Leaning into a Fracture

Counterintuitive Wisdom for the Pain of Life

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Hello Dear People,

First of all, a thousand thanks to everyone who wrote to me after I reported on my accident. I received such varied and sincere bits of encouragement and inspiration from many different spiritual perspectives. I treasured every one. But I do have a favorite, thank you, Jim Spring. Maybe it’s my own Scottish heritage—those fighting Scots—but this became my mantra.

I am wounded but I am not slain.  
I will lay me down and bleed a while, then I shall rise and fight again.

Now, I don’t normally think of life as a battle, but sometimes we’re going through something that makes it feel like one. And it’s good to be reminded that it’s okay to “bleed a while.” That doesn’t mean that you’ve given up.

Both my fractures were on the right side, and whenever I tried to move or sit, I would lean toward the left, my instinct being to reduce the weight on the injured side, to move away from the pain. This always hurt hurt hurt.

I soon discovered that it was much better to lean into the fracture. This was so counterintuitive that whenever I was struggling to get out of the bed or gingerly sit down, I’d have to say to myself, “Lean into it.”

Lean into it.

I’m sure there is a physical explanation for this phenomenon, and I’m sure it’s not universal, so don’t take it as medical advice. Likely, in my case, the pressure applied to the fracture actually pushed it together while leaning away put some force on it that insulted all those newly sprouted ectopic nerves. (Within minutes, cells at a fracture site induce ectopic nerve sprouting, which gives you more pain.* Fun stuff.)

Teresa of Avila in her Interior Castle speaks often of pain, both bodily pain and emotional pain. And her conclusion is that pain will come, it is part of the human experience, and the best we can do is to face it and accept it. To “bleed a while.”

In my entire long life, I’ve never lived through a time with so many problems coming at us all at once. It’s not unusual in history. Medieval people certainly understood the intersection of climate disasters, epidemics, wars, and internal division and unrest. But for most of us, all this at once feels unnerving.

Our Western minds have difficulty encircling paradox. We want everything to be good or bad, black or white. We want instant solutions for those things which we have labeled bad. Physical pain is bad, so we want a pill. Emotional pain is bad, so we want a pill, a distracting entertainment, or retail therapy. Our instincts tell us to flee the pain, to lean as far as possible away from it. But sometimes, as in the case of my fracture, that actually makes it worse.

I certainly do not subscribe to the medieval philosophy that pain is always beneficial. You won’t find me seeking out pain in any way. As one of my fictional characters once said, “Fasting only makes my meditations turn to cheeses.”

And I am NOT saying that we give up. I did everything I could to get better. To face into the situation is the opposite of giving up. It is thinking clearly, being intentional, and choosing a path toward healing.

As I wrote in my last letter, I was in a funk after this accident. I think I would not have been so blue if I’d been hit by a comet. If the accident had been something completely out of my control, I think I would have accepted it better. But it was the result of my own carelessness, lack of intentional thought, and crazed distraction. I had skipped morning prayer for several days because I was in such a fizz to get that work done. I don’t think God punished me for that, but I think that had I been in a more serene, less driven, frame of mind, that accident probably wouldn’t have happened. So, I was angry with myself and heartbroken at my foolishness. We always want to blame someone. But when we get stuck in blame and anger, we can’t move to acceptance.

But accepting is exactly what we have to do, no matter the source of our pain, even when—perhaps especially when—that source is ourselves.

Order, disorder, reorder. Richard Rohr has written a whole book on the premise that all of creation moves continually through this cycle. That “disorder” is a natural part of life, of growth, of wisdom. That what arises in the “reorder” is different and better.

So, I had all your lovely notes and Teresa of Avila and Richard Rohr all telling me to “bleed a while,” accept that any life on this planet is going to have disasters, and then to be prepared to move on in a, hopefully, better, wiser way.

At almost exactly two weeks, I turned a corner physically and emotionally. I began to notice that movement didn’t hurt as much, I began to be able to imagine returning to normal, which, of course, was always a good possibility but one that had seemed too far away. But now I was getting better every day, though the ortho doctor wants me to say on this walker for another week. But I made a trip to Clarksville for one day and worked in Mother’s house. And I’ve been to the Eureka house twice. I’ve got an auction company lined up to do an auction in Clarksville, and an estate sale service engaged to do a sale in Eureka. I am making progress and that feels so so good.

And as for my mom, once again, she dodged the nursing home bullet. The woman who was supposed to meet with us to arrange “respite” care for two months just did not show up. I told Mother I didn’t know whether she had prayed or put a hex on that woman, but she never even called. With Covid exploding all around us, I decided that if I could care for my mom those first days after my accident, I could continue. She has a new emergency alert which she has to wear when I go out. When she balks at this, which she always does, I say “nursing home.” Works every time.

Order, disorder, reorder. Acceptance. “Bleed a while.” All just different ways of saying that bad things are going to happen to human beings on this planet. When we try to deny that, when we are angry or frustrated because we suffer, when we try to escape into a quick fix, we sometimes make the physical or emotional pain worse. Sometimes, it’s best to just lean into it.

Finding our stories . . . and ourselves.

Alison

*New Insights in Understanding and Treating Bone Fracture Pain by Mitchell, Majuta, & Mantyh. nih.gov, HHS public access.

My keepables snugged into their storage unit. The antique desk with leather hinges that my grandmother remembered as a little girl. Its top is stained with India ink. My great-grandfather’s rocking chair, which I dragged out of the barn after the rats had gnawed it. As a young man, he rode horseback through the Ozark mountains and taught music. I remember how, as an old man, blind and deaf, he would sit and sing in his head, tapping the time on the arms of that rocker. Two porch swings, my grandma’s and great-grandma’s. A little table from my dad’s family; the top is one, 24-inch board. In total, the perfect collection to furnish my someday, somewhere cabin.

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