Day 35: Something you are passionate about.

I'm passionate about empowerment.

I recently was in a group playing this game where you talk about yourself (or something that happened to you) for 3 minutes and then someone asks you 2 questions. A girl spoke, and while it was pleasant and kind, there was no thought behind it. So I asked her, "Why are you here?", which was misinterpretted. Then I asked, "Why do you want to be a chiropractor?" to which she said what she'd already said. I asked her WHY her, and why chiropractic, and she started to cry. 

At the end she asked what my why was, and I said that I'd known many people who had been told they were broken, and that "x" woud NEEEVVVERRR happen. And of course, like most things in life, when the option of whatever they wanted was "taken" from them.... their purpose floundered. My goal is to let people know that their bodies can do all sorts of things. While it's unlikely that a person would ever take flight without mechanical or technological assistance, who is a doctor to tell you how long you have to live? Or that you can't have children?  

People receive news that they will live 6 weeks and live 6 years (I've seen this one directly). People get pregnant all the time when they were told it was impossible. The most beautiful thing that I saw working for my previous employer was when many doctors told my fiance there was no hope, and that surgery was his only option, she said to him, "Let's just try this first and see how it goes." 2 years later he tore his ACL, and in review of the MRI, the doctor told him there was NO evidence of a previous tear to the LCL... which means either the doctor misdiagnosed the LCL tear, or it healed so well that it wasn't evident on the new MRI. 

It's no longer appropriate for a doctor to be the primary decision maker for your health. Doctor means teacher. Teachers inform, or at least they should. I would never advise a patient against taking a drug or having a surgery, I simply insist in this age of information, that they consider the consequences are advantages of all things; including chiropractic. 

Chiropractors are doctors of the nervous system. To say that Chiropractors are doctors of the musculoskeletal system is to deny the fact that our soft organs are innervated and influenced by the components of electricity and hormones from the brain. If your GI tract isn't receving sympathetic and parasympathetic influence, you are dead. If your ovaries aren't receiving FSH, then you aren't ovulating. If your kidneys and adrenals are in sympathetic mode, your blood sugar will be high, your kidneys are working way harder than necessary, and you're taxing a fairly delicate system. You do not "Fix" blood pressure by taking a pill. You're just bunching up the kidneys and making them work harder. All actions have consequences. 

I believe in trying noninvasive methods of managing health issues first. I am passionate about letting people know that SO many things start and heal in the limbic system. I am passionate about people taking an active role in their health; and it starts with being informed about the body in which they dwell.

Day...s past. What mourning looks like.

Today I was driving in the car, listening to music that bordered damaging for the ears. I was reflecting on my life in the past year. This time a year ago I randomly developed nutritional deficient stretch marks. (Because I know wandering minds, I've supplemented and they've started to go away at the top and in the middle). I remembered the chaos of winter break last year. It is easy for me to blame much of that conflict and poison on my lovely betrothed. My body... went through a trauma. You see, God taught me 3 lessons in 2013. 

1. Steve died. Yes, yes, I've talked about it a few times. And sadly I'll never be able to put in words the things I felt for that man. He was like a mentor, a friend, and a parent wrapped up into one legend of a human being. He was all things rational, beautiful, and disfuctional. My relationship with him showed me so many things without ever being spoken. Through him, I learned what a good wife is. I also learned how to formulate a proper rebellion. Through him I learned love and hate and pain and apathy and most vital and gentle of all, I learned how one hides all those things. The thing that always, and will always bruise and scar me over Steve's death is that I was TOLD he was dying, and yet I foolishly thought that if I didn't reach out, he couldn't die. That is how I thought we were linked. He was my Dumbledore; I didn't go into a world of wizardry, I went into a world where I wasn't defined by things my parents did... which for me, was just as magical. I hope that if his children are reading this that they don't judge me too harshly. I know he failed in ways. I realize his imperfections.... that's a lie. I know some facts, but they don't sway me from truly believing that if it wasn't for him... My God... I can't fathom it. All I can see is work and pain and responsibility. He told me I didn't have to conform. He didn't know what I'd do with it.... but he was the first one to say I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to.  So, I feel guilt about not calling him when I was instructed to do so. I found out he died standing on a rock; the sun blinding me as I cried. 

2. Dawn died. She wasn't my closest friend. I sometimes she was full of shit. But she loved her children and absolute chance took her from them. Steve's death was beautifully orchestrated. Maybe it wasn't, but he's my big fish. Dawn is the anomally. Her death made me want to get married. Which, maybe is irrational, but my thoughts were: Why wait for anything? Why pause? Money doesn't matter, Time doesn't really matter, and details don't really matter. I knew that I wanted to marry Brian. I knew that I wanted children. And so I began to fight hard for what I wanted. Her death gave me an urgency in life. 

3. Nana. For those who know me... for those who have known me, this will be the most mundane thing I ever write, but her death has ruined me. I hate how people asked me why I didn't cry at her funeral. I hate that some of my family members are angry with me over how I handled her death. Now that the immature feelings have been shared.. I'll try to be a little more descriptive. There were times in my life that I felt only loved by my grandmother. There were times that I felt like she was the only one ony my team. I didn't realize it until today, but her death was like death, the being, gripped my gooey, thumping heart and stopped its beating in a closed fist... and all this time I've been walking around without a thud. And it's been this way since the day she died. It feels like my squishy, slippery little heart was transformed into a mechanical little thing that is only concerned with in, and out. My little metal heart is only doing half of it's job. A heart feels and breaks and swells and thuds and pounds and flitters and dances and explodes. But my heart, like hers once did, just ticks like clockwork. Of course I want to call her and tell her my news or my upsets.... but its only now I see how much work it is listening to someone else's life. I miss her opinions; I miss vehemently disagreeing with them. I look back at when I started Chiropractic school and I wonder just how insane I was. In retrospect I feel down right maniacal. I wonder if this is the new me, or if I'll heal over one day and my heart will catch up to its soft and light behavior. What has been done can't be undone. I miss them so much. Just knowing they were on the same planet as me made the world a safer place. I feel like the Circus ring master and the entertainment schedule is starting to run together. It's that awful moment in a live performance when the audience starts to wonder if the scene is intentionally frantic. Things are out of order and performances are bleeding together.

So mourning is a messy business. My brain and mechanical heart are making what sense of it they can. I fear for the damage I've done to my current friendships. I feel like the people who know me best are the ones I've been avoiding... but they too have had their own sort of... lapse in universal organization. I think Nana would be proud in my ability to 'keep on keepin' on'... but at a certain point I do hope my love heart returns... so I can live a bit more than tick...tick...tick...tick....