Where My Being Waits: A Poem

I cannot do nothing

Some days, yes

I rest

I retreat

But when I can

I write

I create

I pull work out 

from within

I spin a self around it

a courageous chrysalis

Before sinking back

into non-doing 

where my being 

waits

A Small, Tenacious Part of Me

One of the things I am consistently having to remind myself of is that CFS/ME is experienced differently by everyone who has it. A naturopath said to me once, “It’s not really CFS. It’s more like CFSes”—that is, a completely different illness for each person. That’s partly what makes it so difficult to treat.

I would not describe my physical symptoms as severe. I can go for regular walks (and, living in the mountains, puff my way up and down the unavoidable hills), and am currently doing a small amount of resistance exercise as prescribed by a physiotherapist. Recently I’ve been getting into my studio quite often to paint, which usually means leaning over a piece and working on quite small details for sometimes considerable periods of time. Such things are not always possible, nor are they easy. There are certainly limits to my energy. Yet I am mobile, and in that sense, I am fortunate. 

Sometimes I wonder whether my symptoms are more mental/cognitive in nature. I can’t seem to think clearly, or in any kind of sustained way. Occasionally I struggle to think of completely everyday words like ‘fork’ or ‘cucumber,’ and they emerge awkwardly from my mouth. Currently, I am not reading as much as I would like, as my concentration is poor when I am fatigued, but I can still read, and assimilate information to some degree. I am well aware that some people with CFS are unable to read, so I am very grateful that I still can, for where would I be without my beloved books?

So, it’s not that I can’t function at all—yet my functioning is significantly impaired.

However, what I know very clearly now is that my mental symptoms cannot be separated from my physical ones, and vice versa. There is no real separation between body and mind, other than the one we impose conceptually or philosophically (which I think is gradually coming to be understood as a big mistake).

This means that I am becoming more and more aware of physical symptoms which are having a deleterious effect on my mental state and abilities—symptoms that I would not have noticed before, having become so used to their presence; or symptoms that I simply had not realised were related to other symptoms (everything is connected, after all). 

I do not want to sound like I am complaining, or seeking pity. I just felt compelled to write this down, to try to make sense of things, and express something of my own experience of CFS. I’ve been doing so little writing recently, it just feels good to want to write, despite the subject matter.

What prompted this was a review I read yesterday of Heroines, the anthology a short story of mine was published in last year, in which my story (the reviewer calls it a poem) is mentioned in glowing terms:

Therese Doherty’s poem ‘The Fisherman and the Cormorant’ soared with stunning lines of imagery, encapsulating the flight of a half-woman, half-bird after she is cursed by a man who ‘wanted to grow his own power by stealing from [hers]’. Therese’s vivid poetry makes the reader believe they are there, with ‘supple wings instead of arms, and dark as night feathers’. (Yvette Gilfillan, South Coast Writers Centre blog, https://southcoastwriters.org.au/news/2019/review-of-heroines-an-anthology-of-short-fiction-poetry)

This short paragraph made me so happy. Yet it also made me sad, for that is what I know I am capable of. A few years ago, writing stories brought so much joy, magic and purpose to my life. But I can’t write when my body-mind is impaired as it is now. Right now, the thought of writing stories barely appeals to me, and it doesn’t even seem possible. My mind simply refuses to work that way. My body rebels. 

In short, I am not myself. 

A small, tenacious part of me is just barely hanging on, is still hoping an idea will spark into being, and that I will be able to fan that flame, get it burning strongly and brightly once more. Yet I know that is hardly likely unless I address the physical symptoms which are having such an impact on my mental abilities.

This leaves me both frustrated and hopeful. It’s not going to be easy, and I know it will take time and patience, but improvement is possible. It’s just a matter of making sense of what is happening in my body, and finding ways to ease the symptoms.

In many ways I know I have been going through a long period of transformation, unlearning many things and reconsidering my perspective on the world, and transformation always involves some pain and discomfort. As I wrote in my story, ‘Changing is always a difficult undertaking. We avoid it more often than we embrace it.’ So I am trying to embrace it, and work with it, and to find my way back to where I want to be: immersed in a mythopoeic understanding of the world, from which stories can grow. If I can find ways to heal my body, and relieve my discomfort, I am certain that my mind, as an integral part of my body, will feel more willing and able to connect with the imaginal once more, and to make something of that.

It may be that having an illness means that a certain level of potential will never be reached, or will only be reached rarely, and with great effort. But for the sake of my sense of self, my happiness, and whatever health I may have, I am not going to give up on dwelling in possibility.

