body grief
A week or so ago, I brought my friend Lidy some pumpkin soup I had made. Still recuperating from the flu myself, I wanted to just hand over the soup container and hurry back home. As we stood in the doorway, she mentioned that she had suffered a small stroke the day before. We went inside, where she told me what had happened whilst I was petting her dog.
Riding her bike home after a social event for the elderly, she was crossing a street and wanting to steer to the right when she became aware that she actually went in the opposite direction - toward oncoming traffic. As it turns out she had a TIA; a brief disruption of the blood flow to part of the brain. At the time she felt there was no need for a big fuss; even though bystanders had to support her in staying upright, as an acquaintance hurried to the scene by car to drive her to the doctor’s office. Once there, a quick check-up proved she needed to go to the hospital immediately for a more thorough examination. A stressful sequence of events for an ordinary Monday morning.
When I spoke to her, she was still processing this rather unexpected turn of events. Unable to see beyond the headache and fatigue, she shared with me that her strategy in the face of this physical malfunctioning was “to just keep her cool”. As we talked some more about the benefits of her down-to-earth coping mechanism, she shared how her dog Boef had been curling up to her in bed during the night and been keeping a very close eye on her. This piece of information is dog owner’s code for: if my pet acknowledges something is seriously wrong, there actually is. So much for her carefully selected strategy to regulate fear of uncertainty by keeping her cool. Our bodies are fragile. And most of the time their functioning or malfunctioning is out of our control.
Lidy’s rational attitude comes with a side of stubborn self-sufficiency. Having been diagnosed with chronic conditions before, such as fatigue, scoliosis and Crohn’s disease, she is familiar with health issues. Her modus operandi in dealing with them: keep it to yourself, adjust plans, avoid asking for help, stay upbeat, grit your teeth and push through. There is nothing wrong with being able ‘to do for yourself’, yet it can be a survival strategy that is problematic when it presents as a refusal to get help when you actually need it. After the brain bleed manifested itself, Lidy was presented with this process of accepting the changes in her body in a whole new way. It is as if she is starting over. Because she is. She says she does not recognize her body. Which must be daunting. A great loss.
The fact that able-bodiedness is in fact a temporary identity is something that most humans tend to forget. The body as a system can be remarkably regenerative, rather it is the long-held ideas about how our bodies are supposed to show up in the world that are actively interfering with Lidy’s ability to be (a) patient. It is the expectation that her body will always be able to function at the pace she is accustomed to, that is tripping her up. An upbringing that taught her not to be a burden and that difficult emotions are to be dealt with in private hardly allows space for self-compassion, now that the outcome of her recovery is still uncertain. Furthermore, the subconscious conviction that asking for help is burdensome, stagnates the flexibility necessary to embrace her bodies’ decline over time.
Lidy is experiencing body grief. She was expecting an autonomous body. She is not getting what she wants. Having a body that needs to radically slow down, avoid too many stimuli, incorporate lots of rest and enduring physical reprimands, such as dizzy spells and headaches when doing too much. It is the self-evidence that is lost, of doing and being what you want, when you want, in the way you want it with your body. This foundation ceasing to exist, brings up feelings of betrayal and distrust. Getting to know her embodiment anew in this moment requires a tenacious learning and unlearning. And implementing physical- and cognitive therapy in her daily routine is the easy part. Now that the plans she made for herself have fallen through, the task at hand is to rumble with her mortality. This requires the skill of actually staying with the emotions that accompany such a big adjustment; denial, resistance, resentment, impatience, frustration, anger, compliance and hopefully, ultimately, acceptance and trust. Acknowledgement of the fact that she as an individual is frail and finite, is quite the feat.