Tez In Denver

A disturbance in the Force

I am an empath. I was born an empath. For as long as I can remember, I've had the ability to feel other people.

Whenever there is some sort of humanitarian disaster, I feel it... REALLY feel it!

During the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square China, I watched every moment on television and cried for days. I still can't listen to "China" by Joan Baez without tearing up. I can feel my throat tightening just reading the lyrics (below). The images are vividly burned into my memory. 

In the month of June, in the darkness of the moon
Went the descendants of a hundred flowers
And time may never tell how many of them fell
Like the petals of a rose in some satanic shower
Everyone was weeping in all of China
And Tiananmen Square

And even the moon on the fourth day of June
Hid her face and did not see
Black sun rising over Tiananmen Square

And Wang Wei Lin, you remember him
All alone he stood before the tanks
A shadow of forgotten ancestors in Tiananmen Square

And my blue-eyed son, you had no one
You could call a hero of your age
You have the rainbow warriors of Tiananmen Square, singing
China Shall Be Free

So many other disasters have emotionally overwhelmed me: the 1993 fire at the Mount Carmel compound in Waco, Texas; the genocide in Rwanda in 1994; the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001; the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004; Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, China; the genocide in Darfur, and now the earthquake in Haiti. Human rights abuses seem to have the most profound affect on me.

Not only do I feel the pain and horror in my head and my heart, I feel it in my body. Flares up my fibromyalgia.

"There's a great disturbance in the Force," my husband will say.

I'll be glued to the TV, watching every miserable detail, waiting for updated reports. This isn't because I have some sort of morbid fascination with disaster. It helps me make some sort of sense of what I'm feeling.

My astrologer confirmed this at our first session. She told me that seeing people suffering is very hard for me; that I feel their suffering in every part of my being. She was spot on!

It's a challenge to keep this in perspective. I can so easily sink into the suffering, so overwhelmed that I feel as though I'm drowning in it. I have to recognize that my job in this life is to feel the pain but not own it. While the news crews are recording the events, I am recording the pain and sorrow. I hold it like a chalice, offering it up to the Divine, releasing it to Heaven.

Are you an empath? Read 7 Signs You're an Empath by Isabella Snow.

Shower away pain

I want to share a visualization I've used for years that helps me when I'm in pain or just need a bit of clearing. Warning: this may not be good if you're fanatical about conserving water. Although I love water, I'm not really a bath person, unless it's a hot tub. I really prefer showers. So this exercise is designed for the shower.

While you're in the shower, take a moment to close your eyes and feel the water running down your body from the top of your head to your toes. Now visualize the water running through your body, again from the top of your head all the way down to your toes. Feel the water pouring out of your fingers and toes. As it runs through your body, see it gently washing away any pain, toxins, or negativity that may be in your body. The water runs down the drain and into Mother Earth, carrying the gunk from your body with it. Relax and enjoy the feeling of being cleansed from the inside out. Take a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. Before you finish your shower, thank the blessed element of water for washing away your pain. Then thank your body for everything it does for you every day.

When I do this exercise, whatever I'm cleansing may look different from time to time. Sometimes it looks like sludge, or crystals of dirt, or globs of gunk. It might just be a dark brown or grayish color washing out of me. This can be particularly powerful if you're going through some other kind of cleansing or fasting.

Duality of fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia reminds me of the duality of being. I am a spiritual being having a physical experience, not a physical being having a spiritual experience.

The chronic pain of fibro makes you want to leave your body or at least ignore your body. At the same time, the pain is nearly impossible to ignore.

How do you balance the two and remain whole?

Paying the price for a great weekend

I'm hurting today. My fibromyalgia is flared up. I had a busy weekend and got quite a bit done, but I'm paying for it today. That's usually the way it goes. I have to pick and choose what I do and decide if it's worth suffering for.

Last week was Greg's birthday. Got him a new HDTV set up. He was so excited. All weekend he was so happy with his gift. It makes me happy to see him happy. It meant moving some things around: furniture, wires, etc. I'm strong enough, so alone, this probably wouldn't have been a big deal, but in combination with other things, it hurts.

The weather has been unstable the last few days. Cool and rainy Saturday evening and Sunday. I tend to be sensitive to weather changes, so spring is tough on my body. But I'm so excited about my garden that we started working on preparing the soil Saturday. My first real day for yard work of the year. Knew that was going to hurt.

Yesterday, being Easter, was a family day: grocery shopping in the morning, big dinner to prepare, grandsons visiting. By the time they left I was about out of gas. But it was fun to have everyone here, as always, so worth the price I'm paying today.

I knew it was gonna be rough today, but the weekend was great! Worth the pain. That's the key: deciding what's worth hurting over. Some things are; some things aren't. This weekend definitely was.

Two tips for Tim

I just left a comment on Newsvine for a guy struggling with fibromyalgia. Here are two tips I've found helpful that I thought I'd share here as well.

Wiggling Awake: I know how awful it is to wake up and feel pain first thing. Not a great way to start the day. It's tough to look forward to the day when it starts with pain. On particularly bad mornings I wiggle myself awake, something one of my therapists suggested many years ago. I start with a foot, just wiggling it gently back and forth. Then move up my leg, then the other foot, and so on, until I'm gently rocking my body back and forth. Sometimes this can take a few minutes, other times it can take an hour, but it seems to help get me moving better.

My Extra Brain: For dealing with fibro fog (or just plain forgetfulness), I use a technique suggested by a professional organizer. I carry a little spiral notebook everywhere I go. It's always in my purse, or on my desk, or in my pocket. Wherever I go, it goes too. I write absolutely everything in it. Notes from phone calls or messages. Quotes I want to remember. Phone numbers and addresses. Ideas for projects. Tasks and to-do lists. I tape business cards in there. I rarely use sticky notes or scratch paper anymore. With my book I know exactly where everything is. I don't have to go searching for "that little piece of paper with that phone number on it." My husband calls it my brain.