down to the bones for me and my blog

Nine years ago last month, my life turned upside down and inside out when I rolled my trusty Jeep Cherokee in the desert of south central Utah. Some would label it an “accident,” but I knew better then and I know even better now.

No accident. Perfect timing. Invitation to go Home politely declined. Yet another evolutionary growth opportunity in which I was stripped of just about everything and everyone that supposedly mattered. While my body tumbled over and over and over in the glow of the setting sun, my brain sloshed and came to rest in some altered state that was not less than, but definitely different than, what previously lived between my ears.

My long-frayed and tattered safety net wafted in the breeze and settled slowly into the high-desert sand. I was offered a spiritual acceleration not-so-happy meal to which I responded: “Hell yeah! While you’re at it, super-size me!” The space shuttle Columbia went down the same day; clearly, the multidimensional Universe was afoot.

Less than two weeks ago, I took a nasty fall (actually, the nasty fall took me). I can not explain exactly what happened, except that I felt taken off balance, lifted off my feet, wrung out like a sopping dishcloth, and then slammed directly on my sacrum. Within seconds, I went from walking across a familiar room to lying on my back, thinking, “This cannot be good…”

This most recent incident (again, no accident! ) offered me the necessary motivation to walk ever so slowly and carefully into a chiropractor’s office for the first time in nine years. That first time around, my chiropractor ignored my sobbing, shaking pleas not to touch my battered neck or head and gave me an old-school adjustment that I believe re-injured and re-traumatized me. Never, again, I swore, despite decades of positive chiropractic experience.

Going in for treatments from my tiny rural town is a 100-mile round trip, and I’m about to head in for #9. (Numerologists, note how many times that number appears here!) But the journey is taking me much further than that.

This time, I’m going down to the bones. Nine years of acupuncture, bodywork, trauma release, cranio-sacral treatments, energy healings, PTSD and spiritual counseling, forgiveness (and lack thereof), only went so far. You can paint the house, tweak the plumbing, replace the windows, rearrange the rooms – but if you’re working with a cracked foundation, crumbling beams, or other longstanding (or not ) basic structural issues, the day will come when you have to go straight to the bones.

My new chiro guy is a gift from above, and he and I are engaged in a slow, gentle, collaborative dance of deconstructing and then re-constructing my foundation from root to crown. Every adjustment is subtle yet potent, followed by days of rest in which my bodymindbrain adjusts to the adjustment. Best of all, he doesn’t even flinch when I remind him, “Hey, I’m on the edge of a new existence and I’m not about to drag a rusted, outmoded central nervous system along with me!” As we say out here in the country, “it’s time to get ‘er done.”

Same goes for this blog, which turns four years old on Friday, March (ahem!) 9. Like me, this blog is a proud Piscean, though my birthday follows on March 18, which of course, numerologically, is, well, you do the math.

Finally, I am ready to move on from this current template/theme (titled, ironically, “Chaotic Soul.” You have my permission to LOL.) I’ve already begun stripping extraneous material from the right-hand sidebar, in anticipation of a cleaner, simpler, brighter presentation more aligned with my Work and my inspired relationship with letters and words. So if things seem different or altogether missing or in transition for a long or short while, rest assured that they are.

PS: If you’re struggling or resisting or feeling out-of-sorts these days, consider whether you are truly going down to the bones and addressing issues of alignment, balance, core, purpose, and integration at foundational levels. Lateral moves, creative sidestepping, dealing with symptoms instead of causes, and tweaking old coping mechanisms just won’t cut it anymore.

Take courage! Who knows what hidden treasures you will uncover, discover, and recover when you bring out the metaphorical crowbar and rip out the rotting drywall of your life? Maybe one of these days, I’ll tell you about the 43-foot pine tree that busted away from its roots in a microburst of wind in Wyoming and landed directly on the small tent in which a friend and I were sleeping…