Tag: knee injury

Abuse Role Reversal

I was in an abusive relationship earlier this year, but unlike the union I designated as such in the past, this one held a wild abuse role reversal. Instead of the more familiar role of the victim, this time, I was actually the abuser! 

How fascinating it was to play this opposite role, as the well-intentioned and loving human being that I am. I felt like a really good actress who had accepted a really bad role in an even worse movie. Who casted this thing? Me? A villain? Yep. Turns out we can all be a villain in someone’s story.

When called upon my abuse by my victim – my very own knee – I looked nervously at this new role in the abuse script. I’d never even glanced at my ex’s lines or read his in-depth character portrayal. I’d only known what my childhood trauma had decided about my seemingly villainous co-star, and what the internet and abuse world told me was true about our relationship.

My knee had been trying to let me know it had been perceiving me as abusive for a long time, but I hadn’t been listening. It finally had my attention, but only because it was screaming at me, and I couldn’t escape it. It’s hard to run from one’s knees without them. 

The knee insinuated that along with being physically abusive by rescuing my traveling palm tree from a bug attack (as detailed in my last post), I’d also been emotionally abusive!

It was hard to look at this. So, I responded to the accusations like someone with narcissistic personality disorder might have. I didn’t take responsibility. I made excuses. I reverse-blamed and conveyed the message that my knee was too sensitive by minimizing the damage I’d done.  

“I’m not entirely certain taking you for granted constitutes ‘abuse,’ knee. Overall, I practice stellar self-care, don’t you think?” 

My knee threw its brace across the room. Oh crap. This thing is pissed. 

“When massage therapists ask what to focus on, how do you respond?” the knee asked rhetorically.

The question made me cringe. Between you and me, and apparently my knee, I tell them to skip my legs. That’s right, just withhold all love and care for the parts of my body that do the most work and keep me mobile. 

The knee’s more boisterous siblings – my shoulders and back – had commanded all the attention, and I’d let them. But I hadn’t meant to be neglectful!  

I apologized to the knee, thinking it would understand. It perceived my apology as the generic and meaningless type I used to scoff at in my victim days, once I’d finally hit the “fight” phase of my relationship. 

“What are you actually sorry for?” the knee asked, just like I used to. On the rare occasions I’d received apologies, they had felt insincere.

“For making it seem like I neglect you when I get massages.”

“It doesn’t seem that way. It is that way.”

Listening To the Body

As I contemplated escape routes that didn’t involve my knee, it began to rattle off its long laundry list of additional issues with me. I did not want to listen, but I had absolutely no choice.

It had been trying to communicate, for months, that I needed to actualize creative projects, like publishing the books I’ve already completed instead of working on the new ones, and letting people know about my energy healing work with BEST (BioEnergetic Synchronization Technique).

I also had to get back in the habit of making my choices intuitively, not with my indecisive mind, which had somehow found its way back into the driver’s seat and had been procrastinating a decision.

The common theme between my knee’s complaints was my hesitancy to move forward. Apparently, knees don’t like stagnancy. 

Subtle messages had failed to get my attention, so the knee had to up the ante. 

This was when I’d gotten really abusive, according to my knee. Because when I finally started paying attention to its cries, I’d tried to heal it externally, while still ignoring its emotions and needs.

“I thought you would want to walk again!”

The knee rolled its eyes at yet another excuse. My desire to heal it wasn’t the issue – it was how I’d gone about it. My intentions had been in the right place, but my demonstrations were questionable at best. I’d misdiagnosed myself online (how shocking!) and since I was in an area where I know a great chiropractor, I went in for his opinion. He told me it was a strained PCL and gave suggestions to facilitate healing, most of which I ignored.

In case that hadn’t been abusive enough in my knee’s eyes, I took my mind’s suggestion to go back for another adjustment, just three days later. The first one had been helpful, so this seemed logical. The knee responded to me listening to my oft-wrong mind instead of my ever-wise body by blowing up. Literally. I had never seen a more swollen knee, but I was about to.

When I called to report the swelling, my chiropractor’s staff told me the knee was “compensating.” I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but I figured they did – so I went back for yet another treatment.

“I told you how much that hurt me,” my knee said. “So you did it again?!

“I was trying to help you!” I defended.

This time, I finally heard myself – and the knee.

