Thank you: Now Everything Changes

 Hi all. I apologize for starting another solipsistic thread while this situation in the Middle East continues to chaotically unfold. I know many of you are scared sick. But “matters” within my life have been rapidly falling into place since the New Year, and I need to share those developments here. They’re too big for just my personal journal. In fact, when I put pen to paper last night, all I wrote was “now everything changes.”

Time for a story.

The week before Christmas, I took the train into Boston for a follow-up appointment with my new neurologist at Mass General Hospital. My neurologist exclusively treats patients who have been diagnosed on the neurofibromatosis spectrum, which encompasses 3 similar tumor-growth disorders of the nervous system: NF2 (what I have); NF1 (the most widespread of the 3); and schwannomatosis (the rarest of the 3). When I arrived at his office, I was upbeat. I felt an energy of optimism I had never brought to a doctor’s office, a feeling that soon something significant would change for the better in my life.

A few minutes after I sat down in the waiting room, two more patients—both young men (unrelated) and accompanied by their parents—checked in and sat down in the row of chairs opposite me. One looked a couple years younger than me, the other a few years older, and I could immediately tell that they had NF1. That’s because they both had visible plexiform neurofibromas, which is a type of tumor that’s specific to NF1. Plexiform neurofibromas cause gradual disfiguration of soft tissue and, occasionally, underlying bones, over the course of years. Because of the way they insinuate themselves into surrounding tissue, they are inoperable (aside: I volunteered for 2 weeks in 2014 and 2015 at a summer camp for children with NF1, so I’m intimately familiar with these things). The older patient had a neurofibroma on his head that was disfiguring half of his face. The younger patient had a neurofibroma on his right leg that was causing his tibia to bend to an extent that he needed combined arm and leg braces in order to walk (again, I’ve seen this in the kids I’ve worked with).

I could also tell, just by looking at their eyes and the way they carried themselves, that they were suffering profoundly on a spiritual level. I could see the hurt of repeated disappointment, of being stared at in public, of constantly being told that there wasn’t much to be done about their condition except to “watch and wait.” I recognized that suffering because I used to be in the same position not so long ago.

In my encounters at the NF1 camp, I had many instances of deep compassion and wanting the people in front of me to “get better” in a passive sense: I hope the doctors find a cure for you; that sort of thing. But those two young men I saw in Boston three weeks ago elicited a soul response I have never experienced. I desperately wanted to heal them, to actively make their tumors go away. I wanted to use everything I had been learning about narrative medicine, nature therapy, interpersonal healing, and energy healing in order to show them that there was more than the single story of their disease that the biomedical establishment had been telling them.

I thought A LOT about those two patients over the holidays, but it wasn’t until last weekend, when I was reading chapter 6 of Joanna Macy’s book, Active Hope, that everything started clicking. In that chapter she discusses how some of us will hear our calls to act for the world. She writes: “There will be times when we become alerted to an issue and experience an inner call to respond…We can experience our call to action in many different ways. Sometimes…we just know, even if we’re not sure how, that we need to be somewhere, do something, or contact a particular person…Just as we experience the Earth crying within us as pain for the world, we can experience the earth thinking within us as a guiding impulse pulling us in a particular direction.” Well, that’s exactly what happened to me in Boston. I encountered the key codes that activated my healer impulse, and it took Joanna Macy’s words for all of the visions and intuition Spirit has been sending me since 2017 to assemble into a coherent life path, and it’s this:

Beginning this coming autumn, after my service with AmeriCorps ends, I will be working in jobs that involve physical outdoor labor, but with people and endeavors that appreciate what it means to nurture Gaia (perhaps therapeutic or biodynamic farms). I’ve already become aware of places in the Bay State that meet this bill. My tumors will shrink, I will grow physically stronger, and my sense of hearing will improve as I further integrate marginal healing/esoteric practices into my own particular story of what it means to be alive now. Eventually some like-minded individuals and I will establish an intentional community centered on a therapeutic garden/farm (this is what I saw in my NDE), and people will come to us for physical healing.

But my focus will not be to make physical illness go away as an end unto itself. By directing people to nurture the land while also helping them craft the stories of being their souls tell them to be true, I will also be doing my part to purge globalized culture of the myth of separation. The myth of separation is the underlying cause of all the darkness we see in the world now. Over the course of millennia, ever since palace elites set up the first state granaries in Sumer and Shang Dynasty China, we’ve been convincing ourselves that we are apart from nature, and this delusion has bled into almost all of our institutions (including in healthcare, where the Cartesian paradigm of mind's separation from matter still reigns supreme). We’re convinced that competition and scarcity are the default of existence on this planet, when really Gaia wants to bless us with her ever-renewing abundance. The people who seek me out will be returning home not just with vibrantly healthy bodies; but with a renewed understanding that their souls are radically linked to all living things. This biophilic sense of interconnection is the wellspring of enduring health, joy, and contentment.

I know all of these steps in my future journey can come to pass because of something else Joanna Macy writes about following our call to action: “When we share our cause with others, allies appear; synergy occurs. And when we act for causes larger than ourselves, the larger community for whom we do this will be acting through us.” I already see this synergy happening all the time in this forum. We’re all lightworkers, sharing our causes of living through this profoundly draining period of transition. And we’ve kept each other going. Remember how frightening and scary things were 3 years ago? But this community has only continued to reach new heights.  

You’ve all kept me going and helped me reach new heights. A lot had to happen just for me to end up in a new city at the precise date and time so that I was face-to-face with the 2 suffering strangers who unleashed my soul’s memory of why I came to this world, why I’ve kept trudging through so much sh*t. And I’m sure one of the active ingredients in that alchemy was the love and wisdom everyone on this site shares so freely. I’ve been deliriously happy all week, but last night, when the full realization of all of this mutual support hit home, my mood went to another level. I was laugh-crying, singing out loud, stomping my feet to the music coming from my speakers while I cooked dinner: Oh my God, I’ve made it, and so many people helped me. So THANK YOU, everyone: @jeanne-mayell, @vestralux, @lovendures, @cc21, @michele-b-here-in-the-forum, @unk-p., @laura-f., @lilinoe, @cindy, @deetoo, @triciact, @bright-opal, @baba, @codyroo, and so many, many more. I'll let Natalie Merchant express the rest of my gratitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR6PV-Irv7s

It's 6 am here in the Dawnland (New England) without a cloud in the sky. Which means that in about 70 minutes, I will walk outside and greet Father Sun as he blesses a new day. I will ask for healing for myself and for the collective. Then, as I further absorb the first light, I will ask for help to send special healing energy to two strangers I may never see again, but who changed my life nonetheless.