I was reading a story one day about an injured football player. He was playing even though he had a broken bone. The commentary on him was how strong he was…maybe the strongest person the writer had ever met.

We idolize people who continue to play a sport even though they are injured and may do more damage to their bodies. We admire them and praise them for their strength and determination. We respect them because of their toughness and because they never complain. I think our praise for that behavior is misguided…or misplaced…or just missing the mark.

I grew up idolizing athletes and modeled them in many ways, including not listening to my body…feeling weak if I couldn’t do whatever I wanted. It seems like that behavior is born out of insecurity and fear…fear of rejection…fear of failing…fear of not being enough…not being enough just as me.

I know I need to reframe what I consider admirable strength…reframe it with the wisdom of compassion…and maybe common sense. Strength may actually be found in being present with whatever is happening…staying in my body even when I am in pain. Thinking about all of this led me to write this poem called “The Strongest Person I Know.”

Playing football with a broken bone
Elicits the response… “He’s the strongest person I know”
I want to be the strongest person you know
Doesn’t complain
Copes with anything
Plays through the pain
Always finds the positive
Pushes forward no matter what
No sign of weakness
No pain no gain…right?

The strongest person
Doesn’t feel
Doesn’t allow
Doesn’t sit with anything…no time
Must keep moving…distracting
Too many unfelt
Unexperienced
Unrecognizable emotions

She can’t be the strongest person
And be present with pain
With disappointment, confusion
With grief, gut wrenching sadness
The strongest person doesn’t get lost

In my mind it’s all or nothing
The strongest…or the weakest
No room for anything in between

This won’t stop him
He’ll be back
She never quits
Nothing will stop her
She will always push, always do, always be a winner….

Is there a different perspective?
A bigger view…

The strongest person I know
Nothing will stop her…from sitting
She’ll never quit…being with her feelings
This won’t stop her…from being present
Even though it’s tremendously painful

The strongest person I know Is content to be who she is
Fully human and frightened
She’s afraid but she stays
She’s confused but she stays F
eels lost but she stays…no excuses S
he’s the strongest person I know
She’s fearless

© Karen Raines 2016 All rights reserved

According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, there are over 1.5 BILLION people worldwide that experience chronic pain. In the United States that number is over 100,000,000 adults who are affected by chronic pain. That is more than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined. Over 23,000,000 people experience severe pain on a daily basis.

I knew a man who had had chronic headaches for over ten years. He had seen specialists, tried every alternative treatment, and no one could help relieve the pain. He committed suicide. He couldn’t stand the thought of living one more day with debilitating pain. People with chronic pain are 3-4 times more likely to experience anxiety and depression. They are twice as likely to consider suicide. Chronic pain is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States.

Where is our compassion for people in pain? Compassion including the use of opioids or anything else that gives relief and allows people participate their lives?

I have experienced chronic pain for over four decades. In that time I have had over twenty knee surgeries, seven elbow surgeries, three back surgeries, and a shoulder surgery. I have degenerative joint disease and my joints continue to wear away.  I have tried everything to “conquer” my pain…physical therapy, exercise, dietary changes or restrictions, acupuncture, herbal therapy, Chinese medicine, massage, injections, prescription drugs, several rounds of talk therapy and reading, reading, and more reading. None of these have relieved my pain.

I have read numerous books on the topic of chronic pain. The majority offer “cures” to end chronic pain but my experience has been that they do not work. Change your diet, take these pills, lose so much weight…keep fighting. It’s exhausting and fruitless.

Hippocrates said, “Divine is the task to ease pain.” Pain, and our relationship to it, affects our family, friends, caregivers, work, our mind and body, our feelings regarding the quality of our lives, as we perceive it, our success, failure, our thoughts…the list could go on and on.

Everything we do involves a relationship with something. Relationships are at the heart of who we are as human beings. Our relationships include every person, entity, or thing we have contact with each day, including pain. Whether we like it or not our relationship with pain colors every other area of our lives.

