My voice is too close

Last time my son was sick with a virus, he spent a lot of time upside down. He said it helped his voice. "My voice is too close, so I need medicine" he explained.

His attempts at explaining his condition so precisely from his unique perspective in his own words impressed me.

He explained that being upside down helped him to get his "voice not so close".

I thought about when I am sick and about how all the ways I have of describing how I am feeling are unoriginal pat sayings. "I feel like there is someone pounding my head with a hammer."

"My nose is stuffed up."

"I feel like I have been run over by a truck."

I don't go deep inside of myself and think "where am I at with this?" I wonder if the way I describe my symptoms influence how I cope with them or not cope with them.

I don't turn myself upside down.

I just lie there. Inert. Or slog my way through the day. Waiting to feel better.

His experience coping with minor illness opened my eyes to new possibilities. He was experiencing his virus and telling me about the experience. It made me think that I should go with my intuition more, listen more carefully to myself, especially when I am sick.

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

Shake your Bummy

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Growing Versions

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