The last ten months have been one long lesson. My malformed hip socket which was an inheritance gave me trouble at 46 when I had to cease taking jazz dance. My hip “tore” and I could not walk so I retreated to taking only necessary steps. After six weeks, I was no longer in pain. I returned to the dance studio and within the first 15 minutes, I once again felt the pop-rip of my right hip.
It was then I went to the doctor and received the news that the cup that was supposed to provide a nice swivel surface for movement on that side was not as it should be.

And so I gave up the dance lessons I had taken since I was four. But then, as I do so well, I adjusted by forgetting. I forgot the deformation, the freedom of dancing, the joy of moving in a studio with others. It was all dropped down into the deep well of the past.

Last year, I gave up walking up hills and continued monitoring and retreating from physical activities. I said to myself it was my knee because I had forgotten.

In October I got into the surgeon and was told I needed a new hip joint. By now, I was in constant pain stabbing at the top of my leg, in my knee cap and what felt like a shin splint on fire shot down the front of my leg. Sleep was hit or miss. Sitting became impossible for extended periods of time. At first, I monitored the situation and then I gave up.

My world retracted when I had to measure out movement and could only bend myself up to get in the car one day a week. There were times when only the thought of asking for help to get out of the car drove me on to push through and manually unfold my leg.

So then the real lesson began.

I watched my emotions which wanted to explode like a burst pipe and just spray all over the inside of my mind.

Over the years since 2010, I had been wading hip deep into the swamp of my childhood prison camp. I faced, again and again, the brutality my conscious mind decided to leave behind in the land of amnesia.

I went to sit ayahuasca ceremonies, sat in a circle with Gabor Mate, and learned. I listened to teachers on YouTube, and extended my eight years of seeking various counselors into the next six years. I learned to sleep peacefully, to not struggle in the present like a fly caught in a spider web. I got deeper into my body and learned to live without the jagged knifing of fear.

But now, now I was restricted, alone, challenged, and tempted repeatedly by self-pity and anger.

Why? Why? I asked myself. And then the image came to me of the booster shot. I had vaccinated myself against despair, hidden anger, and flaring grief. But the issue of living at peace with my body was still a struggle.

My body holds pain. It holds memories of violence and broken bones. I holds memories of being choked until I passed out. It is still hidden in there. 

When I began to step further back, I could see that this ten months of chronic grinding affliction asked me to surrender. There was only one way of dealing with the sense that living was just a torment and that was to submit to what is. My ego always wants to make plans, to take action, to get back into the game of proving to myself that I am worthy. But, now, that choice is impossible.

Who am I if I am not work? Who am I if I am not action? Who am I if I don’t throw the axe of desire into the bulls eye of achievement?

My booster shot is to make me stronger. Every day I ask, “Do you trust the universe?”
My answer is always,”Yes.”

And so I release the attachment to the future as a way of pulling me out of now. I am not pulling myself white-knuckled and anxious toward someday on the calender, some promise of tomorrow. When people ask when I will have the surgery I say, “I don’t know.”

The predictable world has collapsed. And so the last vestiges of my work addiction fall away. 

One cannot tidy up during an earthquake. One cannot focus on an unformed future during a period of chaotic destruction. I remind myself to come back to now.

I sit on the deck this morning knowing my hip will soon refuse to allow me to sit much longer. I hear the birds sing around me and am grateful for the cool wind before the blasting heat of a full-on day.

I am not assessing or monitoring how I am doing. It is the last stage of recovery from work addiction. It is the last stage of leaving behind patterns and habits that blocked me from being fully present.

I did not pay for this lesson or go to a retreat in the mountains for this shedding time. It came to me. I won’t get a certificate on glossy paper with a golden seal. I will simply develop into more of who I was meant to be. 

And I trust that I am somehow growing and becoming stronger and softer as I simply allow whatever is happening to me. One day, I will understand.