Writing From The Middle

Does the process know we're trusting it?

How do you write when you’re in the middle of a process that you don’t have the answers for? When you don’t yet have the swanky one liner to summarize what took you from this place to that one because you’re still traveling there?

I sometimes feel an apprehension while writing vulnerably as a mental health professional. Not that I am necessarily scared of being seen imperfectly, but that I forget I am also allowed to show up feeling uncertain or off-balance.

I think I am unlearning that relational safety doesn’t rely on me being the one to have it all together all the time. And Substack seems like great place for some exposure therapy in that regard.

Also, if I don’t write and really feel through this moment, how can I one day experience how beautiful and full circle the other side is?

Some of y’all have may have noticed I haven’t been publishing consistently the past couple weeks. I could blame it on being busy, but honestly I’ve felt blocked from writing because I’ve felt so unsorted. (Is that even a word?)

But I promised myself when I began this publication that I would write from my life and all the messy moments of becoming, not just the finished product. So here we are, I guess.

I always hear online about the people who visited all the doctors that said everything looked fine while they clearly weren’t. Then, I became that person.

For years, I’ve been dealing with a confusing constellation of symptoms I still don’t understand. Some of them have improved as I’ve been on the healing journey with an amazing care team (therapist, chiro, naturopath, holistic OB). But some of the biggest question marks still remain.

After 6+ months of running all different kinds of tests, I have a lot of closed doors. I have a lot of ruled out possibilities, but no answers, no dx, and no clear path forward.

I continue to travel the blueprint of symptoms, intuition, and doctors’ hypothesis. The hope being to keep pulling back the layers until we get the full picture, while also knowing that there might not be one that medicine can offer.

Somedays, I am filled with hope and appreciation. I have a sense of perspective that this process has given me so much life saving wisdom about my body and how to care for it. I am proud of the healing, peace, and vitality I have fought for and for the ways I got uncomfortable so that I could see change.

I am proud of how I’ve learned to let myself ride out the waves of hope, grief, disappointment, anxiety, fear, frustration with emotional safety and regulation that wasn’t modeled for me. How I’ve learned how and with whom I can share this process.

I am proud of how I’ve kept hope alive for one day being able to have a family, while also grieving and allowing myself to accept whatever reality the future holds. How I’ve practiced monitoring my changes with loving curiosity instead of suspicious vigilance.

Yet, somedays the uncertainty, grief, and exhaustion from the process is overwhelming. I feel whiplash from constantly digesting new information/test results that can have so many different implications and fitting all of this new information into a living puzzle.

I know I will find the power, meaning, and joy in it all because that’s just who I am. But somedays, it’s also extremely exhausting and lonely.

There are days the challenge makes me feel invincible and days it makes me feel like I am treading water alone at sea while trying to be okay enough to show up to work and be a safe space for others.

It’s in moments like these where I am so comforted by the words from my favorite poem on joy and sorrow:

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain….

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

-Khalil Gibran

As I write this, I realize how I’m learning to be present with all the beauty of the now, while trusting that the sorrow carving into me will one day make room for even more joy. And by feeling courageously through all of it, I allow myself to one day taste that deep joy.

While this process has been grueling and uncertain, it’s also challenged me into necessary change in ways comfort never could have.

The person I am becoming fears uncertainty less and less. She doesn’t feel the need to maintain control with an iron grasp for fear of loosing it. She is able to move with life. She is adaptable. She knows herself and her values. She cares less what others think and how’s she perceived. She knows who her people are and what makes her truly happy.

While this frustrating, painful, and scary process is unfolding, I have moments of simultaneously feeling the happiest I have ever felt in my life because I am no longer scared of pain in a way I used to be.

I once read from the contemplative monk, Martin Laird, that we should picture ourselves like a mountain and the inevitable feelings of everyday life are like clouds passing over them. Sometimes they linger and rain heavy, but like all storms and sunny days—they are just passing through. The more I settle into this vision, the more at peace I can be with whatever is.

photo source: @bir_muamma on Pinterest

I’m thankful that I didn’t get my answers quickly and that I didn’t create realities that I would have suffered inside of because that version of me couldn’t steward it the way I could now.

In this post, I don’t have some inspirational admonishments. I just have the truth about where I am at and what I am feeling.

I hope you feel like you’re not alone if you see yourself in any of it.

One of my client’s once said to me that “grief shared is grief halved, and joy shared is joy doubled”. So if you resonate with any of the grief or the joy I shared, I hope the division or multiplication brings you peace.

With love, Mads.