An Ode to Healing
Two years ago to this day, things were not okay.
There was a birthday party for Ollie with a few family members, his very sick mother included. She sat on the couch while we ate at the dinner table. Upstairs was Jane, her daughter, locked in my room unwilling to come out because seeing her mother--burned and changed--was like living a horrid nightmare.
It was awful.
And we tried to have perk. We wrapped up overflow Christmas presents for the birthday boy (turning the adventurous age of four) and baked a cake. We lit the candles and his breath blew them out. He sat on the floor playing with noisy toys at the feet of his mother. Reality was wasted on his divine oblivion.
And everyone who came brought presents of gum.
He couldn't have been happier, but for the rest of us there was so much pain, frustration, feelings and anxiety. I feel back at that night and nausea threatens. How desperately grateful I am those days are over.
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Then there was tonight.
There was Ollie again, turning six. There was his healthy mom, his dad, his sisters and brother. There was me, and Chup, The Chief and Ever. We were back at our house celebrating his birthday with a stubborn bunt cake that stuck to the confines of the pan and refused to come out. And when it did budge, it barreled out in clumps and crumbs. We made it into an "adventure cake" with powdered sugar representing pockets of snow and the chunks a rocky terrain. Plastic figurines were stuffed here and there--lions, tigers and a Lego guy--and in the middle, a diamond jewel, the treasure! Six candles this time which six earnest breaths were used to extinguish.
Two years behind us.
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About that night two years ago, I bemoaned post-Christmas birthdays. I called them redundant. I'd like to take that back. I see something really fresh about getting a new age at the same time as a new year. All things start again, together. Double beginnings--I think I might be jealous.
And that is the power of looking back in time. It comes with it enlightenment and clarity. I love the girl I was two years ago, but I am glad I am not her in many ways. There was hurting, now there is mending.
I have chosen Healing as a theme for me this year. I want to explore the culture of healing--physically, emotionally, spiritually--the choices, the paths, the outcomes. I hope to hear stories, successes and otherwise, from healers and those seeking out wholeness. I want to mend some of the broken pieces in my own life and achieve health as measured by nothing (not success, not busy-ness, not numbers on a scale) but happiness.
Care to join me?
On Dear C. Jane:
Kourtney Kardashian stole my baby's shoes.
I am C. Jane Kendrick and here we go. You can contact me personally at cjanemail @ gmail.com or leave comments on my facebook page and if you are on twitter you can find my tweets here. But no pressure.
