BY LISA MARIE BASILE
Body Ritual is Lisa Marie Basile's column about wellness, chronic illness and finding healing and autonomy in ritual. You can follow her on Instagram for more on this topic.
If you live with a chronic illness, or if you love someone who has one, you know the delicate balancing act it requires. Living on that liminal precipice, between doing just enough and doing too much, requires an almost spiritual focus. And it’s tiring. I know, as I have ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative, incurable spinal disease.
Who we feel we are within our minds is not always what our bodies reflect. And sometimes, that very lack of reconciliation rewires us. We start to believe we cannot, are not, will not.
We can, we are, and we will embrace the wholeness of our limitations and our magic. It doesn’t matter if people want us to stay quiet, go away, or stop complaining. We have a right to explore what it means to experience life as we do.
Stigma, lack of education, and fear make it hard to exist in a body that exists on the margins. Sometimes all the noise and suffering keeps us at a distance from ourselves. We often are so tired from the pain or insomnia or anxiety that we smile and pretend everything is okay. We sometimes allow ourselves to be taken advantage of just so we can seem “normal.” We push the limits of our bodies and lose grip on our boundaries. Sometimes, we get through the day, and that’s it. Sometimes it’s hard to feel empowered, to feel enough, to feel that we can and are and will.
The deep and important work that goes into healing the trauma of illness is often ignored. Instead, we focus on the day to day needs. We keep our heads above the water — but the secret is that we must become the sea.