While earning my Masters Degree in Contemplative Education I completed my thesis on Chronic Pain…and specifically my journey with chronic pain. We use words of war when describing managing pain or illness. We conquer pain, fight the war, and do battle to wipe out chronic pain. I realized with that language I was engaged in a battle with myself. In letting words of war go I learned how to befriend chronic pain and develop a relationship with my pain.  I do not offer a cure but rather a way to embrace all of who we are and to thrive in that realization…a way to fully become who we are.

I developed and used contemplative practices to understand the nature of our minds, and how it influences all our interactions, beginning with ourselves, and our pain. Through contemplative practices, we develop the ability to recognize our unhealthy, habitual patterns. These practices provide the opportunity to transform unwanted habits in every area of our lives.

This work offers those with chronic pain, as well as caregivers, the opportunity to transform their relationship with themselves, and how they understand and interact with pain. Contemplative practices provide a way to befriend pain and to interact with it in a compassionate manor. Through growing, and maintaining, these practices we experience transformed relationship dynamics, increased openness, greater compassion, and improved ability and desire to resolve conflicts. 

Chronic pain is a difficult topic to discuss with other people, and those in pain, including myself, frequently feel invisible. A disservice that many books create is the myth that if someone with chronic pain fights hard enough, does the “right” work (whatever that may be) then they will be healed. Which leaves those who are not healed feeling as if they have failed and it is their fault they have pain. Those with pain can also face the judgment of others who think you have not done the “right” thing to be healed. We struggle endlessly when we continue to look outside of ourselves for a “cure” when we actually have everything we need already. 

I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology, a Masters degree in Counseling, a Juris Doctorate, and a Masters degree in Contemplative Education. I have spent my entire career working with people and helping them….as a therapist, a child protection caseworker, an attorney, and teaching mindfulness to young children, adults, and families. This work is an extension of a lifetime of work helping people with chronic pain to understand their pain and form a relationship with that pain in order to live a fuller life and to become fully who they are. 

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude….easy to understand why gratitude is important…noticing what is happening in the world and being grateful…grateful for the magnificence all around and within us. Seems so simple until you go see the doctor for a problem with your recently revised elbow replacement and find out you have a torn triceps and need emergency surgery, tomorrow…WTF?!

I feel so tired…so tired and so worn out…too tired to talk about it…too tired to cry about it…possibly too tired to write about it…unfortunately not too tired to be cranky about it. The vulnerability feels overwhelming. I am frustrated. I just had surgery 7 weeks ago and for sure was not expecting another one this week. I just got over being depressed from the last one.

I went to the ER last week because I was having a hard time straightening my elbow…the same left elbow still recovering from surgery January 31st. I was worried and scared…it freaks a person out to not be able to move their arm. My daughter, who went with me, pointed out repeatedly that I was being dismissed while I was there. Because the x-ray looked fine the PA assumed there was no problem. Because she could bend and straighten my arm I was told it was tendonitis and no big deal. Over the weekend the problem got worse and when I would try and straighten my arm I could not do it without taking my left arm into my right hand and pushing it straight…then it would flop back toward me lifeless. When I saw my doctor Monday I told him I had lost control of my arm. That is when he told me my triceps was not attached and must be repaired right away or I could end up with a permanently floppy arm. I ask again…WTF?!

So here’s the thing…I am not a proponent of the thinking that things happen to us because we need to learn something. I believe things happen…it is our choice how we respond to the circumstances and whether we will learn or grow or be better off because of it…at the moment I am on the fence with all of it. I like to learn but seriously? Enough already! In the past year I have had five, now six, major surgeries…and I am tired. I feel worn down and exhausted. I don’t think I can only learn when I am beaten into submission…and I know that is not what’s happening…well I mostly know.