Abuser No More

How many times had my ex told me he was trying to help me while saying and doing things that felt abusive? Yet, if he was in front of me all these years later, acting those same ways, I wouldn’t see him as being abuse toward me. I wouldn’t see him as being anything toward me. 

His volatile relationship with himself had nothing to do with me, even when we both believed it did. Forget fight or flight – today, I wouldn’t even blink at his unconscious words or actions. I would recognize his hostility as the insecurity it was and say, “Thank you for being one of my greatest teachers.”

Before I could make that transformational shift, I had to go through the victim phase, during which I very much believed I was in an abusive relationship. Sometimes, in order to make necessary changes in our relationships with ourselves, we need to project our self-abuse onto someone else. That doesn’t make it feel any less real. 

Thanks to recalling how it felt when I did believe I was being cruelly abused, I could understand how my knee felt, make true amends, and ensure it knew how much I loved it. 

I took it to Dr. Sue Morter’s alumni retreat in Nosara, which was like taking a Disney-obsessed child to the Magic Kingdom. I’ll continue sharing that miraculous healing story and more about the retreat and magical Costa Rican adventure in my next post! 

As for those massages I got on the beach in Playas del Coco before the retreat, mentioned in my Costa Rican Redirect post? I don’t need to tell you what areas I asked my massage therapist to focus on, and I didn’t have to tell her, either. My newly empowered knee ascertained its needs and asked for what it wanted, assertively and gracefully, without a trace of codependency.

Rapid Healing

I was on crutches the day I left for Costa Rica. Just over a week later, I carried a marginally heavy baby tree to plant on the beach while volunteering with Costa Verde, an amazing nonprofit committed to reforestation and other environmental efforts.

The full circle tree moment felt like something out of a dream.  

So did surfing and hiking to this magical waterfall and a volcano a few short days later. 

Healing can occur immediately when we understand the real reasons for our injuries and illnesses, implement the messages our bodies are trying to communicate, and release unprocessed emotions that are creating interference with our natural ability to heal.

I’ll detail this in future posts. Contact me for more immediate info by filling out the form at the bottom of the page.

And stay tuned for The Relationship Ride, which will be available for preorder this November.

The Relationship Ride

Inviting Healing

“What happened to your knee?” asked new friends met at Dr. Sue Morter’s alumni retreat. The storyteller in me jumped at the chance to share a remix answer, not realizing that by doing so, I was perpetuating the injury instead of inviting healing.

Since my knee was so swollen, it would not have looked terribly out of place on a holiday weekend watermelon display, this was not a smart choice.

“Well, I travel with a palm tree. You know, cause doesn’t everyone?” Cue the laughter reel.  

Word that I’ve been pet sitting nomadically for almost seven years had spread quickly, so the only background info they required involved Persival Grant the traveling plant. Once a fairly ordinary house plant, the ponytail palm got bored of traditional living and hit the road with me three summers ago. He has served as my trusted copilot and companion ever since!

Unlike most trees, which generally prefer to stay in one spot, Persival has loved adventuring as much as I have. That is, until he outgrew his pot last year. 

On a drive that featured no bumps or turns, Persival toppled over three times within ten minutes. I’d been in considerable denial that I’d been stunting his growth, so his more subtle requests hadn’t registered. Now he was letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that he needed a new pot. Pronto! 

We were in the middle of nowhere, but within moments, a random nursery appeared, complete with two employees that seemed to have been expecting our arrival. Before I had issued a single word about the issue, one grabbed a bag of soil and the other ran over with a much bigger (and heavier) pot. They said f I’d waited another couple of weeks, Persival Grant would have perished.

I apologized profusely to Persival Grant, who was fortunately enjoying his new home too merrily to hold a grudge. He forgave me, and we resumed our journey.

Within a few weeks, however, a new problem emerged: he doubled in size.

Encouraged by more laughter and a growing audience, I continued to share how the knee injury began. As with all injuries, an emotional and energetic component proceeded the injury itself. (I’ll share about that in a future post!) Since I hadn’t been receiving my body’s messages, it was ready to turn up the volume.

Don’t Try This at Home (Or Someone Else’s Home)! 

A cat sitting adventure brought me and PG to Boca Raton, Florida, where Persival enjoyed lounging by a large and luxurious pool for several weeks. He loved the humidity and I made sure to take him out of the direct sun after 11 a.m. each day.

“He’s a palm tree” scoffed a friend who makes him stay outside when I visit. (In fairness, her cat’s obsession with him leads to considerable chewing and puking.)

