Wow! Not the emotion I was expecting to experience post-surgery. However, it quietly seethed undetected for a few months with the occasional bout of depression brought on by the feelings of ‘Why me?’. Fortunately, I know how to handle depression when I feel it coming. Usually, I allow myself to wallow around in the self-pity for a day then eventually I will take myself outdoors to wherever I feel drawn to.
I was completely unprepared for anger. I was told that surgery would be life changing. I had already made those changes and it didn’t need a heart attack to make it happen. Follow up courses talked about healthy food and reading labels. But I did and still had a heart attack. Those same courses suggested quitting smoking. Yes 12 years ago and still... alcohol? Rarely and exercise? Yes. Stress? Managed! I was told that surgery often brought about epiphanies. Nothing that I haven’t had already. In fact, the heart attack stopped progress. I had been slowly moving in the direction of my dreams, okay the key word there was slowly and laced with procrastination and visions with minimal action. I was told that I am no longer the same person I was before I had the heart attack. What?! No!! I liked who that person was becoming. Yeah sure, she was a dreamer, a procrastinator and a wanderer but she was creating her own meandering path. All the local Councils in Aotearoa were going through elections when I came out and the anger bubbled away because all I heard was more and bigger and more and bigger. The campaign promises contradicted all the key words they were also using such as ‘climate change’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘environment’. Suddenly, I felt for all the indigenous people of the world (and we are all indigenous to somewhere but for some the connection has been weakened by greed and nature deficit disorder) and those who have campaigned for Papatῡᾱnuku for decades and the frustrations they must have felt and still feel. In the meantime, my healing was progressing well. I was increasing my walks both distance and gradient, biking and had returned to the swimming pool and work. Gratefully picking up where I had left off because it was just a glitch on the journey of life after all. Until the pain in my foot sent me to the doctor to discover I had possible septicemia. I hadn’t addressed my anger. So, I started to question the emotional and spiritual causes. Louise Hay is one of many who believe that our physical illnesses are manifestations of what is going on internally. For example, she says that the heart is a lack of joy. Well, that triggered my anger response. I felt that I was a happy-go-lucky person. I realize that they were her words and it was my choice to accept them or not. They gave me cause to self-reflect on a deeper level and ask if my outward joy was masking the opposite. I had put on weight in the abdomen but put that down to genetics and menopause. I have heard that it represents protection which makes sense. Time to take that anger and be genuinely honest with myself. We are experts at putting ourselves down but being honest is different to put downs. We can fool ourselves, but our bodies will manifest the truth in the form of dis-ease as Louise Hay puts it. Ironically, what finally dissipated the anger came from the most unlikely source. I was told that someone from my past had heard that I had ‘Let myself go’. I laughed once I got over the initial shock response. YES! I HAVE! I have let myself go of worry, of doubt, of long work hours, excessive baggage both physical and emotional, and freed up more time to spend on my passion which is spending time outdoors. I write this parked up in the very place that I had my heart attack 6 months ago. Throughout this whole journey it was natures spaces that I visited for healing.
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