Trusting love
This week was supposed to be about family.
And it is.
On Saturday, I traveled to the Pacific Northwest, where my bonus parents live: a couple who took me in when they hadn’t even been married for a year, and I was a teenager with a complicated case of anorexia. We rallied together. They got me into therapy. I became part of their family in a way that I am pretty sure none of us thought possible at the time. They sometimes credit me with them staying together. I always credit them with me coming through puberty, healthy and sane.
For many years, their relationship was the only model I really had of a solid relationship. Maybe not the exact relationship I aspired to, but a proof that right relationships exist. Relationships where folks make space for each other and themselves. Where boundaries are set and held lovingly. Where “always having your back” means fiercely standing with and for the person you say you love, without losing sight of your own values and goals. I cannot overstate the importance of witnessing such love as a young person. It gave me hope and kind of a North Star. It allowed me to always come back to the knowledge that true love is possible and concrete.
Pretty much as soon as I got here this weekend, we realized that several of us were either already sick or coming down with whatever nasty cold is going around. I managed to see my parents and do a little hiking and see bald eagles and drink local cider. We managed to connect. But now, Wednesday afternoon, I am in bed in my rental apartment, fighting the urge to just sink into the fever I clearly have.
Why, I ask myself for the umpteenth time, is accepting the need to rest and heal so hard to do? I make deals with my body: if I let you rest today, will you let me be back to normal tomorrow? If I hold space for your healing now, can you speed that process up? Paradoxically, if you let me do yoga, I will let you heal. (Yes, I know),
But of course, I am my body. I am going to heal in whichever time that takes. If I don’t make space for that, no one else can. Me and my body, we are in this together: in sickness and in health. Ignoring that truth is what prevents me from sinking into healing. It is what makes me focus on disappointment rather than love.
My rental apartment overlooks Bellingham Bay and it is breathtakingly beautiful when the sun rises and sets. I am here with a friend who takes care of me. Over my lifetime, I have had a plethora of parents and friends who have showed me how to love. Sinking into that abundance feels a bit like sinking into a fever, but better, more healing, more real.
Tomorrow is another day, for healing or for staying sick, but always (always) for love.