This morning I was meditating and, although there was a lot of complaining in this mind of mine, I remembered something I had read from Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, “The most precious opportunity presents itself when we come to the place where we think we can’t handle whatever is happening…..That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away” (p. 12-13). Meditation provides the opportunity to sit with what’s happening inside of me instead of pushing it away. I need to lean into the frustration, sadness, and pain I am feeling so that I can learn to live my life more awake and less numbed out.

This morning I could see my thoughts and emotions (I do like to think my feelings…so much less messy) and I can choose to let go. The emotions I feel so solidly in my body, or thoughts in my mind, are in fact fluid…they will arise and fall away if I allow them to. Frequently I want to hang on to the feelings in order to justify them…I feel entitled to be angry, sad, frustrated, resentful, whatever…and as long as I feel entitled, I hang on with a death grip as my fingers turn purple from lack of circulation. If I can take a breath and pay attention to that breath, then I can feel the movement and fluidity of all my thoughts and feelings….even if it’s the tiniest of movements. All thoughts and emotions are just energy…that’s not so scary. I don’t have to repress or magnify that energy just allow it to be…feel it within me and feel it move on…lean into the discomfort and refuse to protect myself from it…keep moving forward.

Over the years I have begun to know my mind…to know it’s habits and patterns. I’m an initial resister…I resist painful emotions or difficult circumstances falsely hoping that resistance will change things. Then I recognize my pattern, I meditate, and I begin to feel just the slightest movement…the tiniest shift and I breathe deeper…and on I go.

I was thinking about the AA Serenity Prayer “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I think that’s an exact quote…or at least close enough to understand what I’m saying. I would like to rewrite that for myself as, “God grant me the courage to control the things I can, the strength to release the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference…without a 2×4 to the head.”

Because here’s the thing…I spend a shit load of time resisting and trying to change what already is…I fight against reality because I want it to be different…I don’t like it so I won’t accept it…and I’ll dig my little heels in, so there! The problem is that I am trying to control things that I cannot control. It’s like banging my head on a brick wall (that I don’t want to admit is there) and then arguing that I don’t have a concussion and all the birds I see flying around my head (like in a cartoon) are real…can’t you see them? I waste time fighting what I cannot change and in that fight I ignore the things I really could change.

I miss opportunities to impact my world, and THE world, with my narrow and stubborn focus. When I was a social worker, many moons ago, my boss called me into her office one day to tell me about some work I had to do on a case. It’s been so long I don’t recall specifically what it was I just remember that I did not want to do it. My boss, very graciously, let me rant for 10 minutes on why this was the wrong thing to do and I shouldn’t have to do it and here’s what I think instead. After I quit talking she asked me if I was done…and I was. Then she did an amazing thing…she told me to DO IT ANYWAY, because she was the boss! I did not control the situation, she did. Now I could have spent the next week arguing with her and trying to change her mind, possibly losing my job or I could just do it. I chose the latter because there really was no choice.

So much of the time there is no choice but I fight and resist anyway…my bulldog and I are more stubborn than we like to admit. I had a close friendship end without explanation and I spent months and months trying to change that. Initially I did it with a phone call, and email, and a letter…all of which went without response. But I fought the new reality for a long time…and remained sad and stuck. I lost a job and did the same thing…I used my anger (not knowingly) to fuel my resistance. The point being that all that sadness and rage did not change anything…including me, because I was stuck in a past that did not exist anymore.

I frequently do the same thing with my pain…I want to be out of pain and be able to run easily, play with my grandkids, dance the night away, or at least walk without pain…but that is not my reality at this time. When I fight this I wage a war against myself and I am definitely the one who loses. I hurt and victimize myself because I can’t deal with reality. When I was younger I would go hiking even though I knew as soon as I sat down I would not be able to walk without horrible pain for several days. I would rationalize that my knees would hurt anyway so I might as well hike…although the difference in pain was very significant. I was cruel in my treatment of myself.

