The photos are ones I painted in 2021. They are how I feel today, collectively. Abstract. If you put them all together.
I realize that attempting to balance this new body (how I refer to my body post injury; the day he killed me.)
Attempting to balance this new bodies needs, with what level of activity I require mentally, has been most challenging of all.
I have had to not only adapt my physical movement lifestyle because of these new limitations, but also my mental health needs.
When movement is another language of yours and you have to adapt to a new normal, whether from sickness, or injury that is short or long term, it changes you. The reflection that comes with that much time and inability to move energy, it really allows you to have perspective.
The movie that best describes it is, ‘You before me’
The story is of a very wealthy man, he is adventurous and athletic, he financially and otherwise, can make any dream of his, a reality…..he ends up crippled. Unable to use any of his body neck down.
When a woman falls in love with him, he explains to her, and his family, that it isn’t really about what he can do still, it’s about what he lived before. He knew what it was like to live. In this movie he had everything at his disposal financially and treatment wise, yet he still chose to end his life, a peaceful passages.
I may seem normal to you now, but if I do, you must have never known me before, ever.
This has been one of the most terrifying experiences in my life and I still went through it attempting to balance everything. And I am not a wealthy woman, at all! What made me rich was my able body, my intellect, I needed to be physically able bodied to survive. Society just proved it!!
I still was Continuing to move forward and keep doing the things I loved, while adjusting them to this new bodies needs, attempting to work and make a living for myself, consistently putting myself out there…..being traumatized but really working my hardest to heal with everything I’ve learned and was continuing to learn.
Unfortunately one of the things I have to consistently adjust is the ‘new normal.’
I had tried to track it in the beginning and it is nearly impossible. I initially thought that barometric pressure was contributing to spasms in the beginning of the injury. That if a storm was rolling in, it caused these electric like shocks to go through my body.
The spinal fluid acts as a conduit from brain to body, so it made sense, but it was never predictable. The first year those spasms were typical and one of the most painful things I have ever experienced.
Then the spasms would occur when I would adjust my spine back into place, using yogic poses, known as, cat, cow, cobra vigorously. This was because by the time I was doing those postures. I was in immense pain and had a hard time breathing.
I took Time outside Walking in a space that was easier with this injury, instead of the mountains, keeping my spine in alignment (my iliopsoas and psoas are affected because of the bone in my T7-10 area, where I got hit. It pops and causes that whole area to become destabilized. It then causes for my Thorocolumbar Radioculopathy to skyrocket.
Once I learned about thermal regulation, I learned even more, I had to wittle down my movement slightly more and think about what temperature it was outside. I learned why I walked funny, especially if I did too much movement. Once I learned about autonomic dysreflexia in 2022, I really started to understand how serious this injury was and how much I needed to really altar. This is my moral obligation, to keep myself alive, now that I know how. It’s annoying for me.
I had been peacefully dead and my ‘new normal’ life, it isn’t lucrative and it doesn’t make me happy. How can I be fulfilled when one of my ways of communicating is missing? How can I live, when my own country showed me what it felt I was worth, crippled, and it’s so scary they don’t want me believed.
Today I don’t feel like speaking, I just feel like singing and doing art and dancing. When I had a normal job I knew how to balance everything, all my needs into one, I knew how to balance everything.
Now I can’t even find a job I can do with this injury. What kind of balance can I create around that?
Not to mention, without adapting, I can’t really exist in society, it legit doesn’t allow it.
I know because I have tried.
I am hardest on myself.
I LOVED my happy little life before.
I loved dancing in nature, hiking, singing and doing my art, making a living and saving money, living life! I traveled to study in my Past 2014 & 2015, not until September 2023 was it to seek medical refuge.
