Slow living is healing my body

Life has changed a lot over the past several weeks, hasn’t it? Here in NYC we are still on lockdown in the outside world. For me though, this is just more of the same, as I enter my 9th month of being housebound due to chronic illness.

I don’t mind being at home all the time, as odd as that may sound. Do I want to be able to do more outside? Of course! I would especially love to be able to see my family or go on a hike in the forest. But these days with most public places closed and quarantines still in place, I don’t feel the same sense of loss that I once felt over not being able to be out and about in the world. This is just how things are right now for everyone. It’s weird how perspective changes things. I feel less pressure to “hurry up and recover” and more ok with just existing and taking things day by day. 

My workload has decreased by about 40% due to our current world situation and I am surprised to say that… I feel somewhat relieved. Yes initially I panicked about this loss of income. I had to rearrange some things and I am really watching my spending these days carefully. But as the weeks passed, I realized how good it felt to be without the constant pressure to work and deliver on a timeline while trying to care for my chronic illness. Suddenly I had TIME. Time to lay down and do gloriously nothing. Time to relax my mind and be at ease. Time to actually devote towards healing, as well as some much-needed projects, (like cleaning a house that’s been more or less neglected for the past 9 months of my illness).

Funny enough, my boyfriend has been encouraging me to cut back my workload or quit working altogether since this all began with my eczema and chronic illness. He’s been telling me for months not to push myself and to just focus on getting better, that he would support me and I wouldn’t have to worry about finances. He is amazing. I have been very lucky because not everyone who is chronically ill has this support to fall back on. Yet I resisted quitting work all this time because it just never felt truly “safe.” In the back of my mind I kept thinking, If I stop working, that makes me totally dependent. What if my boyfriend decides to leave at some point down the line? What if he decides he can’t deal with being the caretaker anymore? What if a family member needs my help financially and I can no longer support them because I have no job? All these thoughts plagued my mind and I held onto work for dear life. I always told myself “I will work until I am physically not capable of working anymore – or until I have no more clients!”

I am sure that my hanging onto work at all costs has impacted my healing and held me back from progressing as much as I could have. I am sure of this because now that my workload has substantially decreased, I’ve noticed a big shift in my stress and anxiety levels. Days feel calmer now instead of full of pressure and panic. I realize this is not the general consensus out in the world right now. Few people if any are feeling calm these days. But I will be honest, the stress and impact of our current world situation feels like nothing compared to the 24/7 torture I lived through this past fall. The severity of my eczema literally had me screaming in agony for months and wishing for death. This in comparison feels manageable. 

Surviving chronic illness does make you stronger. I guess there are gems to be found even in the worst of suffering, although I would never wish to go back to living through that hell again.

The worst of my illness is behind me.

For the second time in my life I find myself recovering from a rock bottom health crisis with zero medical intervention. No drugs, no pharmaceuticals, no conventional doctors. Only the support of a few medical intuitives, a trauma coach, and my own iron will. And for that I thank God. 

The decrease in my work has allowed more healing to take place and I am finding myself able to take on more and more. For the first time in 9 months, I am finding myself well enough to do one thing a day that involves a good deal of physical labor. For example yesterday that one thing was vacuuming the house and cleaning up Meadow’s pen. Before that it was cleaning and rearranging stuff on the kitchen counter. Last week it was planting seeds and weeding in the garden.

Always after one of these physical labor tasks I make sure to lay down in bed and watch an episode or two of a show to recover. This helps to calm my body down and clear my adrenaline from the stress of the physical labor. It is surprisingly more difficult than you would think to do these small things around the house after battling both extreme fatigue from chronic illness and losing much of my strength from being bedridden longterm. My hands are always more swollen after these physical labor tasks; still in pretty good shape but just more swollen and slightly irritated. 

I AM HEALING. Bit by bit, day by day.

Mornings are still kind of crazy for me but I’ve currently got a flow going with my tasks and I find myself moving through the chaos with a steady sort of ease. It’s wonderful really, this level of healing that’s taken place. Since my boyfriend is working from home now I’ve been making him a giant smoothie every morning (the LEAST I can do after all he’s done and is doing for me!), in-between my multiple rounds of juicing, bunny-sitting Meadow, feeding the squirrels multiple times and hanging with them, tending to my seedlings and plants, and getting some work done here and there. 

There’s a lot I juggle in the mornings but just the fact that I’ve been able to take on this much is a tremendous achievement. Slowly, I am getting my life back.

The body heals when the nervous system is calm and relaxed

My days have been spent largely resting both my body AND mind for a change. Besides resting in bed, two things I’ve been routinely doing lately every day are caring for plants and animals. 

I started indoor gardening a few weeks ago and am so glad I’ve felt well enough to take this project on. Gardening invigorates my soul, grounds me deeply and brings me so much peace. There’s nothing else quite like it. Currently I am nurturing several trays of vegetable seedlings indoors plus a big batch of fresh grass for Meadow to eat. That’s not counting the other dozen or so plants I have scattered around the house already or plants in the backyard.

I check on my seedlings throughout the day, spritzing them with water as needed, moving them around under the grow light and into patches of direct sunlight when available. I love it because it makes me feel connected to life, to nature, to something organic, earthy and raw. I love getting my hands full of dirt and watching my seedlings reach for the light, getting stronger and growing bigger leaves every day. I look forward to warmer weather when I can walk barefoot in the grass, transfer my babies into the yard outdoors, see the wildflowers I planted bloom, and sunbathe in the bright light.