“He only likes morning sunshine!” I explained. 

“He’s too sensitive! Look at all those other palm trees,” she said, pointing to big palms outside. “All day sun. They love it. Stop coddling him.”

I laughed, but still brought Persival and his heavy pot from the sun to the shade and back again each day. See where this is going?

After several weeks of doing this, I noticed my knee felt a bit sore but didn’t think much of it. I incorrectly surmised I must have slept on it awkwardly.

The deck that surrounded the pool was essentially a screened-in lanai, a wonderful concept when the holes are small enough to fulfill the actual purpose of keeping bugs out. But there in a house where the people could have paid me 10K a day to care for their sweet kitty without noticing a dent in their bank account, the holes were, well – holey.

So, when it finally rained, and did so all night, about five thousand insects flew in and attempted to claim my unintentionally overwatered friend Persival Grant as their home.

Instead of calmly researching solutions online or calling a nursery, I went into fight or flight mama bear mode. I took Persival out of his soil, placed the soil in various buckets, waived my typical no-kill policy, and hosed in water, creating a massive natural disaster for the bugs.

Then I created one for myself, while lifting the heavy buckets – which now contained mud – into the sunshine to dry. Persival survived the attack! My already aggravated knee, however, did not fare so well.

That’s only how the injury began, not why my knee was the size of a watermelon when I left for Costa Rica. It’s a very long story so you’ll have to wait for the standup routine I was encouraged to create about it to hear the rest.

We have more important things to explore today. Like:

 

The Epiphany

While I deeply enjoyed entertaining my new amistades with the story, it finally dawned on me that by doing so, I was perpetuating the injury instead of inviting healing. Like someone who had never heard of the mind-body connection or how what we focus on expands, I’d been focusing intently on how I got injured.

Although I had been answering compassionate and well-intentioned questions and building bonds with special humans in the process, I was putting way too much focus on the issue I did not wish to perpetuate. 

Then I had an even bigger epiphany.

How often has my inner storyteller led me into undesirable situations, for the sake of entertaining and teaching others? 

One of my mottos used to be, “What isn’t good for my life is good for the books.” Case in point, I am launching The Relationship Ride this summer, based on that real life soap-opera many of you loved following nine years ago!

In the book, I share how my teachers Michael Beckwith and Guru Jagat helped me open to the ways that even the most excruciatingly painful parts of that journey were serving me. I wasn’t yet studying with Dr. Sue back then, but when she received her new student baton, she ran that concept home for me. Learning how to work with the energies in my body was a profound game-changer.

As I heard her talk about not defaulting to our old patterns anymore on day one of our retreat, I made a commitment to stop discussing the injury. Surely, my inner storyteller could find ways to impart her wisdom and express her humor without continuing to affirm what I didn’t want!

“What’s wrong with your knee?” someone asked after lunch that day.

“Nada!” I replied. “My knee is already fully healed. I’m just wearing the brace for attention and love. No laughter this time. 

“I’m joking! I’m not sociopathic – I just I realized I was focusing on the injury every time I answered similar questions this morning. But after the morning with Dr. Sue, I’m letting that story go and inviting healing!”

She commended my shift, and we shared a beautiful conversation.

From that moment on, I only spoke of my knee from the perspective of “already healed.” Until it actually was! Inviting healing led to quick and profound miracle.

Just over a week after not being able to walk across a room without crutches, I was – get this – carrying a small tree. 

On the fourth day of our retreat, our group planted trees with Costas Verdes, an incredible nonprofit dedicated to reforestation. Before planting mine on the beach, I had to carry it there. You can’t make this stuff up!

Could I have asked for help? Yes, and I did. I asked the woman walking in front of me to carry my water bottle. I watched my mind insist that I was going to reinjure the knee, but I intuitively knew that despite its weight and the distance I needed to carry it, I was going to be just fine.

I could not have believed that much healing was possible, that quickly, if I hadn’t experienced it first-hand. So, how did it happen?

Well, that’s a story worth putting a lot of attention on! Stay tuned! Persival Grant and I are busy traveling but we’ll back next week to share more about the miracles that took place at that glorious retreat!

Click here for Part One of the Retreat Miracle story! Dr. Sue Morter’s Retreat (Part One) ~ LOVE WITHOUT TRAFFIC

 

 

 

 

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