counted eight, all hanging around our entry way and Maki’s entrance nearby. No where else on the premises did we see them. Eight, of course, was significant, and the metaphor of metamorphosis was not lost on me. We were all going through massive changes at the moment, let alone what we have already experienced. This message felt present: this wasn’t about dwelling on the past, but embracing the patient unfolding of the future that can only happen in the now.
Since that night, it has been an exquisite month of witnessing the chrysalis process. I watched a couple fat black caterpillars crawl up to the overhang and spin themselves into their pupa stage, and I discovered more hidden chrysalises in the meantime. Thirteen all together, though two never made it out of their casings. I knew I was blessed with an experience that will not happen this way again. Every day, I checked up on them, counted them, looked for more—I was a butterfly babysitter, putting all my hope into these mini-lives. I loved the perspective they brought me: “Wow, miracles happen all the time. We just don’t always get to see them. But these I do. This isn’t just an every day miracle either: this is transfiguration.”
As mesmerized as I was, and as much attention as I paid these little jade pendants each day, I never got to witness the exact moment of shift—not on the way in and not on the way out. Maybe some things we are not yet meant to see. We wait and we watch but can miss the moment by a moment. Its like things take so long you wonder if they will ever shift, then you turn your head for two minutes and everything is different. I did learn that the caterpillar, once it finds its chosen spot, will hang like the letter “J” for about 24 hours before transforming into its next stage. I would watch and watch, hoping to see the green goo take over in front of my eyes, but all I was allowed to see is that the caterpillar’s head goes limp before the rest of the body curls up completely. When the green chrysalis has taken shape, the lifeless head does not make it into the casing it just hangs as a bit of black husk or it falls off completely. In other words, for this transformation to happen, the creature literally has to lose its mind.
There was no exact clockwork to each transition, but it seemed the pupa stage was generally two weeks, and so the whole process (from noticing the first ones to the birth of the last) was a full month. Just as I didn’t see the moment the caterpillars turned green, I wasn’t allowed to see the moment any of the butterflies popped through their veils. I’m sure I got within a minute a couple of times, but the moment of transit was still closed to my experience this round. I noticed that when the rich orange-red color would drop in and the familiar monarch pattern would shine through the transparent casing, it was near time. When it really got bright, it could be anywhere from a minute to a half hour. But as I said, the breaking through must be so fast. So slow and so fast—isn’t that life? Then the new butterfly would emerge, crumpled and wet, desperately hanging on what was left of its transparent container.
I noticed that when they did emerge, each seemed to have a different rhythm, maybe even personality (insectality?). Some would wait till their wings were sturdy before they tried to move away from their empty casings. some would be in a rush and fall in a heap to the ground. I had the privilege of handling all of them, because it seemed the best way to move them from the too-smooth doorframe to the jasmine plant nearby. There, they could walkabout on twigs and dry their wings at leisure. I noticed that once they got a sense of a safe human hand, they would return easily for more of that texture. I suppose it’s the way babies are in general: trusting. Why wouldn’t they be? Earth is their mother as far as their first instincts seem to know. How humbling to think my hands are just part of the Earth.
It’s the end of June now, the last butterflies left a couple weeks back, but they changed me with their gentle medicine. I see monarchs dancing around the neighborhood and feel a new kinship, wondering if any of them were the ones I met. If so, they are teenagers now, completely ignoring me. Sometimes I see them visiting my jasmine plant, but still I have no idea. I have read that Monarchs can live anywhere from 2 weeks to 9 months (the late blooming butterflies that migrate to Mexico live the longest)…but still, in human eyes, that just seems so short. Yet the winged-archetype aligns again. How many mini-metamorphoses do humans have in a lifetime? How many butterfly lifespans can we squeeze into our own? Quite a lot. We go through so many birth-death-rebirth cycles. No matter what stage we are in, we can be assured it will change again. Isn’t that miraculous? Nature mirrors our human journeys so much, and all we have to do is pay attention.
Here are a couple short videos of our experience. (Clearly obsessed, yes…I took many more.)
We are coming up to SEVEN years since Vernon’s accident took place so I thought I’d share some reflections I pulled together a few months ago.
One of the metaphors that keeps returning to my life is the idea of a structural crack: how the tiniest fissure can go unnoticed over long periods of time but eventually knocks the whole building down. We can blame any number of things, the bigger the better, the more obvious, the easier. But it’s often the little mistake, the repressed secret, the unrecognized trauma, that is the core culprit. It’s so small, patient, and silent, that no one even notices. It can take years, even generations, to do it work, like dripping water on stone. But the longer it goes unnoticed, the more expensive the damage.
