Sunday 20 October 2019

Wise Words: Illusion

In my own body … I experience … movement, a shift from hope to betrayal, almost daily. Whenever I feel well for a period, my days seem to glisten like a pastoral idyll photographed through a soft lens. Even now, used to years of fluctuations, with each remission I am given to believe that the failures of my body are gone and I will be well forever. The temptation is to believe that finally I am in control, that I have taken on the right attitude, assumed a posture of strength, and cured myself. Only later, like a lover who is seduced and abandoned, am I dismayed, as slowly in the course of an hour, a day, or a week my symptoms gradually reappear. Then it is wellness that seems an illusion.

(Susan Griffin, What Her Body Thought: A Journey into the Shadows, HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1999, pp. 30–31)