EARTH DOG

Image by Mystic Mamma

The turning point is now.
Welcome to the Year of the Earth Dog. 

"Let me begin with the element (Earth) that rules this year. Earth has the qualities of stability, nourishment, consistency, balance, and harmony." 
Narrye Caldwell from Mystic Mamma

Today I spent hours at the doctor and the ER, terrified my son had spinal meningitis. The icing on the cake is that he's so terrified of shots and blood draws that we're actually in therapy for it. Terrified isn't a strong enough word- terrorized, panicked, loses all sense of being a human is more like it. So not only were we facing dire consequences if we didn't figure out what was going on immediately, but we were dealing with a shrieking, kicking, banshee of a boy. For over an hour of  insane trauma, we worked out way up to a 2 min. blood draw. Nightmare.

I did not feel stable, nourished, balanced or harmonious, despite this being the year of the Earth Dog.
I felt stressed beyond belief, anxious, and afraid.
I tried not to let my mind wander to what could lay ahead, I tried not to imagine the worst. I tried to breathe, and keep my feet on the ground, and take it one moment at a time.
And you know what?
It worked. 
I did not lose my shit. I felt my belly rise and fall, I felt the ways my legs supported me. I felt my spine against the many uncomfortable hospital chairs, I felt myself. And I felt the support of the earth, of gravity, of furniture. 

Now when we got home and the dr. told us to get our butts to Children's Hospital in Denver, I cried. I shook. I jumped up and down to move the anxious energy pouring through me. I felt terror well up in my throat like a grenade about to unleash but I kept my body moving. I paced, I flexed, I breathed. And I stayed calm. Ish. 

Fortunately, my dad is a kick-ass doc and went over the test results, consulted with the pediatrician and we decided to stay home and let him rest. And he's sleeping peacefully now, snoring away, burning up with fever but no other worrisome symptoms. It was just a weird perfect storm of complaints today that could've been serious but turns out to be just a bad cold. 

So I'm not saying I wouldn't have moments of complete and utter freak out if the diagnosis had gone another way. I'm not saying I wouldn't be writing a very different blog right now if things had gone South. But today I was still very activated, very worried- and my body had my back. The ground had me. My breath soothed me. I was able to come back to the resource of being alive in the present moment and be ok. And that's something. 

So on this cold winter night, as I write to the sound of a sweet sick boy snoring away, my heart bleeds for all the mothers with sick kiddos. All the parents who've lost their babes to the insanity of mental illness and weapons in our country or another, or to hunger and hardship.  My heart is beating with my fierce prayers for all the parents who will never be comforted by the diagnosis of a cold, as I was tonight- and may we all go to sleep feeling so damn freaking grateful for what we have- and so freaking outrageously compassionate for those who hurt.
May this year of the earth dog benefit us all and bring us stability, nourishment, balance, and harmony too all beings everywhere. May we all have ourselves as resources through it all.