Fear and Transformation

Fear.

What a visceral, body-focused emotion. There are few sensory experiences more intense and uncomfortable than terror. And these past couple of weeks, for me, have been saturated in that wild, consuming, crushing cascade of sensations.

Years ago, I developed panic disorder. I could attribute it to a lot of things, but what began as a triggered response to a perceived threat became a full blown “condition” where fear of fear took over my ability to feel comfortable and safe in my own skin. One single response in the body to danger – a racing heart, a twist in the gut – would quickly swell into a full-blown fight-or-flight crisis.

One thing I have learned over years of battling with both real and imagined danger is that you cannot run from fear. You cannot run from any uncomfortable emotion. The more you try, the more it rears its ugly head in other ways – destructive habits, suppressed tension and inflammation in the body, explosive emotional reactions in seemingly irrelevant contexts.

I have made a career of avoiding discomfort in my life. In my earlier years, I experienced long periods of time where life was so utterly expansive and free, full of pleasure and adventure, lacking in responsibility and loss, and this “history” often creates a certain impulse for me to avoid the harsh realities that life can present. I DO NOT like feeling bad. I am VERY GOOD at constructing narratives that sugar coat the shit out of the ugly stuff.

In fairness, that talent for positivity is not always unhealthy, but rather a kind of superpower that offers me an incredibly beautiful lens of life. I believe with my whole heart that we have the power to interpret out lives in a way that gives meaning and value to ALL of life’s experiences, and that being positive is power. However, I am also recognizing, more and more, that pain is a part of the process. It is information. It is a necessary component of change and transformation.

I have done my best to acknowledge this lately – to sit with pain and allow it to be. To breathe. To work its way through me so that I don’t have to prolong its inevitability.

But life lately has just been so fucking scary.

I haven’t been able to write much. I haven’t been able to do much of anything but play video games and breathe. I brought in a workbook to the ward – a “distress tolerance” guide that offers ideas on how to manage enormous emotions and sensations. Things like using cold water on the face and holding your breath to trigger a “dive response” that regulates the heart rate and blood flow. Things like intense exercise and belly breathing. Things like using the five senses to shift focus and self-soothe the nervous system.

Things that are literally allowing me to get through the day, minute by minute.

A few days ago, counselors from Canuck Place came by. It wasn’t the first time. This time they brought the dog – a beautiful golden lab that carried a more peaceful presence than a Buddhist monk. Gaia sat on the bed with Violet to soothe her – she ran her hand across the dog’s fur and stared into her sweet eyes while I chatted with her owner, carefully dancing around words that would otherwise identify the real reason she was there – to soften the possible blow of hospice talks.

Later that night, after I was finally able to relax my nerves to keep down my dinner, I walked into the hall to get a glass of water and found our neighbours two doors down in a tearful huddle on the hallway floor. Our social worker was with them. The nurses were tucked in alcoves, crying. The candle outside the door was burning. The ward had lost another sweet soul to this unimaginable disease. With a crushing burden on my heart, I ducked back into the room, sucked back my tears and reassured Violet that all was well (she’s no fool, unfortunately, to any of this).

And yet, the next morning, in the wake of a new day, the Child Life Specialist walked past our door carrying a brand new baby. A beautiful new being in the world. Death and life both present everywhere, bursting at the seams. The whole spectrum of life experience exploding through the halls of one single floor.

Too much. And yet, so exquisitely just right.

The heart’s ability to expand to take in life at its most intense in absolutely astounding. As is our ability to feel – love, grief, gratitude, despair, fear, joy, bliss.

Violet is in slow recovery. As she did during our first go at this, she is taking her own time in getting back to homeostasis. Her blood pressure is a challenge as the tumor cells are, once again, leaking hormones into her blood stream from her adrenals that are causing her BP to spike. They are playing with different combinations of meds to keep it in check as we attack the cells and minimize the burden, balancing the toxicity of the treatment with control of the cancer. Balancing pain meds with nausea, nausea meds with constipation, and on and on.

Balance. Trying to return to balance.

Life is transforming. Without question, our  whole family is in a deep dark night of the soul. Everything has been thrown into uncertainty, even more than the last time, and with more intensity with the added impetus of narratives and data and experiences that lean toward scary outcomes. Expectations that aren’t in our favour.

And yet…

Something in my heart is breaking through. Like a seed pressed into the soil, we are in it deep, without the light, seemingly against all odds. But part of me knows something that my head isn’t entirely ready to trust. We are destined for something greater. Something thriving. Life is stirring: a new life where we are stronger, steadier, more alive, more free.

The plant can’t grow without the depths and the dark. It can’t become what it’s meant to be without going into the unknown, trusting the unseen, cracking open and working its way back up to the sunlight.

We’ll get there. I know it. But there is no getting around the pain of it. The uncertainty. The fear. It’s part of the process. It’s what faith is really about.

I am trusting it and allowing it to hurt. Allowing it to be the scary, awful shit that it is. And allowing it to get better, one breath at a time.

And luckily that positivity “superpower” comes in handy. It is like a natural buoyancy that pulls me right back up the surface without really trying. I just can’t stay down for very long…maybe because I know better. I know that the natural state of everything is good. There’s beauty everywhere, even in the dark. One thing gives way to another. And the only way forward is through.

We are getting through. We will get back to the light. And in the meantime, we will breathe through the scary stuff and savour all the things in between.