It took a long time to see this resistance and feel the sadness of having an ongoing battle with myself…how could that ever be won? How would I ever benefit from disrespecting myself? And it is disrespectful to ignore reality, whatever that may be. I don’t benefit from fighting the way things are with my body, friendships, work…my life. There is no reason to beat myself up over things I have no control over…like fibromyalgia, arthritis, degenerative disc disease…to really experience my life I need to open my eyes and my heart to control the things I can, release the things I can’t and have wisdom to know the difference…please.

I have been losing and gaining weight for years…such an infuriating cycle. If losing weight were as simple as eating the right food and exercising then I would be at and maintain my “ideal weight”…whatever that is and who makes that shit up anyway?

What does not get taken into account is the emotional nature of food. Food has a feeling…the warm comfort of soup on a cold day…the feeling of well being when someone prepares a meal for us. We feel nurtured, comforted, calmed, relaxed, cared for, content, loved, (to name a few), by food. Food feeds our bodies but it also feeds our souls…we celebrate success, holidays, anniversaries, and achievements, with food. There is meaning in what we eat and the circumstances around our eating.

So here’s the thing…when you are overweight (which the majority of this country is), people look at you and make assumptions about you…they even think they understand you. Perhaps you look at me and think that I am out of control or I’d be thin…and with those thoughts you develop your own story about me based on your own experiences, what you were taught, and your own biases…you think you know me but you have no idea.

I am not lazy, unmotivated, undisciplined, or uninformed…I merely have a challenging relationship with food. I heard Glennon Doyle say something to the effect of “I am not overly sensitive. I am a deeply feeling person living in a messy world.” That’s me. I am a deeply feeling person and the world is messy…I’m messy. If it wasn’t then I could put a formula into place, follow it, and I’d lose weight. But this is a messy process…messy because I need to unravel, or uncover what food means to me in order to have a healthy relationship with it…with myself. The issue is not the food that sits quietly around me it’s my crazy interactions with it…what do I understand the nature of food to be and how did I come to view food as so powerful…what is the meaning in the message of food and how do I reinterpret it?

So I am calling this blog “Shedding More Than Pounds” because that is exactly what I need to do. It isn’t just weight I want to lose…I want to lose the conclusions I have drawn about a relationship with food that makes it a giant mind f**k for me. We’ll just have to see where this leads….I’ve got no answers, only questions.

While watching MSNBC today I saw a man with what looked like a smudge of dirt on his forehead. It seemed strange that someone wouldn’t have said something to him before he went on national television…and then I remembered it is Ash Wednesday…hence the smudge.

So here’s the thing about Ash Wednesday…I was raised Catholic so I am familiar with the practice but not a huge fan of it or Lent…which is the next 40 days…business days, which is kind of funny because I never thought of Jesus as using a work calendar. Lent is a remembrance of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan…that’s awfully intense.

Now the reason I am not a fan of Lent is that it seems a bit oppressive to me. Lent is a time to give up a “vice” and I could see that…smoking, drinking, donuts…it’s a time to repent, pray, fast, and exercise self-control over our desires. I wonder what would happen if rather than controlling our desires we really experienced them and took action toward them? I am not talking about the desire to cheat on your spouse, or rob a bank, or harm anyone…I am talking about the desire to fulfill the dreams you have for your life…the little voice inside you that tells you there must be more, that you are more…to leave a job you feel stuck in and find a new one you feel passionate about, start an in home business selling something you love to create, playing an instrument or singing, or painting…or publishing a book and becoming a famous blogger. ☺ Life changing desires that we are too afraid to entertain…desires that terrify us and yet we long for them to become reality.

What about holiness? Holiness is another desired outcome of the practice of Lent. The focus is on repentance and our sinfulness. I believe we are excellent at telling ourselves how bad we are but what about our basic goodness? Why should we focus on our faults or failures? Why not look at our potential and promise? And I don’t mean some ego trip where we decide we are God’s gift to the world and we are all we want to talk about. I mean giving up any sense of superiority and focusing on the connections we all share as people on this planet and doing something to enhance those connections…to better the world.

