“Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” –Ovid

Greetings Dear Ones!

One of the most savage and shocking injuries a seamster can sustain, apart from the obvious yet PURELY HYPOTHETCAL ones that spring to mind—like dropping an iron on one’s toe, sitting on the wrong side of a pin cushion, or accidentally ironing your own boob (if it’s a hot night and one is doing last-minute, late-night ironing naked and the ironing board is set too high and/or the boobs are set too low)(NONE of which EVER happens…) is to have a chunk of his/her/their/my/our finger ripped off without warning as it gets caught under the buzzing needle. It’s as sudden as a wasp sting and mutely stunning as a mousetrap. It’s only happened to me a few times in my life and each time it occurs, I am amazed at how swiftly my body is able to short-circuit rational thought and decide instead to do exactly the Wrong Thing—namely, pull the punctured finger back hard, with all my force, while the needle is still in it. If we could only pause, breathe, take the foot off the pedal (before I have stitched myself up to the wrist), calmly wind the needle to the upright position so I can dislodge the needle, not the flesh, I would only sustain the mildest of puncture wounds. But No. Lizard brain, which seems to think we can just systematically re-grow any body part that happens to get ripped off in a panic, has taken over and the results are very messy indeed.

A friend of mine recently confessed that this had just happened to her for the first time. As soon as she began telling me the story, my own finger began to ache with digital PTSD. I could literally feel her story as she told it—the sharp bite, the pull, the sudden regret followed by shock and throb... My body is really keeping the score on this one! There is a white sliver of scar tissue through this finger that will store the memory forever. More significant than my friend’s pain was her incredulity that such injuries can happen. “Who knew?” she said, “I’ve been sewing for so many years! I had no idea this could happen. I’ve never been afraid to sew!”

“It usually happens when we are really tired or really distracted,” I say, offering no help at all to no one what-so-ever. She nods kindly anyway.

“I have a new rule: No sewing after 1:am.”

“Pain’s a great teacher, isn’t it?” I ask. She nods wryly. “How swiftly we regain all of our clarity and focus after such a zap!”

All I can say is that I am grateful to be a seamster and not someone who handles large saws on a daily basis! Our best tools can be very dangerous indeed. We seize their power at our peril. Pain reminds us to Pay Attention.

Pain, swift and shocking, is often the thing that plunges us from unfocused complacency to the momentary terrors of survival. Hopefully, we wind up in the Center, with our dial reset at the Focused-Respect-with-a-dash-of-Gratitude that is Mindfulness. This is how it is with those of us who work with sharp things that can bite us without warning. We cannot be too afraid of our tools to use them, yet we must respect them! It is the circular and recurring dance of the craftsperson—from Masterful to Humble, Radiant to Grateful, with the Innocence and Wisdom of a Fool.

I am a great respecter of pain. In my deepening old age, I have learned to see it as the friend and teacher who bestows Clarity. I am grateful for the ways it shows me the appropriate margins of my Free Will, scorched boobs and all. I believe that Life is absolutely perfect and miraculous. I look down at the deep pink scars leaving their trail of acid heat and pain across my torso as the shingles gradually heal and marvel that my body, which has learned how to get sick, also knows how to heal itself so wonderfully.

I welcome these symptoms as a Gift (not a favorite gift, of course--more like that blue, port-a-potty-scented candle one gets in the neighborhood holiday swap). They are the reminder I needed that I was too stressed out, stretched too thin, ignoring vital needs. I thought, as I sometimes do, that I could manage the Unmanageable. I forgot. I needed to get “bitten,” as by a sewing machine, or Shingles, to wake up and remember. I truly believe that everything that happens to me is for my Highest Blossoming and expansion—or at the very least so that I can stumble past the pile of boxes littering my new home, temporarily dubbed “The Land of Lost Plots,” and lie on the floor and rest. Sometimes we all need to slap a post-it note saying “Out of Service: Closed for Maintenance” on our foreheads and call it a day. This is NOT procrastination. Procrastination is about unhealthy “baggage” and deep Resistance. These are healthy boxes. And they can wait. I must rest.

REST is about faith that we are safely where we are supposed to be and there will be plenty of time and energy to do what must be done. My physical condition is serving me and helping me bring love and attention to the parts of myself that I have neglected. I don’t get to decide exactly what happens, but I do get to decide how I accept it—whether I shave my head and move to Bora Bora, or decide to wait it out on the couch, sipping lemonade and reading a book I’ve been dying to read. Ailments are accelerated opportunities to stop judging ourselves and take care of ourselves instead. They give others the chance to care for us. They give us opportunities to Receive. I am so grateful for the care I have received—the works of mercy from my loved ones to feed me and help me do all my chores.

When I was young and suffering, I was told crisply to “offer it up for the souls in purgatory,” the idea being that the pains we encounter and endure in our mortal flesh are a chance to win glory for others; by uniting our suffering to Love, we participate in Salvation. Being possessed of enough Imagination to qualify as a character in “Anne of Green Gables,” my young self could only picture what looked like a train station with numbers rolling and flashing up high on a wall, while crowds of anxious, disheveled souls looked at the lottery tickets in their hands and scanned for a match. “I just need one pious, decent kid to get a splinter in his knuckle and I’m IN!” croaks a bag lady at the front hopefully. “Not me,” sighs a dejected man, “It’s going to take a crabby, middle-aged woman six month’s worth of fibromyalgia and all the blind fury of getting locked out of the IRS website four days in a row for not remembering her username and password to get me past those pearly gates…” And so they languish, in the eternal train station, waiting for the Living here below to step on a stray leggo in the dark and “offer it up”….

Our connection to our own pain is a connection to others. Any act of love we bring to this aching world brings Light. We do not use pain to forget who we are, but to wake up and Remember. I see the news and I think—I/we did not come here to be a person of power, privilege, or prestige. I/we came to be people who Love.

This pandemic is hitting us all very hard. There is not a soul who isn’t suffering in some way—small or large—physically, financially, emotionally. It’s like our country has become not a melting pot, but a mending basket of so many things that need healing and fixing. I know it feels overwhelming. We are facing some huge tears in the fabric of society as we once knew it. However, we can learn from our pains, individually and collectively, and we CAN “offer up” some of our discomfort (like the wearing of a mask) for the saving of another, even if we don’t know who it might be. We have untold opportunities, like never before, to do some real Good and make some positive changes around how we value our lives. We can start with the littlest things and go from there, learning as we go. And it’s ok to rest! Thank you so much for your Good Work.

Let the Mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy