My Healing Weekend

Fanny laid in the circle of cold ash from the fire we had over the weekend.  Yesterday I watched Lulu roll in it.

I sat next to Fanny and scraped the mud and pebbles that had gathered in her hoof.  This morning when I tried to clean her hooves she wouldn’t let me near them.  Now I used my fingers and a small soft piece of wood from the fire to gently rub away the hard packed dirt.

This weekend I took time to do some healing.  Time to begin to process some painful realities of my past that have eluded me until now.

It’s like putting together a puzzle with missing pieces.  But just as I know how to make a quilt or potholder from all those stray bits of fabric, my therapist knows the signs of trauma, even if I don’t have all the memories.

Since an incident at a doctors appointment that triggered me two weeks ago, I’ve been swinging in and out of anxiety and panic that I don’t remember experiencing before.  I’ve been opened up.  What I pushed deep inside of me years ago is surfacing.  And as much as I hate feeling this way, it’s also a relief.   Even at this early stage, the bit of truth that I know is helping me make sense of some things in my life that have  kept me confused and questioning.

I’m fortunate to have a husband who understands and is willing to help, good friends I can comfortably talk to and a therapist who I trust.

So no more hiding.  I’m letting my feeling flow and storm through me.  Instead of pushing them away, I allow myself to feel them to the fullest.

That’s what I was doing this weekend.  Starting the process of healing.

I did a lot of resting and reading.  But I also found it cathartic to pull the weeds from between the stones in the walkway.

The grass had all but covered the stones in places.  It lay thick, a mat of tangled roots often the home to tiny ants and their eggs.  But as I pulled it up and tore it away the stone buried beneath was instantly exposed.

I kept thinking of the months I spent in the deserts of New Mexico, how the earth was so bare there, compared to the north east.  I felt as if I were looking at and walking on the bones of the earth.

That kind of laying bare is what I want for myself.

The fire came next.  Some pallets and rotting parts from the house that we’re been replacing.  They were piled up in the barnyard, long enough to become one of Zips hide outs.

Early in the evening, I brought two chairs into the barn yard, stuffed the pile with cardboard,  sprinkled some gasoline and threw a match.  It had rained hard the night before and the ground and all the wood was still wet.

But it burned as Jon and I watched.  Cleansing and healing.

The next morning I picked through the still smoldering ashes where the nails and screws from the wood still were.  Each time I dragged my rake through the ashes more surfaced like memories.  Some four inches long and others so small they easily broke from the heat.

I saved them all in a metal bucket.  I’m not sure why, just a feeling.

This morning, after another night of rain,  I shoveled all the ashes and any nails or screws that might be left into the wheelbarrow and dumped them on the other side of the fence where the animals don’t graze.

On Sunday I rested some more and stacked firewood.  I was reading on the back porch and suddenly  needed to move my body.

Stacking wood, another way to make sense out of chaos.

For years, as I’ve stacked the firewood, I’ve been telling myself a story about a woman who I admire.  She is more self possessed and confident than me.   There is a hardness about her when it comes to self preservation.

Yesterday, as I was tossing logs into the woodshed, narrating the story, I realized that I had become the woman.  Or she had become me.  That we were the same person.

My therapist suggested that in the fall when I choose my health insurance I might want to consider getting some that covers mental health.  That’s a good indication that my healing is going to be a long process.

But I’m up for it. Because I know how good I can feel.  How little anxiety and panic I can have in my life.  I’ve been living it for the past eleven months, and I want to get back there.

I do wonder if the donkeys sense the healing that can come with fire.

If there is something mystical about them rolling in the ashes.  Fanny appeared magical to me when I saw her sitting in the circle of the ashes.  Like a unicorn from a fairy tale.  As if she was soaking up its mojo.

Or maybe the ash just feels good on their skin.  Mixed with a bit of rain it’s as close to soap as they’ll get.  Still cleansing though, even if just in a practical way.