According to the Bible love is kind, patient, doesn’t envy or boast, it’s not proud, rude, self-seeking or easily angered. Rather love rejoices in the truth, it trusts, hopes, and perseveres. Let’s practice that kind of love.

Instead of giving up something for Lent what about adding something to enhance your life and the lives of those around you? What about practicing unconditional love for 40 days? Allowing only unconditional loving thoughts in our minds…loving without expectations of something in return.

Psalm 51:10 says, “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Maybe our pure heart comes as we practice and pursue unconditional love in every interaction we have and make it our guiding compass.

We create the world with our thoughts…let’s think unconditional love.

Over 20 years ago I was in a horrible car accident. A pickup truck on the opposite side of the highway hit black ice and came flipping through the grass median and right towards me. The young man driving the pickup was ejected from the car and went sliding down the icy highway as I hit his truck (which did not land on me) and a chain reaction ensued. I was not injured. The 17-year-old driver of the pickup was killed.

That accident was the first time in my life that I sincerely believed I was going to die. As that truck flipped toward me I knew that would be the end of me. The truck was going to land on top of my car, and me. People say that your life flashes before your eyes in a moment like that and it does…it’s amazing how much you can think of in the blink of an eye.

Traumatic events, aside from scaring the shit out of you can also be life changing. I became mortal that day with a clear understanding that I could be gone at any moment. My world became divided into before the accident and after. I could no longer go out driving in a car on a snowy day. I would call in sick to work too terrified to leave the house…fortunately I had a boss who understood. Almost 25 years later I am still terrified driving on snowy and icy roads.

My daughter and her two children were recently in a serious car accident that totaled her car. No one was hurt (physically) and no other car was involved in the accident…all good news. But I was left with a haunting fear of losing them…I was traumatized after the fact. Traumatized because we are human and we die…I was going to say we could die, which sounds nicer but we do die…and we don’t know when…I hate that. I couldn’t help wondering what my world would be like without them in it?

Those events bring such fear, just thinking about them…fear of losing control…fear at the terrifying realization that I do not have control. My young grandchildren are mortal…one day those sweet children will die…and I have no idea when and I have no control over it. That leaves me feeling groundless and vulnerable.

And here’s the thing…I really want to be in control of pretty much everything. I seem to have an inflated idea of my potential to run the world. I want to control everyone that matters to me so they are safe all the time. When my children, all adults, come to visit or drive home (a trip of less than an hour) I always tell them to drive safe…and I expect those words to protect them…make a little, impenetrable bubble that they live safely in all their lives.

The idea that I cannot control these things gives me anxiety…there’s a whole world out there where things go wrong for people every day. The reality is I can control very little…myself…short list. And I only have so much control over myself…because the world interacts with me in ways I cannot necessarily predict and definitely cannot control.

The reality is that everything does change in the blink of an eye. I think and act as though the tighter I hold on to something the less likely it is to get away from me…so I provide pretend protection to those around me…like saying drive safe or always kissing my wife before she goes to work and saying I love you…actions and words that provide me with a false sense of safety…my made up sense of safety….my house of cards, and a tornado is coming…Auntie Emm, Auntie Emm…☺ The tornado is life…and more life.

I have noticed that I can spend so much energy trying to control what’s impossible to control that I miss the opportunity to control the things I can…now there’s a sentence. I heard the author Jen Sincero speak one evening here in Colorado. In her talk she gave three things to remember everyday…of course I only remember one (sorry Jen)…that I am going to die. What would my life be like if I lived every day as if it were my last day? What would I do? I know I would love the people in my life as completely and deeply as I possibly could. I would tell them, with words and actions, exactly how much they mean to me. I would make sure they knew the difference they have made in my life. I would keep our bulldog, Abby, close to me. I would not be afraid of taking chances because I would know it was my last chance. I wouldn’t worry about failing or being embarrassed because I’d be dust at the end of the day. No reason to care what others think….

