HEARTFELT and WHOLEHEARTED

This is a story of a Creating Circle...a love story...a story of healing long and slow. I am going to tell it backwards because I can only see it looking back and I am supremely grateful that I have learned to see it at all. This little felted lady is all heart. I spent an afternoon with my friend April playing with felting. It was Valentines Day actually and I started out poking hearts shaped with cookie cutters. I made a bunch...6 anyway. As we jabbed and poked, and talked and laughed, I noticed April was forming a head just as I noted that the pink heart looked like feet. Soooo...I started making a head and suddenly I knew what the 6 hearts were for. I do love the spirit of creativity. You always have to take a leap of faith even to begin to make something because sometimes you just don't know in your head what your heart wants to do. Writing is like that too. Sometimes you just have to start without knowing where your headed and all the steps you take finally begin to point the way...and you say AHA! so that's where I am going. So her little body is a heart with another heart at her center. Her hat is a smaller heart and if you turn her around, she has a heart backpack she is wearing that says LOVE. Her wings are half hearts. Her hair is white and she has a rat tail in the back because she is a cool old bird. She came together in the spirit of creativity, of sharing and hanging out with a good friend who also finds sustenance from making stuff and delights in the discovery as things unfold. I love my friend April. I have known her since we were young parents in Marblehead, though I knew of her from early high school years. Her friendship has helped me navigate some very stormy seas...painting pottery at her shop called Hands On...making ornaments for the UU church fair...working at Me and Thee...taking part in Goddess education and when I hit the bottom in Marblehead, April had appreciation for parts of me that no one else seemed to notice. It was a great pink morning when she and Ken moved to Maine and once again, we became neighbors. In February 2003, just before they moved up, Stephen and I were invited for a dinner with April and Ken at Gary and Les's house. It was once again, Valentines Time...the day after I believe. Stephen couldn't come to dinner because he had contracted the flu at Sunday River and he was too sick to go...but I went anyway. Stephen and I were having some relationship difficulties that seemed a product of moving away from the familiar old and welcoming the new and unfamiliar...a necessary process to moving from one state to another.

Two days later, I came down with the flu. I had a high fever. I found myself beside myself...nearly hallucinating...feeling like I wanted to jump out of my skin and bite the wall. Had I been a dog, I may have had rabies. I was ferocious and frothing at the mouth. Stephen took me to the health center and I was given something that was supposed to reverse the growth of the virus. I'm not sure it was a good thing. The upshot of the whole thing was, the virus caused me to have Congestive Heart Failure. I was weak, fearful, unable to participate in anything fully. By April, I noticed that I could barely carry my skis from the car to the lift at Barker. The little mound from the porch to the lift was like a mountain to me. I began my regular trips to the doctor. That spring was a wet one and over time it became more and more difficult to breathe. I was treated for asthma. I moved very slowly through the spring and summer. My sister heidi came to visit and she expressed real concern about my health as I had to sleep in a chair by that point. I was a crappy wife at that point and a worse friend. I had no energy for anyone or anything, though I did manage to plant my garden. It was harvesting my first potatoes that told me something serious was going on. DUH!!! I couldn't even carry 2 lbs of potatoes up the ramp to the house without stopping a bunch of times to catch my breath.

Stephen and I were celebrating our 20th anniversary in 2003. It was August 20th. We made our way to Monhegan Island after a stop at the doctor. I wanted something so I could breathe...thought a boat ride in the fresh air and some recreation time with Stephen was all I really needed. I was given an inhaler and some kind of sodium based medicine that I can't remember now. Driving to the coast, we passed a farm. I was mildly alarmed by the fact that as we passed, I experienced a cow that appeared to turn into a pig. In my usual dismissive way, we laughed and ignored it and continued on our journey.It was a gorgeous hot weekend and I was looking forward to the fairy houses and the art and spending the night in an inn. So...that meant walking. Monhegan isn't flat but you can't call it really hilly either. As we walked I became increasingly distressed, finally with Stephen taking my hand and waiting patiently every few steps for breath, we passed an ambulance with grass growing through it and plants curled all around it. I became frightened because it suddenly dawned on me that if something of a health crisis were to happen,
we were miles out to sea and far from any emergency assistance. I couldn't sleep all night and when we got up in the AM, I was swollen with elephant legs. How did I wait so long? How did I dismiss the signs? How did I not care enough about myself to get help? When we finally went home, I saw the doctor again. This time...4 months after the first symptoms, they took an x-ray and discovered my heart had hugely enlarged and my lungs were full of fluid. By the time I was seen by a cardiologist, my heart was functioning at 19%. But the scariest thing was, I was imagining how great it would be to stop breathing altogether. It was so hard to breathe that I wanted to die. I not only had heart failure... I was depressed, unable to sleep, feeling unloved and unloving and that no only was my heart failing...but my whole life was a failure. I no longer feared death. I welcomed it. Perhaps one of me did die.

Today...nine years later...I seem to be healed. It has been a very long journey, learning to see how the mind and spirit interact with the body both positively and negatively. Mental habits are the most insidious and difficult for me to get a grip on. I am my own worst enemy and I see that in the self talk that I indulge in when I am tired, depressed or frustrated. I was on a ton of medications, including antidepressants until just last fall. Today, I still have to take a few heart meds and will have to take them for the rest of my life.That wasn't an easy pill to swallow for a nature girl who wants everything natural and pure. But today...Ah yes TODAY...in this very moment...at this present time...I just finished 30 minutes on my treadmill and I jogged the whole time...and I didnt get tired. I felt heart power surge. I felt whole...I felt wholehearted and connected to my homemade St. Johnswort/ Dandilion/Hawthorne tincture that helps my heart have wings and I feel the love in my heart being liberated...slowly at first...toward the folks that have been caring to me. I feel grateful for the wonders of friends in my life and the healing power of nature and I try now to imagine...what can my life hold when I set that heart power free ?

The moral of the story is...care for the heart first...then give it a head...but don't forget the wings. This ole bird has dreams of flight. Perhaps today is lift off.