Wednesday, December 21
Winter Solstice

After two weeks of solid migraines I finally got into the neurologist today. I’m down to three options. 1) Try a new med which will make me dizzy and sleepy and see if it works. (It’s just the luck of the draw whether it works for my body or not. )2) See a gynecologist who specializes in endocrinology and see if we can get my body chemistry (i.e. hormones) in better alignment. (This option is most hopeful.) or 3) Botox most of the muscles in my head every three months.

I don’t want to think about it.

My migraine was down to a 3 on the pain scale, so I managed to get to yoga today. As soon as MJ said “Happy Solstice everyone” I started to cry. I cried all through our opening breathing exercises. (Note to Self: It’s really hard to do ujjayi breath when you are crying.) It’s just that we aren’t going to the Feast of the Winter Solstice this year, and it’s because of my migraines. Realizing that broke my heart.

As much as I am a proponent of feeling your grief as it comes up, you can’t really cry when you have migraines. You know how when you have a really big cleansing sob fest, your head hurts? Well when you have a migraine, if you cry, it’s like someone is tightening a metal vice around your head. So when MJ makes space for me on a kiwi colored mat in the middle of a practice space, I cry.

I cry for my pain and for all the things it fucks up. I cry for the hours I don’t get with my girls and how having a mother with a chronic illness is shaping their childhood. I cry for the Christmas cookies we didn’t make for our neighbors, and for the meditation we had to forgo last week at Monkfish because I was sick and distracted. I cry for the lonely nights Paul spends watching movies while I sleep off the pain. I cry for the meals I miss with him and girls, and the extra dishes he takes on when I’m ill. I cry for the book that is not getting written and the books that aren’t getting read. I cry for the unwritten articles and the stalled website. I cry for the directees I know are out there who I haven’t been able to reach, and the plans that have to be set aside.

And once I start crying I want to cry about other more distant things too. For marriages that are ending, and for the long years lost staying in marriages that have lasted too long. For young men whose fathers have chosen their art over their children. For mothers who have raise children alone. For neighbors who live sad, lonely existences behind closed doors. For single friends with fulfilling lives who are always told they are missing out on something–who are never quite recognized for how amazing they are just as they are. ….Or I would cry for those things, if it didn’t hurt so damn much, if there was a less torturous route for those tears.

Tonight the amazing Jennifer B. is holding a Blue Christmas service for those with too many tears. I am proud of her, for venturing there, and inspired by her wisdom. I wish I could be there too. I have two wishing lives then — one for a bawdy pagan feast, the other for a melancholy subgroup seeking a place of understanding and possibly, hope. But instead, I am here in an overheated room, unable to cry.

The sky cracks and the drumming starts as the rain pours down. Perhaps there are tears here yet, falling on my skylight, running down my window.

Tonight the tides turn and the scales shift. Tonight, our dark days lighten.
The people who have dwelled in darkness have seen a great light.
Light has come into the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Amen.