Necklace of Mouths

When I painted Ancestress, I also prepared another piece of paper at the same time, and achieved the same cracking (which I have since learnt is probably because I added insufficient water to the gouache), so I used it to create this image. 

When I was watching Max Dashu’s video, ‘Grandmother Stones of Megalithic Europe,’  I am sure she said that the ancestor figures are generally depicted without mouths. As the ancestors no longer have bodies, and thus mouths, through which to speak, this made sense. Hence, Ancestress has no mouth, but rather, speaks through her presence.

Yet, the idea of voices, of story and poetry and language, echoing back through time, was something I kept returning to. That’s why this figure has seven mouths—her own, plus six hanging below like necklaces. There is a reason for this, as Jay Griffiths writes:

Many cultures conceive the future and plan for it by looking ahead seven generations; the Iroquois Confederacy of Six Nations, for instance, living in the remains of their ancestral land in America and Canada, consider the effects of every decision they take ‘unto the seventh generation’. African and Polynesian tribes, too, were, traditionally, said to look ahead at least seven generations. Seven generations, it is thought, is chosen because that is the greatest number one could hope to know in one’s own life; one’s great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, grand daughter and great grand daughter. (Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Flamingo: London, 1999, p. 225)

To look ahead seven generations, to always keep the future in mind, would have a momentous impact on human behaviour and morality. But what about looking back also? What could we learn from listening to the voices of those who have come before us?

In the film Aluna, about the Kogi people of Colombia, I was struck by one of their ideas: that each generation knows less than the one before—not more, as Westerners would tend to assume. And we know less because we are moving away from the source, further in time from the first ancestors, the people and beings who knew the most, because they were closest to the beginning of things.

There is a thread of knowledge that winds back through time, a twisting labyrinth of story and words and wisdom, that spills from the silent mouths of our forebears. That thread runs through the now of our blood and living bodies, back to the then of ancient times. If we listen closely, perhaps we will hear it whispering.

Necklace of Mouths, watercolours and gouache on gesso prepared paper (2018–2019) 

(Not) Being & (Not) Doing

Without the free flow of energy, nothing happens.

Summer brings many green and lovely gifts, yet I reluctantly have to admit that it simply doesn’t agree with me. Heat or no heat, there is something about this season that drains my energy (though it certainly has been very hot recently, which has made things much worse). I feel like I have been emptied out completely. 

Yet even when I am fatigued and lying in bed, I often can’t help reaching for my notebook and writing something about how I feel—however mundane and seemingly pointless. Because sometimes the words cause a shift in my mental state, or even in how energy is flowing in my body. It doesn’t always work; and usually any effects are very subtle, below consciousness. Yet it has become a habit that I can’t shake, this reaching for words, reaching for some kind of expression leading towards understanding.

With words I can defy my inner critic, and defy the powers that be that dictate how I should think and feel, and how I should even perceive and understand the world. I can defy my own sense of helplessness. This is a kind of healing magic.

It’s not working so well at present, though. I can’t seem to find many words, or the right ones. I can’t seem to push beyond where I am into new territory, which should bring me new impetus. Instead, I am having to surrender to what I am feeling, to tell myself that it is okay to not be writing, painting, reading (much), or working towards anything in particular. 

The past year brought with it many challenges and changes, and I suppose I am yet to integrate many of them. For my health and sanity, there is much that I have to face.

And I don’t know what this new year will bring. I have no specific plans. Perhaps I should lie low for a while, take a break from social media, find my bearings, and go in search of ‘real world’ nourishment.* So I may be a little quiet in this space for the time being, as I tend to my health-related and creative needs. For unless I take care of my wellspring, nothing creative will flow from it, and my life will wither away. I don’t want that to happen, for I know I have much to give—I just need the energy to be able to do that. 

When necessary (which is quite often at the moment), I am going to take Kat Duff’s advice: ‘a simple spiritual exercise for pulling ourselves back together and cultivating the self-possession of the masters [is] to collapse with exhaustion’ (The Alchemy of Illness, 1993, p. 32).

Of course, now that I have written this, probably ideas will begin flowing, and I will have things to post. Such is usually the way with me.** But I am trying very hard to let myself (not) be and (not) do whatever is necessary, in alignment with what I need, physically, emotionally, creatively. If work comes it comes; if it doesn’t it doesn’t. I can’t force the flow of energy, but must learn to work with it, however meagre it may be. If I take care to beckon it gently, humbly, then maybe, just maybe, it will grow.

In the end, it is process that is more important than product. I’m going to try to live the process for a while, and see where that leads. 

* This has been made a little easier over the past week because I’ve had little to no internet access—both very inconvenient and a blessing in disguise.

** True to form, I have indeed completed a new painting, which I will share in due course.