Bent over a journal, sobbing as I wrote, broken-hearted from a divorce, beaten by a back injury’s unrelenting pain, exhausted without reprieve from a sleep disorder, I pictured myself in a hospital bed, lights dimmed, encircled three-deep by caregivers. In the warm, imaginary room full of people, present for me twenty-four hours a day, I felt my anguish ease.

As I envisioned myself lying in the bed, every need filled, every heartache and backache tended, I began to sense an uneasy presence in my chest. It felt hard, jagged, plastic and hollow, like a twisted yellow Christmas tree star. No matter what words of comfort those gentle, well-intentioned caregivers spoke to me, no matter what ministrations they offered my body, sharp, angular pain within me persisted, untouched.

Tracing origins of insights is difficult, but I think that experience writing in my journal and realizing that people could help, but that they were not enough, contributed to my beginning a quest to find not just what would ease my suffering from without, but what would ease it from within. [Read more…]