The Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss, PH.D is a beautiful and insightful guide into the mind/body/spirit connection. I first read this book about 10 years ago and found myself leafing through its pages once again just a few months ago searching for answers.
About 13 years ago I suffered an unspeakable trauma, something that I could never ever imagine happening, did. Yes, I did go for many rounds of counseling but other than that, I kept my trauma a secret. My tears were cried privately and I just continued with the business of living.
We make decisions sometimes that are not in our best interest, maybe out of fear or in the hope that we are somehow protecting ourselves or others, or both. But choosing not to speak our truth is not a good place to be in. What I did instead was to stuff my pain way down deep into the very darkest corner of my by heart, my soul, my being. No amount of counseling, no therapy could reach that.
Yes, our life, our story, our thoughts and our beliefs really do become our biology. We are, after all, a mind body. After so many years I thought that I had been able to exorcise most of my demons, but this was not the case.
About a year ago I started to experience bouts of extreme lower abdomen pain that left me drained and bedridden. Initially I shrugged it off - after all, wasn't I always a stomach girl? Every time something stressful happened in my life, wasn't my stomach the first to say, "Hello there, remember me?" And weren't we all going through an incredibly stressful time trying to cope with my Dad's rapidly failing health?
After my 5th attack and a battery of medical tests showed no medical cause for my symptoms, I acknowledged what I already knew. I think we always intuitively KNOW, don't we? My body was rebelling and screaming for me to pay attention - to sit up and take notice - to deal with my trauma once and for all. I was scared, really scared. I knew enough about the mind/body/spirit connection to realize that I needed to take action now to start the healing process before it was too late.
You see, disease is sometimes the result of trauma firmly rooted in place in our bodies. It can cause an energy shift that affects our cells - the very fabric of our body, leaving us open and vulnerable to disease. And I was hoping that in my case, after so many years of not paying attention, that it wasn't' too late.
My healing journey has been long and difficult. In the final analysis, I understand now what I didn't before. I finally got it. This is my life and my journey. No matter what life dishes up, it's how I treat with these trials, these traumas, which ultimately shapes the person I am. It's MY story, no one else's.