When I went to the hospital ER the night my husband was hit by a truck, I was told he might not make it through the night. He hadn’t been breathing when the ambulance got to the scene, so their resuscitating him was the first miracle. I was told he’d broken his pelvis, some ribs, his femur, his jaw, and his left forearm. Also as he’d hit his head very hard, they would have to induce a coma to keep his brain from swelling. There was no telling yet if there would be lasting brain damage, but the surgeons would be working all night on his bones.
He did survive the night, and when I saw him next, he looked like a mummy, all bandaged and splinted in his bed. In the days that followed, there were more surgeries, but the most impressive one was on his forearm. It was overseen by a young orthopedic surgeon whom the staff raved about. Apparently he made lego structures at home to problem-solve the details of his patient’s fractions—a genius. We knew we were in good hands with all of them. I was told that comas were important to keep the body functioning at the quietest level possible. And indeed, his healing seemed to be quick, at least as far as his fractures were concerned. I imagined it would take a lot longer to heal if he was constantly having to move around in everyday life. It would certainly be more frustrating.
But of course, there were other problems. More tests, more surgeries. His kidneys broke down ten days in due to some reaction to something I can’t remember now. So there had to be 10 hours of dialysis a week. A tracheotomy was performed so he could eat through a tube. Physical therapists would come in, moving his arms and legs, so the muscles wouldn’t atrophy, but his ankles hardened in a pronated twist, his right arm postured tight to his chest. (These were not the bones that had broken.) By the time he was awake, a couple months later, it did appear there was some brain injury, his short term memory completely shot, but his bones had healed as if they’d never been cracked. It was the one part of his body damage that we could forget about, as messy and dramatic as it seemed the first night. A good thing too, as for the next two years, all the other problems would only grow, requiring constant care. It was a frustrating frontier for everyone, and ultimately a slow decline to his death.
But that is all just background. With so many other things to keep our eyes on, it was very strange that years later, I noticed one day that his left wrist had become swollen. Had he banged it up somehow in the night? Was it a reaction from the unused emergency dialysis stent in his elbow? The swelling got worse—soon it looked like an inflamed balloon, so we sent him in for more tests, and were shocked to find out the arm had somehow broken. He hadn’t fallen, that anyone knew. The only thing we could tie it to was the original fracture, two years before. Somehow it hadn’t fully healed, although the initial x-rays had shown it had. The crack must have been so thin, it had gone unnoticed. Vernon was not one to use his arms much, he couldn’t even feed himself, let alone eat. So how had this happened? We never found out, but another surgery was ordered to reset the break. He was supposed to wear a hard cast, but of course, he only understood that it was uncomfortable and he took it off. Another cast was ordered, he managed to squeeze out of that one too. We could only laugh now, imagining Houdini at work when we were looking away. With all Vernon’s other functional problems, the arm was comparatively such a small issue.
One day, not long after, he was sent to the hospital with Sepsis. He’d survived the infection once before, but I knew it was unlikely he would again. His body was so much weaker now. Somehow it had gathered at the dialysis port in his chest, so they would be unable to dialyze. Fortunately, there was that port in his left arm, embedded just in case this sort of thing happened. But his reset Popeye arm was still swollen, making the port impossible to access.. At this point, I was told they could try to add another port in his right arm but it would be very hard on his body and probably unlikely to last long. So there was no choice but to end the life support to his kidneys, and a few weeks later, he was gone.
So what was it that killed him? I could say it was the brain injury, as it kept him from ownership of his own physical healing. I could say it was the kidney failure…indeed, that was the written cause of death. I could say it was Sepsis, the infection that corrupted his life support channels. These things might have been the cause at any point, the elements of a perfect storm. But I also know that it was that internal, overlooked hairline fault, the tiny piece of bone that didn’t fully heal, that initial crack of the arm hitting pavement that was at the heart of this particular storm. Who knew you could die of a broken arm?
I think about this a lot in my own emotional healing work, as I try to piece broken parts of my life together, wondering why they just don’t seem to fit where they used to. I do believe that the heart of our trauma is often unconscious. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t doing its powerful erosive work under the surface. Stay mindful when the cracks begin to show. Don’t ignore that niggling memory, that intuitive itch, the symbolic swelling—this might be the very clue to the thing with the power to bring the entire structure down. The body keeps score.
(PS: Here is the blog post about his consultation way back when.)
“if you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” —Maya Angelou
“So…are you getting used to the new normal?” the friendly grocery story checker asked from behind his mask. I was grateful he was wearing one, as the last time I visited this store two weeks ago, the workers didn’t seem very protected. New guidelines take a while to roll out in a state (world) this big, I suppose, though its remarkable how quickly that seems to be happening.
