I'm not fine after all

I have been trying to build a habit in the morning of sitting with Brigid and sharing some coffee with her. I usually watch something on YouTube, like Irish Pagan School or the lady who tells the Irish fairy tales, and then I just talk to her. It’s a comforting ritual. I think I’m going to find myself a little electric candle to bring with me when I travel so I can do the same thing there, or something similar.

This morning I was thinking about Brigid as a healer. This season of my life seems so fallow. It feels like nothing is happening and I’m just stagnating, although I recognize that’s not actually true. I know this is a time when I’m meant to be recovering and regrouping and preparing myself to move forward.

I thought about all the different things in my life that need to be healed. My money, definitely. Finances, and all the various parts of adult life that either were never really done properly or have completely come unraveled. The trauma. So much trauma. Just the accumulated chaos from all the years of instability.

Thinking about it in terms of healing is a shift for me. I’ve always thought of myself as being in the forge in some way or another, more like submitting or allowing myself to be subjected to the fire, with all the imagery of being heated and melted and pounded into shape that comes with smithcraft.

When I considered myself in relationship to Brigid as a healer, I always thought of myself as someone who was supposed to be following her example and doing healing for other people or animals or whomever. I never thought of myself as the person who would need to be healed.

And that’s a shift. A huge shift, actually. Because a person who needs to be healed needs entirely different things from a person who is going through the forge.

To be healed is convalescing. They need quiet, and time to rest, and good food. That’s where I am now. I need quiet and peace. I need space and time. I need to reconnect with parts of myself, and I need to learn more about nurturing myself and supporting myself.

After I was diagnosed with bipolar, back in October, I spent pretty much the entire fall and winter coming to terms with it. I spent long snowy mornings in the camper curled up by my electric fireplace. I took long hikes with the dogs, and I watched endless hours of TV with my bunny rabbits. I was very aware that I was convalescing, that I was recovering from a long period of stress and change.

Lately I’ve started to feel that way again. I feel like this is another season of healing.

I know I’m eventually going to end up doing trauma work that I’ve never really done. More than 35 years ago, when I first understood and named the abuse from my childhood, I chose not to deal with it. At the time, it made sense. It was a strategic choice, because I was getting ready to go into the Army, and I knew I had to focus on survival in that environment rather than trying to pick through and work with all the pieces of my past.

Over the years, I actually thought I was doing okay because I wasn’t having nightmares anymore or anything like that, and I was pretty functional. I thought it was fine.

It took