I’ve been attracting a growing number of animals into the backyard and with the new bird feeder I recently got, I hope to attract cardinals this year again. (I was in shock the first time I saw cardinals in my bird feeder last year. Over 15 years living in NYC and this yard is the first place I’ve ever seen these red birds anywhere in the city!)

My squirrel friends are still coming to visit everyday, sometimes multiple times per day. I doubt these squirrels have any idea how much they’ve helped me heal. They give me a purpose and make me feel useful and needed, with something to look forward to. Every morning I run to the kitchen window like a little kid on Christmas checking to see if the nuts I left outside are gone yet and if squirrels have arrived. Throughout the day in passing I continually check the window ledge and replenish nuts as needed. I go through a LOT of nuts and because of how health conscious I am, I cannot bring myself to give the squirrels anything other than the organic stuff. It just doesn’t feel right  to me to knowingly feed them something that has been sprayed with toxins.

I am never really sure when squirrels will arrive each day. They often like to come early in the morning but sometimes they will wait til the afternoon or evening. Meelu and Ted are regulars, coming pretty much every day. At this point they both take food from my hands. Ted, (who I think is actually a girl), is the bully, always scaring the other squirrels off, growling and chasing them and trying to hoard all the nuts for herself. Meelu is my favorite squirrel and the most friendly one. She comes when called and there’s just a lot of trust built up with her. She’s not afraid when I open the window and will sit right there on the ledge while I’m talking to her and not run off, even though I’m just inches away. 

The other squirrels mostly act like they are stealing nuts when they come up to the window ledge. They stuff a few nuts in their mouth and run off to a safer distance in the yard to eat. Meelu is the only squirrel who will stand up and actually paw at the window screen when she wants to be fed, waiting for someone to notice her. She sits right on the window ledge in front of me to eat and seems to understand that we want to give her food and that she is welcome here. There’s a third squirrel, Shelbi, who’s been coming to visit lately, but is still very scared. If he even sees me standing by the window he tends to run off… but I’m hoping to win him over in time 🙂

Can you tell that I LOVE these squirrels? LOL. But honestly, they have given me so many laughs, joy and healing these past several months. 

And then there’s Meadow, the light of my life. I love this rabbit so much; she owns my heart and I depend on her for emotional support as much as she depends on me. I love just laying around with her, rubbing her head, giving her body massages until she falls asleep draped on my lap (my hands have healed enough that I can actually do this now!!). Just being in her presence is calming and restorative and so grounding for me.

I tell Meadow all the time how special she is. I feel she came into my life at the perfect time, right when things were quickly turning upside down and I was experiencing so much trauma. We have a tight bond, the two of us, and spend the bulk of the day together, sharing food, hanging out, just being.

And without consciously trying to arrange anything like this, I feel I’ve fallen into the slow living routine I’ve actually always wanted for the past 10 years, maybe even longer. That is, a life revolving around nature, connected to plants, animals, and living simply. 

At this point in time, I’m having trouble reconciling my former life with the life I have now. The person I was 2 years ago before all this trauma and suffering began with my dad’s cancer and my eczema flares – the goals and dreams I had in life – I hardly recognize that person anymore. So much of what I thought I wanted in life 2 years or more ago I just… don’t want anymore. Things that I used to be so passionate about — world travel for example — I feel like I’m just done with. To be honest, I never fully got into this in my Southeast Asia travel post but after my 4 month backpacking journey there in 2017 I haven’t had a strong desire to travel again since (and actually every trip I’ve taken since then has left me feeling like I just want to be settled at home).

Chronic illness (both my own and the illnesses of family members) has changed my perspective on so many things. I want a new life path for myself. I feel that even if tomorrow all my symptoms were to magically end and my health was 100%, I could no longer go back to who I was and to what I was doing before I got sick. It’s like… I know too much now. I’m wiser because of my pain. I know too much of what to look out for in terms of health, of what’s required in order to heal and truly be well in this world, what’s most important and what I want to live for. 

One thing I know deeply and that I will never forget is the pain and suffering of chronic illness. Whether it’s eczema and psoriasis like I’ve experienced, fibromyalgia like my mom had, crohn’s disease like my boyfriend had, cancer like my dad had, vitiligo like my brother had, alzheimers like my boyfriend’s father had, lyme disease like my friend had… the list goes on and on and on with all the chronic illnesses out there. They destroy lives and families, they break hearts and they shatter spirits. My life is permeated by chronic illness in myself, my family, and those around me, and it’s getting worse out there with so many millions of others affected. Yes, there are millions living with chronic illness these days. 

I am healing from chronic illness. But I never want to go back to that form of hell again. I feel so strongly about making the life I lead moving forward one of simple natural living, a quieter kind of life. Slow living in order to promote health and healing over a life of chasing adventure and excitement. My stepping away from social media for the past 2 years has reflected this change in my outlook as well. The more attuned I’ve become with illness and suffering in my family, the less tolerance for all the noise out there I’ve come to have. Maybe I will go back to that world someday or have a change of heart about these platforms in the future. All I know is that these days I am craving something so very different. 

My ultimate dream in life (and the big dream that I’ve held onto for the past decade) is to have my own house in the countryside, with enough land to be able to homestead. It’s the vision I’ve been trying to work towards all this time. I’m closer than I was 10 years ago and it’s ok if it takes me another 5 years or even longer to get there. It will come together in time. For now, I am enjoying these calmer, slower days of healing while they’re here, with Meadow, the squirrels, and my tiny seedlings.