How do I live fearlessly each day…with my rawness vulnerability exposed? In a Melissa Etheridge song she describes her skin as “painfully new”. My skin is painfully new too…and old wound was torn open and I am trying to put myself back together again. Maybe I can be rearranged in a way that I can be fearless and vulnerable and still live? That is the question of the week….

I was reading Anne Lamott’s book, Hallelujah Anyway, and in it she described an ancient Chinese custom of decorating the cracks or imperfections in a precious item. Instead of trying to hide the crack or blemish they would highlight it with gold leaf. Their belief was that to cover up or hide the crack dishonored the item. The crack became more prominent with the gold leaf and demonstrated that even though it had been damaged, and was not the same, it still had value…value enough to restore it.

Pink, my favorite singer, named her last album “Beautiful Trauma”.  I saw her interviewed when she was asked how she chose the name of the album.  Pink said that her husband has a lot of scars and that those scars are a part of his story…his beautiful trauma.

I have a lot of scars too…big scars. Sometimes in the summer, when I have on shorts, I notice people staring at my knees and the scars from numerous surgeries including two knee replacements. People are not very subtle in their stares either…it’s a little unnerving. I remember being taught that it isn’t polite to stare…clearly not a universal lesson.

I have a big scar all the way down my spine, from the base of my neck to my tailbone. Scars from shoulder surgery, and a gnarly scar on my elbow…only gnarly because it has been opened three times. I like to think that these scars are part of my story…my beautiful trauma. The story of how I have managed all these surgeries and all this pain since I was 12. The story of how I have succeeded in spite of surgeries and chronic pain. The story of how I have been shaped by the pain…rough edges worn off as I learned not to fight and do battle against myself…and honestly I’m still working on it…on not resisting what already is.

I am not my pain but I have been molded by it. I have been changed because of it and I have grown in relationship to it. Changed in my ability to empathize and give compassion to others in pain…physical as well as emotional. Molded by the presence of this uninvited, and frequently unwelcome, companion in my life. Stretched to let go of a search for “the answer” to the pain, to make it go away, forever…there is no “answer” and that quest just frustrates me and keeps me stuck in a war with myself.  Transformed by a process that taught me to allow my life to happen…to stop resisting what I don’t like or want, and instead relax and let go. When I resist, pain becomes worse and I become worse…worse in the sense that I begin to see everything as fixed and solid…I lose my ability to allow the ebb and flow of feelings, emotions, pain…life.

I continue to be transformed by this ongoing journey with chronic pain…continue to have edges rounded and smoothed as I learn to let go and fully embrace my life, including the pain. Maybe I need to buy gold leaf to highlight the imperfections that have shaped who I am and to remind myself that I have value enough, and am precious enough, to be restored…big ass scars and all.

Happy Valentines Day! It’s a funny thing that we need a holiday to celebrate the people we love the most…wouldn’t it be nice if we remembered to do that each day on our own? Maybe we need an app for that. Lol

Thich Nhat Hahn in his book True Love, says, “The most precious gift you can give to the one you love is your true presence…When you are really there, you have the ability to recognize the presence of the other. To be there is the first step, and recognizing the presence of the other is the second step. To love is to recognize; to be loved is to be recognized by the other” (pp. 6-7 and pp. 13-14).

To recognize and be recognized…seeing another and allowing ourselves to be seen… that is the beauty, the simplicity, and the challenge of love. It seems as though seeing and being seen would be the easiest with a significant other. As we share our lives with someone it seems natural to really know our partner and to be known…to be present and to recognize the presence of our other.

And yet sometimes this may be where our greatest fears lie. When we are invested in a relationship and hang our expectations upon it, we can become too scared to really be ourselves. The risk of loss or rejection can feel too big…too risky. And yet our relationships can only grow as much as we allow them too…as much as we can risk…as much as we can bear to be seen with all our flaws and imperfections….as much as we can allow ourselves to be loved and to love another with all their flaws and imperfections…to be fully present and fully aware of the presence of our other…spouse, friend, brother, sister, mom, dad, grandparents…whoever our other is in that moment.

