Me and My Hip Pain

As I’ve begun this series on death denial, or, what is its opposite, I’ve been taking an inventory. Where does death denial live in myself? What does it feel like? What does it look like?

These writing prompts “I” make up for myself have a way of offering me exactly what I need hahahahaha. I put “I” in quotes because honestly it doesn’t quite feel like me. Someone told me recently how my writing was useful to a friend of a friend and I felt such a sense of joy! Ultimate life success for me is when it is useful in any way! But the interesting thing about it is I didn’t even remember this thing I wrote, and it was about relationships. I feel whatever I write that contains wisdom is something I’m borrowing momentarily for the writing and usually I’m borrowing it from mystery because I need it the most. Just so we’re clear. I write it cause I need it, and the bonus is if you need it too!

Anyway, about my death denial. Right now I am being offered a way to confront this with my hip pain. I’ve had hip pain on and off for probably 15 years, and in recent years it’s become more insistent. There’s this fascinating pattern with it where it goes away for a while, and then appears again, and it gets bad enough that I pursue some healing around it, and it goes away! It’s as if what it’s asking from me is for my loving attention hahahhaha.

I realized I’ve had this large thought bubble around it for years. The thought bubble is a resignation and defeat kind of vibe. It is death denial masquerading as non-death denial. Because I am resistant to the obsession in our culture with being able to will and bio-hack our way out of our bodies aging and dying, and I don’t want to do that because I don’t think it’s even possible but more importantly I wouldn’t want to miss out on all the riches of what we might find inconvenient or troubling or devastating in the realm of death and dying. I don’t wish these kinds of pain on anyone, and yet everyone I have known intimately who has been in these realms beams a kind of life the rest of us don’t regularly access. The life that is brimming with death. The life that is so very close to death that the light from death shines on everything that needs to be seen, and it changes how everything looks. This is what I am talking about as the opposite of death denial.

But what I have been doing with my hips is pretending that I am facing death and or my fear! Instead I have been rushing toward giving up on my hips, “accepting” that they will just be this way, as a way of guarding myself against the vulnerability of trying to heal them.

Yes I want to accept aging. Yes I want to embrace death as the loving light that shines clear prioritization onto my life in this moment. Another part of the opposite of death denial for me right now is embracing the agency I have to heal myself, to receive healing from others, to stay open to the possibility I could heal.

And to trust that healing could look so many ways, on different days, in different hours.

So perhaps I am realizing that the opposite of death denial is staying open to and facing fully exactly where I am at any given moment on the spectrum of acceptance and denial. Because sometimes the medicine my hips are needing is acceptance that I am in pain and it is fucking difficult. And sometimes the medicine my hips are needing is whole-hearted seeking healing and healers with faith that they can feel different, and putting time and investment toward that possibility.

Perhaps death denial is a kind of rigidity of thinking. Longing for and then stagnating in the surface-level comfort of only seeing it one way. Death denial might be a kind of craving for being told what to do, that there is one answer for the rest of my life.

There’s this obsession with micro-managing every aspect of the inputs and outputs of our bodies that has become how we think about health in modern US culture. And on the other end there’s a neglect of the individual responsibility to tend to this body, that I learned from being a part of activist communities earlier in my life. Neglect as in, there are so many other more important things to do than to care for this body. Or I should say, the story that self-neglect is the only way to adequately care for others, or that it’s a zero sum game, was already in my system, and I was drawn to reinforcing that within the activist community I was immersed in at the time.

I want to keep re-finding that knowing place where I tend my body because it is a part of sacred earth, and also because I learn how to tend so much more than my body, or I become available to tend so much more than my own body as I learn the principles of how to tend to this one individual body. I’m discovering how to live here / there.

—

Okay so I wrote that part earlier this week and then yesterday I went to the doctor and I want to tell you about that real quick!

Before I went to the doctor I was reading about Ramana Maharshi again. I found his teachings thirty years ago and haven’t looked at them in a long time, but re-found them. And I feel really inspired by his presence and teachings. But I have this thing where my middle age white mom lady life feels so different from a man mystic in India born 150 years ago, somehow it can feel like that kind of awakening is not available to me. It’s kind of subtle. Like this underlying idea that my life aesthetic isn’t conducive to awakening. Something like that.

In contemplating that, while sitting in my car between doctor appointments, a couple of lines came to me. I never have to transcend anything again. Not sure what that will mean or do for you but for me it frees me from needing to act “spiritual” or act any way other than as honest about reality as I possibly can. I never have to pretend my way into a more evolved perspective than I have, because it wouldn’t work anyway hahahahaha. Big relief. Honesty about reality is as evolved as I ever want to be or need to be. Remind me of this when I forget, will you?

The other line that occurred is: this doctor’s office with the mounted boxes of Fitguard ES Select blue glove boxes is my ashram. This plastic and metal zooming protection box called my car is my ashram. Online shopping for my kid’s shoes is my ashram. Standing on the yard taking photos of my kid holding his student of the month certificate is my ashram. Lying awake in my bed stressing about my children’s futures and making big decisions is my ashram. Eating ice cream with my bub while watching tv is my ashram. Praying in the form of writing to you is my ashram.

No part of my life is outside of my ashram. Every single part, most especially the parts that feel outside of my ashram, are part of my ashram. This doctor’s office, this xray machine room, these locations are as sacred the side canyon of the grand canyon where I slept alone twenty years ago, and the absolute perfect ones for me to awaken within. Awakening doesn’t care about the aesthetics or the language or location!

My hip pain offers me plenty of opportunities to awaken to love, which is the only kind of awakening I am interested in.

May this wild solstice energy fortify your remembering of your own ashram, wherever and whatever it is.