Living Spinefully

Hello friends,

This past week, I have tried to be more intentional about doing things just to do them, without any expectation of the outcome. I have gone on walks around the neighborhood, done body weight exercises, and played on my keyboard while singing along, just for the joy that these activities bring me. Of course, I still have pain flare ups and still get anxious about what will make it go away, but mindfully engaging in the things I love leaves me with a feeling of peace.

This week’s mindfulness attitude is acceptance. From my training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, radical acceptance is a skill that focuses on turning the mind from a state of willfulness, denial, anger, and frustration to a state of total willingness – acceptance of a situation, just as it is. I call the opposite of acceptance the “I don’t wanna” mindset. I think of a toddler throwing a temper tantrum, screaming “it’s not fair, I don’t want to, I wish it wasn’t this way.” We all have moments in our lives that we are that toddler, but we cannot change reality until we have first accepted it as it is.

In making sense of my scoliosis journey, I have begun to conceptualize it in terms of loss and grief. Anyone who has a chronic illness or chronic pain is familiar with the many losses that come with these diagnoses. For me, some of those losses have included not being able to sleep through the night because of pain, not being able to run as a hobby/sport, not being able to play volleyball with my friends, and overall, losing the image of my body as being pain-free and strong. The majority of the time, I am somewhere on the continuum of acceptance with these losses. At times, I embrace that inner toddler, screaming “it’s not fair! I don’t want it to be this way! Why did this happen to me? Why am I so broken!?” By refusing to accept my current reality, I am totally frozen. I cannot invest in my future and I cannot make meaning of my experience.

Most frequently, I experience this battle with acceptance in moments of comparison – either to other people doing things I cannot do or to my prior self, and the things I used to be able to. In these moments, my mind begins to think in hypotheticals, wondering “how fast could I run now if I hadn’t gotten hurt?” or “I wish I got to play volleyball with my friends,” or even “what would it be like to be able to have kids naturally?” In her memoir about the year after she lost her husband, Joan Didion coined this thought process as “magical thinking” – wondering about hypothetical situations and how life would be different if the loss hadn’t happened. And although normal and natural, magical thinking gets in the way of accepting the reality of the loss. Because every time I think “What if things were different?” I eventually have to again face the facts that things are the way they are, which requires re-experiencing the pain of the loss.

So, what would it look like if I really accepted the reality of my scoliosis journey? Maybe instead of comparing and coming up with hypothetical situations, I would sit with the emotions themselves. Maybe I’d say, “ouch, this hurts.” Maybe I’d label the emotions, thinking, “I’m disappointed that I can’t do this. It makes me sad. I’m really frustrated.” And then maybe I’d recognize the ways that I can still have a meaningful life, even with limitations. Perhaps I’d say, “Yes, my life has been forever changed and shaped by scoliosis. But I am bent, not broken. I can still invest in a life worth living. This does not define me.” This thought process moves through the tasks of grief and allows me to envision a life around my scoliosis, instead of being blocked by it.

Bent not broken. I’ve had to repeat this mantra a lot lately, as pain and medical uncertainties have made me feel so broken. But just as sunflowers turn towards the sun, I can also turn towards meaning and growth in the life that I have. And that starts with acceptance.

As always, thank you so much for reading. Please send me an email (lauramchase20@gmail.com) or a DM on instagram (@livingspinefully) if any of this resonated with you. I’d love to talk to you about your experience with mindfulness, chronic pain, scoliosis, or just life in general. The support and connection mean so much to me, and I truly appreciate you all.

Laura

References: Joan Didion, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” 2007.