New normal. That’s a phrase I remember bandied around in the Traumatic Brain Injury community I was thrust into six years ago. Until then, I don’t think I’d heard it…or if I had, I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t needed to. Truth is, I still don’t love the term, even though I get what people mean.
“You think we’ve landed at a new normal?” I asked back from behind my own mask. “Seems like things keep changing to me.”
We bantered a bit, the checker, the bagger and myself. I hoped my smiling-tone translated since my face was mostly covered, and I willed my eyes to twinkle in case he actually looked up. I wanted to make things light and act, well…normal….even though we were wearing surgical gloves and masks in a GROCERY STORE! He was wearing a lavender bandana covered with butterflies that he said a customer had made for the workers there. It was as if we were had all dressed last minute for a lame costume party with a doctor/bandit theme. Pick your poison. About half the people in the store got the memo. The checker told me he’d been working there for two weeks and was grateful for the job. The teenaged bag-boy said something about how his mom couldn’t make him do his school work at home, nor could his teachers. We all chuckled knowingly, maybe a little extra, because again…masks and weirdness.
New normal. I don’t agree that this is our new normal, because, like I said, its still changing so much. It changes every week. We’ve never been here—even our leaders and doctors, the ones giving directions—don’t know what to expect except by looking at charts and science, history, and what other countries at the front-stages of this war against an invisible enemy have done (or not done) so far.
It’s been over a month that we’ve been isolating, over a month since the schools ‘closed,’ and since our the Shelter-at-home order was given. I work from home anyway, but without a separate boss to crack the whip, that has slowed down a frightening amount. I expect we aren’t even half way through this period yet, the quarantine recommendations keep extending. Schools are closed through summer. The economy is shifting big time. Regulations are changing rapidly. The Earth is breathing freer while we stay indoors. Will we even be able to return to the “old normal?” Do we really want to? (Well, yes, if we can pick the parts we want to keep.)
(The classic Theme Building at LAX…reminding me each time I’m at the airport that there’s no place like home.)
Every time I go out something has changed. Sometimes, I imagine my house like a slowly revolving tower, perhaps like the iconic old restaurant tower at LAX. Every day marks a slow tick in rotation, and whenever the door opens, I may find myself in a slightly altered reality: It looks like the same town, same world, same fellow citizens, but its not the same at all. Every day that goes by, every tick of the wheel, puts us further out to a changed space, and none of us have an idea of what that will be when the stay-at-home order is dropped.
New Normal? It’s certainly not normal. But it is new for now. I am getting used to much of it, to answer the checker’s question. But it keeps changing. Many of the changes I’m experiencing are in my own head as much as out in the world. Different emotions I have to touch on, different triggering points, things I recognize as shock, things I recognize as lingering trauma, that built-in ability to reframe the story toward Hope. For me, I’ve learned that flight or fight behavior doesn’t kick in as much as freeze. Time just sort of stops, and my motion is very slow. A lot of quieting down, barely getting things done, starting new things has been almost impossible, but I have a few old things to tie up. It’s never been easy for me to look far into the future, but I will say being PRESENT is getting easier, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s always the present, after all.
I’m rambling now, but I’m offering this to people who may struggle with where their own minds have been. In our society there is a lot of pressure to get on with things, or make something better out of the experience. Hopefully we can find ways to be helpful and eventually we will find our meanings. I can’t speak to everyone’s losses or how their personalities manage these things, but for many this is a period of SHOCK. It’s one of the early stages of grief, and I have become familiar with the physical symptoms of it several times over the past years. Everything slows down. Things feel unreal. Perhaps movement is just pushing one pile to another edge of the proverbial desk. Sleep seems more available (or less.) There is a haze. I think of it as ‘hibernation energy’ like a bear hunkering down, saving its energy for the unseen phase that’s coming next. Communication seems to take more effort. You might find chocolate helps with brain chemistry balance, even if you didn’t think you had a sweet tooth.
This is our nervous system taking care of us, getting us down to basic securities, like having food or getting through the day with one or two things checked off your list. You know…the essentials. We show up for work as best we can, if we are lucky enough to be working. We try to convince our children they are still in school, though they know better of course. A friend texted me the other day, proud of herself for taking out the trash. I felt proud of her too, as mine only got as far as the front door. Not everyone has the luxury of recognizing the shock or even resting. What we are now calling essential workers are out there on the road, in grocery stores, and in hospitals dealing with life as it comes at them, probably busier than before. They are on the front lines of this season while the rest of us get out of their way.