Happy Valentine’s Day and here’s to being present and being aware of the presence of others all year long…not just on a holiday where a fat baby shoots you with an arrow…crazy holiday. 😉

So here’s the thing….I’m getting ready to have surgery on my elbow in 9 days. I had an elbow replacement 3 years ago and now I need a revision because it’s loose….so depressing. I am happy to know the cause of all the pain just not thrilled with the solution.

A couple years ago I had the Bionic Man theme song as my ringtone. I thought it was funny and I joked that I was the Bionic Woman (probably dating myself with that reference). But the Bionic woman could jump super high and run crazy fast…I am made of a lot of metal but I can’t jump or run at all. I can’t even walk fast just (ask my wife ☺). I’m more like the Tin Man than the Bionic Woman…I really need my oil can to keep me going…if I only had one…that would be amazing! Wake up in pain, oil the knees…can’t bend over, oil the back, elbow gets stuck, oil it up…then start running!

So now this is REALLY the thing…I get afraid to tell people that I’m having surgery. I have had a lot of surgery in my life…two knee replacements, most of my back is fused, a torn rotator cuff repair, and soon to be two elbow replacements…just to name a few. In the past year and a half I have had two major back surgeries and three elbow surgeries. So now when I tell people I’m having surgery some of them will laugh and say hurtful shit like “Not again!” “What did you do now?!” or my favorite “Do you get a discount with this one?” Hahaha…yes it was buy two get one free.

So first of all, none of this is the least bit funny. I don’t have surgery for entertainment…oh I’m bored today I think I’ll have my skin, muscles, and tendons cut open and my bones sawed…yep, I won’t be bored then…sometimes people are ridiculous. It’s so hurtful to have someone I consider close to me respond with laughter and feel as if they can make a joke out of my pain…out of me. People close to me know how I struggle with all of this pain… and I am not a joke. I was surprised I needed surgery too but not in the way that feels so demeaning and small. The good news is that those people seem to fall away and out of my life…I guess because they never belonged in my life.

There is room for compassion here, of course. Some people laugh and joke because they don’t know what to say and I get that. If for the briefest moment you can imagine how you would feel if this was you then I am certain an “I’m sorry”, “That’s hard,” or the always good “I don’t know what to say” would come to mind. You may feel an urgent need to respond to news like this but there is no urgency…compassion is more important than speed…kindness matters more than being funny. This is true for any pain, not just physical. How often do we avoid people struggling in their lives because we don’t know what to say? Or because their pain makes us uncomfortable? Compassion for a person in pain is more important than easing my own discomfort.

I can also help by sharing my feelings instead of expecting people to just know…”if you love me you’ll know how I feel”…such an unfair belief. It was my effort to share my feelings and sense of loss about my elbow replacement that led me to write this poem entitled “Bionic Woman” the day before I had my first elbow replacement in 2016 (no need to share my feelings too soon). With my surgery looming before me it has been on my mind and so I wanted to share it with you.

Parts being replaced
Metal Knees
Metal Back
Metal Elbow
Strange to refer to myself as parts
They are part of me
But they aren’t me
If all the parts get replaced
Am I still me?

What does it mean to have less of me inside of me?
Am I the bionic version of myself…without the super speed and strength?
What does it mean if bones just wear away…almost dissolve?
Will I disappear?
What happens when none of the original me is left?

Any time I feel pain I am afraid
Terrified another joint is gone
Disintegrating inside of me
Sometimes it’s so much it seems like a joke…a really bad joke
Without metal I’d be mush

I’m grateful and sad
I don’t know if losing parts of me
Is really losing parts of me
How do I teach what I can’t learn?

Maybe the learning
Is just seeing what I once refused to see
Maybe there is no answer
It’s just being able to look at the questions
If I can’t sit with them, I can take 5 breaths with them
30 seconds of total presence
With what frightens me the most
Maybe that is the learning
And the teaching

© Karen Raines 2016