The Issues In Our Tissues
* Disclaimer-this post is my recollection of what happened in 1986
As I draft this post, I am listening to one of my favorite songs, Free by Florence + the Machine. The singer/songwriter describes this song as her relationship with anxiety. We all hold onto and process anxiety, trauma, and other aspects of mental health in variety of ways.
Earlier this evening I had a tele-health session with my therapist and much of our discussion was centered around my own experience of holding onto trauma; more specifically, medical trauma I experienced as a kid. Between the ages of 3-8 years old, I had four major ear surgeries. While these were life altering experiences in many ways, I believe I hold onto other medical trauma more so.
In July of 1986, my family had been in Minneapolis for a wedding and then we traveled to southwest Iowa to visit other relatives. While mom and dad were visiting friends, I was at one of the family farms spending time with cousins and grandparents. I remember feeling sleepy and went to lay down on the couch. Grandma came to ask if I wanted a hotdog for lunch. The first sign that something was wrong should have been when I turned down that hotdog.
“Annie, Annie-WAKE UP”
I heard these words from my grandfather before falling into a coma as we were in an ambulance headed to a hospital that was nearly 35 miles away. Apparently, shortly after turning down the hotdog, I began having a seizure. I was put into the farm truck and driven to town where an ambulance was waiting for me and my grandfather. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed with a doctor coming toward me, about to insert a long needle to into my spine. The spinal tap confirmed I had bacterial spinal meningitis. For the first seven days of hospitalization, I was semi-comatose. It took another eight days before I would be released. During most of those fifteen days at the hospital, I was in isolation with a plastic bubble around my bed. This would allow medical staff and family to safely come into my room. I was poked with IVs, alternating between the arms every other day. After mega doses of antibiotics for over two weeks, and needing to correctly answer a series of memory tests, it was a tremendous relief for all of us the day I was discharged from the hospital.
Nikki and I reuniting in 2022 at the Omega Institute.
Fast-forward to 2009 and I was in a three day workshop with Nikki Myers, founder of Yoga of 12 Step Recovery (Y12SR). This was a leadership training to facilitate Y12SR meetings. I was wearing a few hats that weekend, a) as a co-host for the training b) as a participant. This was the third time I had heard the presentation. With each training, something new was learned. What struck me most in this particular weekend was the topic of childhood trauma. There was deep, thoughtful conversation around this topic.
Folks started to share their examples of childhood trauma: various forms of abuse, the death of a parent or sibling, a fire to the home, bullying, food insecurity. And even hospitalizations. This is what caught my ear. With surgeries and hospitalizations, my body endured multiple punctures for blood draws and IVs, along with incisions, and isolation, that too, is considered trauma; not to mention what my developing brain was trying to comprehend psychologically or emotionally. Until this point, I had never considered the extent of what I had gone through.
“Our Issues Live In Our Tissues.”
Every cell of our body holds onto every experience we have. This includes but not limited to breath, digestion, thoughts, conversations and trauma. Nikki’s famous line is “Our issues live in our tissues.” Shortly after this discussion at the workshop, as a group we went from lecture to asana (physical) yoga practice. The first time we came into a high plank position, that’s when it hit me- HARD. My body started to shake uncontrollably. It felt like an earthquake was happening but as I looked around, nobody else seemed to be shaking. At the end of the practice while in savasana, the flood gates opened. Tears were streaming down my face; I just let it happen. When it came time to stand up, I felt about twenty pounds lighter. It was as if this heavy weight of unknown was lifted. No doubt in my mind, there was a correlation between the childhood trauma experience we had been discussing had been weighing me down. It made me a believer in Nikki’s token saying.
When I am able to address life experiences such as trauma in safe and healthy ways such as talk-therapy, yoga, exercise, breath-work, conversation, those issues of dis-ease seem to soften over time. Over the last several years I have worked very hard through many of these modalities to better understand what I am experiencing, where it comes from and how to manage all of stuff that gets stirred up. It is amazing what our body can and will hold onto. For me, finding avenues to help navigate some of the challenging moments offers an opportunity to make it feel a bit more manageable.