If you are a person who has been in shock as we get used to this weird, ominous stage of unknowing, that’s okay too. Just go with it. Get done what you need to. Move slowly. Allow your uncomfortable triggers to teach you how far you’ve come and ask how you can gently move through them. Perhaps you’ll find the work you’ve been investing in doesn’t feel ‘essential’ any longer, maybe this as an opportunity to shift it. The shock will wane and you will have your energy back. In time, your role in a changed world will be revealed. And you will become ‘essential’ in a coming phase. (I know, not the most helpful of words, is it?) Don’t beat yourself up. You’ll be rested and stronger and ready to be of service when your gifts are needed and your shock wears off. None of us know what the next phase of life will look like, but be assured, we will all find our place. We are each essential, if not normal.
Anyway, normalcy is overrated, don’t you think?
Photo of the Integratron near Joshua Tree…their website says it’s “out of this world.”
“Love is a state of being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you.”—Eckart Tolle
After Vernon died, and I marched through the long corridor of intentional healing, I heard variations of this one phrase over and over: “Grief is price we pay for love.” I remember those words brought me some comfort at the time—they do have a certain poetic gravitas that seem right—but now they kind of just piss me off. I heard someone mention this phrase recently. When she said those words: “Grief is the price you pay for love,” I shuddered a little. Surprised at my physical reaction to words that once seemed just right, I took some time to figure out why.
I thought about this quote by the Serbian writer Meša Selimović:
“Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt.”
This makes so much more sense to me. This is what I have come to believe is true. To me, his ultimately cancels out the previous phrase.
What I have come to understand on this point on my path, is this: Grief isn’t a price we pay. Love is free. Love has to be free. Love is something we already have, it comes with the package we’re born in, we are free to let it grow or shrink, but it’s already ours, a part of us to do with as we will. When we open our hearts, it multiplies, when we close them, it stays put. When we love another, and they leave or die, our ability to give or receive this love may be affected by the perceived betrayal of life, and how much we may miss being loved in a special way, but the love we gave is still ours, it’s just morphed with the space we’ve allowed it. Our hearts are broken. We’re wounded. We may need to crawl into a cave for awhile and be small. But the love itself isn’t gone, we just may need time rediscover it in ourselves.
Love can’t be bought or sold. No one in the world is undeserving of this gift—its our birthright as humans. The word PRICE to me suggests conditions, a trade. I don’t like the idea of a love that comes with such trappings. I don’t think it’s supposed to, not at it’s purest form. Perhaps what hurts, as in the quote above, are the painful things we have attached to it. If we can separate these shadows, perhaps we can get back to this truth. Love is for everyone, no matter what your situation. It’s a force that sometimes shows up as a feeling. It’s the best part of being human.
Now, about grief: yes, it exists everywhere, it emerges through great disappointment and it can feel awful, and maybe the deeper you feel your love, the deeper you feel the pain (I don’t know)—but another way to view it is that it is a guide to help us figure out (eventually) how to be more human and more compassionate to others…which brings us back to uncovering the love that we never really lost.
So THAT’S how I feel about THAT, in case anyone wanted to know! 🙂
“Unhurt, Unstruck, Unbeaten” 30×40″ oil on canvas, 2019. This is a painting I made exploring the chambers of the human heart…our symbolic space for love.
I am going to be leading a workshop in San Clemente, Monday evenings in February around Creative Grieving. Information below if you are interested in joining me. (I don’t know how to fix comment section on this website so if you are interested, please contact me at wunderali@gmail.com.)
As a human, you are a creative being. It is what keeps us finding new ways forward, against all odds. Perhaps you are in a stage of life that GRIEF has chosen to collaborate with you. Learn to embrace this great phenomenon of the heart and uncover the hidden gifts of loss.
Join me for a 4-week workshop Monday evenings in February in which you will learn to process some of this pain and transform it into a something beautiful and unique to yourself. We will meet in a calm, soothing space, using such tools as music, guided visualization, journalling, artwork, and group-support. Our focus is embracing Grief, and there are no judgements on what is “too big or too small”— this workshop will encircle any level of loss or heartbreak. This is your personal journey, and I want to enable you to see it in a new light.
6.30-8pm
Mondays, February 3-24, 6:30-8pm
Investment: $175 (includes supplies and midweek support)
To register, please PayPal or Venmo $175 along with “Creative Grieving” in the subject as well as your phone number or email.
A special cover of Vernon's fav song 'Waterloo Sunset' by friend and singer/song-writer Ian McGlynn. All proceeds support Vernon's recovery! Donate what you can and download a beautiful song in return.
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