Invitations
When I really zoom out, I see that MS is/was my invitation - to pause, to reconnect with myself, to see my existence from a different perspective, to evaluate what was and wasn’t working, to be honest, to be authentic, to wake up to life happening now.
For someone else, that invitation might be a diagnosis as well. It might be a different kind of personal life event, like a loss, a lay off, an accident. It might be a global, communal event, like a wildfire, or a pandemic. I believe we get multiple invitations, and we’ll keep getting them as long as we continue to ignore the previous ones. I also believe that the invitations get louder and bigger as time goes on, as attempts to finally get through to us one more time.
When I really zoom out, I can recognize the multiple invitations I received in the past. Perpetual mind-body imbalance for two decades meant psychological and physiological pleas for my attention: anxiety, depression, amenorrhea, weight loss, headaches, chronic hives, hormone imbalance, stomach infections, gut inflammation, brain fog, anxiety again, depression again, foot drop, numbness, tingling… multiple sclerosis…
These were all invitations to pause and listen, to put the pieces together and realize that something wasn’t working, and I ignored many of them. They got louder over time until I was faced with something I couldn’t ignore any longer.
When I really zoom out, I can see the path I’ve walked - the life events, environmental exposures, mental habits, social pressures, adopted narratives, toxic patterns of thought, all trailing behind me with the many red flags, symptoms, invitations, trying to catch my attention as I moved forward. I can see how I pushed them all aside. I can see them incrementally getting bigger, louder, and scarier, the more I buried my head down in ignorance and pride.
I feel immense gratitude for these invitations, that they kept coming and kept trying. It makes me feel as if there was some force out there not wanting to give up on me. There was something I was meant to learn.
When I really zoom out, I feel immense gratitude to myself for finally recognizing the invitation, for waking up to a new perspective and finding new ways to answer those big questions - who am I and why am I here? It took time but it really is better late than never to learn that the answers don’t really matter that much. They feel moot in the grand scheme of it all.
Disconnecting from the narratives, pressures, and fears that plagued me for much of my life is an ongoing journey but, with each one that I disentangle from, I breathe a bit deeper, I think a bit wider, I move a bit freer. I’ve tuned in. I’m waking up.
When I really zoom out, it feels like this was the whole point. This is what I was invited to do.