I recently discovered that my normal way of talking about my abnormal health conditions has always been self-deceiving! I always “talk myself up” with family and friends. I say I am getting better, when the truth is I am getting better but so incredibly slowly, that it’s almost invisible to me.

I want people to think of me as on the “up and up”. But the way bodies repair themselves is massively slow and very different to how we all talk about our bodies. The lightning fast way our mind thinks and talks has nothing in common with the speed at which our bodies operate.

I have watched on during eight years and counting, as my body actively returns its systems to normal balance after a sudden onset of arthritis, five heart and one prostate operation and one month of intensive, damaging but successful X-ray therapy. I have managed my Sleep Apnoea well since Autumn last year. At the end of last year, I had to recover from a broken wrist after a trip-fall in the street.

What have I learned? I now understand my body has its own timescales when it gets going to repair and regenerate.

I directly compare the timescales my body follows to what I see in the natural world. A seed lies dormant in the dark. It slowly sprouts. The new sprout grows a little day by day. It will become a flower or a shrub or a tree over time. The time this regeneration takes is so many days and weeks and months of gradual return to normal that I need hindsight to detect and comprehend the growth.

I have discovered what joys await me when I can slow my expectations to be in balance with the processes my own body uses.

I used to reassure my friends and family how well I am doing every day. What I mean to say is how impatient, and even at times desperate my mind is with my inability to do the things I used to do at the speed I had been accustomed to do them. More difficult still is the way my mind lies to me and tells me I never ever will get better!

My mentor, Biodanza teacher and true soulfriend, Milarepa Malc Burgin used to say, “Be well. Go well”. This simple wish has become one of my guiding lights on this fantastic journey of re-Creation

As long as I take good care of myself, and I comply with my body’s demands in the way my family and friends wish me to when they say, “Take Care”, I can say with honesty, “I’m well and improving.”

~ Love is present EveryNow