Weathering a "Shit Storm" (Part 1)
Where do you go for safety?
At the age of 21 years old I navigated a “shit storm” I didn’t know I had the strength to weather. I was studying abroad in Buenos Aires Argentina, living life to the fullest—enjoying the meat, the men, the cafe culture. I felt alive.
I was in the best shape of my life, internally and externally. I felt physically strong from going to reformer pilates classes three times a week. My arms and shoulders were beautifully sculpted—balancing strength and grace. I felt confident and proud of the life I was creating—flexing my Spanish skills and slowly watching my community develop.
Until one day, I left the gym with a weird sensation on the right side of my neck. It felt like I strained a muscle. Yet, weeks went by and the pain got more intense. It soon developed into a tender 3D swollen lymph node. After various doctors appointments in Spanglish, I was stopped dead in my tracks with the words, “You have cancer.” Just like that, life turns the switch. My bags were packed and I was flying back home to New York City to begin six months of chemotherapy.
My whole world crumbled. I was stuck in a victim mindset. Why me? Why now? What did I do wrong? I was loving life and enjoying an adventure of spreading my wings. I now felt imprisoned. Imprisoned in a body that just turned on me. Trapped at home, now living with my mother and sister who both happened to be cancer survivors, facing their own PTSD as they watched my journey unfold. I was emotionally eating my feelings with endless Levain cookies—destroying the sculpted long leans lines I worked hard to maintain. My mind and heart were in Buenos Aires, but my body needed to be on the island of Manhattan to heal. I put school on pause as my sole focus was to get healthy again.
On a hot spring day on the Upper East Side, I waited in the doctor’s office to get a bone marrow test to determine what stage of Hodgkins Lymphoma I had. I could feel my world slowly crumbling beneath me. I sat on the examination table in a green sun dress. My hands gripped the corners of the table as I swung my legs back and forth, trying to distract my mind. I looked over at my mother who was sitting next to me in a chair.
“I want to start meditating again,” I declared. It was in that moment I felt I needed something to grab hold of my monkey mind (aka the anxious loud thoughts). I needed something that was going to keep the catastrophic thoughts at bay. Something that would create solid ground beneath me. My legs felt wobbly. I imagined if I tried to stand up in that moment, my knees would buckle.
The next morning, after brushing my teeth, I grabbed a pillow off of the couch in the living room and popped a squat on the ground looking out the window over Central Park North. I sat. It felt so uncomfortable to feel stillness. Impulses to scratch my nose, adjust my posture, open my eyes and hold my breath, shuttered through my body. My thoughts bing-ponged through the cage of my mind. Tension brewed in the lateral muscles in my neck and shoulders. I tried to settle into the moment and feel what being present truly meant, but it was uncomfortable. I wanted to jump out of my own skin.
My eyes shot open as if I was under water and swimming feverishly to the top, gasping for air. “What! It has only been a minute,” I thought to myself as I looked at the clock on the DVD player. The cocktail of the City’s pulsating energy mixed with my own internal buzzing pushed me off of my pillow and into the flow of the day. The pull to join the rat race was strong. I didn’t have anything inside of me to anchor into for resistance and counter act the momentum. I didn’t have space or capacity to be with the uncomfortable tension of my own present moment experience. I didn’t want to feel the overwhelming grief of my innocent college years slip through my fingers. Anger was hot to touch inside my heart. How could my body mutate on me?
I laughed at myself for how intolerable it felt to settle my attention. The buzzing anxiety of stepping into the unknowns of my cancer journey as well as the pulsating energy of New York City felt too much to hold. It was in that moment, I realized how reactive I was. I fell victim to my anxiety. I fell victim to the pings that swirled inside and around me. I was motivated to sooth what I could control. I couldn’t stop the intensity of New York City, but I could work on growing my own capacity to be with the potency of energy. I knew how toxic anxiety and stress were for my health. I wanted to do whatever I could to manage the inflammation in my system.
Every morning for the next few months, I stayed with this practice. I had Jon Kabat-Zinn’s voice in my mind reminding me I was beginning something new. Part of this practice is building a muscle to get to my pillow and just sit. I needed strength to counter act the strong inertia to jump right into the to-do list. Slowly over weeks and months, I witnessed my 1 minute of sitting turn into three, which turned into five and eventually into fifteen minutes and beyond.
I felt my internal mindfulness muscles get stronger. I was able to “surf the waves” of thoughts, urges and emotions. Construction noise rumbled outside my window. Taxis honked. Family members clamored around, making noise in the kitchen. Loud thoughts of planning my day or ruminating on a conversation I had with my mom stewed in the surface of my mind. The impulse to scream “shut up” to all the noise, internally and externally lingered.
Instead of getting hooked by the irritation, I watch my body tense for a millisecond and then soften as I’d label the experience as “noise” or “thinking.” I didn’t need to take the noise personally or feel upset that the noise was disturbing my “peace.” Instead, I embraced the noise. I welcomed it into my present moment experience as if I was welcoming a friend into my home. As the noise entered, it drifted into the background of my attention just as if I was listening to the sound of music rise and fall with every note. I felt the buzzing energy inside of me ground like a lighten rod dispels electricity from a stormy sky. I’d feel the rise of the tension build in my jaw and shoulders. I watched the tension soften, sometimes just 5%. I felt the fluidity and temporariness of my thoughts and emotions flow in and flow out with the steady rhyme of my breath. Like the ocean tide—everything rises and everything fades away.
Thank goodness I began to strengthen my “mindfulness muscles” because another storm was brewing a hundred miles away. I needed to be prepared. The foundation I created to go inwards offered me a surf board to ride the tsunami wave that was heading right to me.