When I could afford a therapy pool membership, that helped a lot, unfortunately I still didn’t fully understand my injury. This was winter 2021. I tried to ambulate instead of use a wheelchair-that was pride. I would stay in the pool too long and almost go into autonomic dysreflexia or fall to my knees. It was intense. I made it happen though and in the water, I felt amazing. I wore a body suit that was 3mm to navigate the thermal regulation of this new body. I learned to dress warm. Warmer than usual and to check the temperature regularly. I learned that I have to time myself in the pool. That I couldn’t walk across the bottom of the pool, my right leg wouldn’t touch and I would float. This was for 3 months.
I gradually reintroduced simple yogic postures, stretches, and other movement.
I adjusted how I belly danced to a different and slower variant. I still can’t do my belly flutters because of my afflicted diaphragm and it took me four years to perfect those.
It was all in all, terrifying, but I stayed focus. I went from painting standing up and dancing, to sitting on the floor.
All the ways I expressed
Myself had to change.
Now the spasms are different, still painful and uncomfortable; yet different, almost 5 + years later, I thought I would be healed by now.
I feel I really really need to run. I have run since I was a child. I loved cross country. I need to Move energy. It makes me so happy.
In Peru 
South America, they have this free ambuakt
One of the major questions in this time period has been, how is my mental health…:……….
How would yours be?
Think.
I mean, I am doing everything I can that is within this context of my life they created.
Justice.
Where is the Justice?
Today, I didn’t feel like writing at all.
I feel like running and dancing, like moving and living life, but I am reminded by my body, I need to now rest. It’s a bizzare thing to have your body injured, yet having your fulfillment come through moving.
Am I depressed?
Wouldn’t you be?
If I had been able to adapt back in 2021 when I asked, I should have asked even sooner! It was my pride that stopped me, if I had adapted back then, and had a halal income, being able to redesign my life, then I would have found some semblance of a ‘new normal’ and happiness, but it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t what I was before. Is it easier to accept an injury if it wasn’t given by another person??? I don’t know…..this only took a man one second, it wasn’t the first time he hurt me. It wasn’t the last either…..
How can I move forward through oppression? How can I market my business when I’m experiencing all this?
I’m being real, to keep myself safe and to help make it safer for everyone. It isn’t hard to figure out, for people who specialize in these matters. I wrote to everyone I could think of about it all. I am incredibly triggered by what I have experienced in my life & how can I keep myself safe without an income?
These are major matters that need addressing in our country:
Why do we pay in to ssd? If it isn’t available to us when we need it?? Why is the defense fund unlimited, but not our well being? I paid in 22 years. 22.
This is what occurred instead.
Life. threatening. injury.
Today; I am having a bad day and I still love myself. I am grateful for everything but I am frustrated with a lot too, and that’s ok.
I could write about a 1000 Magickal topics, but I really like reading others from different sites and I would rather point them out, then write about the same. Astro.com has a great astrology site. They do a wonderful monthly report.
My Magick school does lots of writings and blogs and classes on Magick. The few I did for free on Facebook, had no following and I sort of feel like re-teaching it, isn’t genuine feeling.
Yoga and dance postures. Art.
A healing flow once a week?
Art pieces all the time.
These all feel therapeutic and beneficial, but is there desire for it?
The ‘new normal’ for me, doesn’t allow me to do things the way I did before.
This is very challenging. I have to speak up for safety. Promote my business for income.
I wanted to give my website up because it’s been 5 years now and I said if this year didn’t do well, I would stop. Yet, here is another year. The 6th year as a website, though my #Facebook page has been 10 years now.
Business.
Not at all the order or way I planned it to happen, but here I am. Still trying to make everything work.
Trying to convince myself that I have value, even without my physically able body. That has been a new mantra.
Trying to find fulfillment in what I can still do…..while
My safety being dependent on my own income. I’ve had my own money since I was a child. I Worked.
Now…….
Inside out, upside down, attempting to redesign a life that sometimes feels over.
Trying to find fulfillment in what I still can do.
Knowing that, how can I ever feel the same way I did before?
I can be grateful and content, but will I ever feel happy? I’ve been through a lot of hell, my happiness was running the mountains. Dancing. My happiness was movement.