Well, I’ve been nearly pain-free (with a few twinges here and there) for about 10 days now…and once again, I am humbled and awed by the results of that experience. I am so grateful to my body. Pain is my greatest teacher. I have been strongly reminded that self-neglect just doesn’t work for me. My body can’t take it. I literally have the kind of body that cannot bear the excess weight. I can’t carry the baggage.

But it’s not just about the weight. These physical pains have emotional and spiritual counterparts. I store rage in my back - anger bulges from my discs, resentment inflames my sacroiliac joint. When a healer friend was doing Reiki on me recently and dared to suggest this, at first I was just plain annoyed. I don’t want to be doing more Inner Work. Can’t I just be done with that shit? But of course, I am never done. I have so many more lessons to learn.

So I am working on taking time for my physical and mental/emotional/spiritual health. I am waking up at the ass-crack of dawn and going to the gym. It feels so great to rise early, to head out into the cool spring morning, to move my body, to sweat, to inhabit myself.

And on the creative front - recently I hired a creativity coach to help me get myself back on track creatively. We had our first session this morning and it was amazing. I realized that I have been largely in a state of creative anorexia since Sami was born…and even before if I want to be honest with myself.

We talked about time and how to make it into a game: How much time can I carve out - 10, 15, 20 minutes at a time - to preserve my creative dreams? I’m on a mission: Time-Snatcher!

I want to state for the record: I love being a mom. Caring for Sami has been magical. I love him more fiercely than anyone or anything I have known. But lately I have been feeling twinges of something like PPD (I hate labels though) - just a feeling of persistent sadness, overwhelm, emptiness, a feeling of “Is this all there is?” - and now I realize it is because I have been starving myself creatively. It’s like awakening from a trance or a dream and realizing how sick I’ve been to deny the writer in me. I miss that part of myself and really want to reclaim it. I have been writing about this for a while, but I finally feel ready to take action to change things.

So today I feel hopeful. I feel less PPD-ish and more like myself. This is what happens when I take the time to nurture the places within me that starve.