Discovering Healing: How it All Began

I like to write, so I start my story as that: a story.

I could feel my senses coming back to me, and I rocked in between awareness and dreamland. I could sense the bright morning sun peaking around from behind my bedroom curtains, yet my eyes remained closed. I knew I would soon need to climb out of my seriously comfortable bed, and get my drowsy essence into the mode of Day.

I was right. My alarm from my cell phone blared into my room at top frequency, causing me to mentally fly up to the ceiling and crash my head. Physically I stayed where I was, but my hand shot out like a cannon ball and haphazardly
turned the wretchedly annoying thing off. “Why is the volume turned all the cotton-pickin’ way up?” I groaned, to no one in particular.

The clock on the touch screen read 9:00. At 17 years old, I should have been up by 7 like the rest of the kids, ready to take the days challenges, and to go at my school work with vengeance. Although it wasn’t all my problem, I still felt a finger of guilt poking at my heart when I thought of all I never got done.

I stayed where I was for a few seconds while my heart got its beating under control. Then, groggy and unbalanced, I forced myself out of bed. I walked up to the window and pulled back the curtains. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the winter sunlight poured in. I breathed in the loveliness of the nature outside my window, and I felt my bleary eyes regain a miniscule amount of normalcy.

My room was located on the second floor of our large house, in the farthest back corner. It was small, and slightly crammed with my bed, an old rustic desk, and my great-grandma’s piano that took up most of one wall. Walls which were painted a calm, light blue, while random items of color enlivened the room. I loved my little cubical of space; it was my miniature den away from the rest of the world. I sometimes felt as a little bird, holed up in a tiny house at the top of a tree with a big world of space outside below me.

I lived with my family on 80 acres of Upper Peninsula Michigan marsh and woodland, and as I gazed out into the depths of the forest, I was brought back to my younger child hood days: happy and golden, free of troubles and worries, free as the leaves that floated on the breeze.

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The evening sunlight flashed off my sun bleached hair, as it floated behind me in the wind. My bare feet seemed to fly across the dirt trail, as I dashed around the corners and leapt over rocks. Not far behind, Ava followed with equal agility, her toes feeling the earth with well-known certainty. Our dark eyes bright and alive, we instinctively watched out for prickles and twigs that could appear in the way, always managing to swat the branches out of the way just in time.

I smiled in pleasure as the sun danced across my nose and the warm breeze washed around me. A joyous giggle escaped, and I sprang over a fallen tree trunk. Ava’s laughter joined in, and we fell into a grassy heap, hooting with laughter to the point of hysterics.

We lay in the dry grass and leaves, catching our breath and gazing up at the blue sky and fluffy white clouds. Two little girls—so much the same, we should have been born twins. I was ten, and she nine. Sisters and the best of friends, we did everything together. We played the same games, our imaginations ran with equal intensity, and we laughed and giggled at anything and everything. We said the same things at the same time, and when we shared our thoughts to the other, it was not uncommon for the other to say, “I just thought the same exact thing!”

Our physical looks were a bit opposite, however. Ava was a dark beauty, with raven black hair that always stayed silky and straight. Curling lashes hooded eyes almost black, and she had skin that always tanned so dark. A sprinkling of brown freckles were scattered across her nose and cheeks, something I was rather jealous of.   

I was lighter, with hair the color of a sandy beach, and eyes the color of coffee in sunlight. My lashes were long, my lips red. I was a honey-gold color in the summer, but quite pale in the winter. And I always stood a few inches shorter than Ava, despite me being older.

While I was the shy, timid one, Ava was the Brave Little Indian. Times when I was too shy to go to a new friend’s house alone, Ava would come along. To birthday parties, and when visiting families we weren’t all that familiar with, I was always glad that Ava was there along with me.

But in the woods and in nature with the trees and the sky, I was at home and totally myself. I felt free and content, with the ability to let my wild side express itself. Our imaginations always got the best of us. On one day, Ava and I might be Indians, the next, cowboys. We could go a week belonging to the days of Laura Ingalls, or it might just so happen that we were mothers with our own spunky little children and our many babies. In our cabin making tea, or in the pine tree fort “cooking” mud pies, we were the happiest little girls on earth.

But as it would happen, we grew. And life changed.

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My door creaked open, and my 15 year old sister poked her head in.

“Why are you only just getting up?” She looked at me accusingly as if I had just created a crime. She would never understand, I thought. Heck, I barely understood myself. Although I know they never meant to, other people said things that gave me the impression they thought I was a lazy piece of crap who never tried hard enough. I don’t know why I ever let criticizing words and looks get to me, but they always hurt a little. 

As Mom would say: “You can’t change how people will act to you, but you can always change how you react.” I only wished I could follow her advice easily.

I stared at my younger sister for a second with zero expression, then without a word I shut the door with finality.

“You know you are supposed to get up at 7 like everyone else like Dad says…” she went on loudly outside my door. I slammed my hands over my ears and screwed up my face in extreme annoyance, trying to block her out.

I flopped down onto my bed. Collapsed, more like it. I was so tired. I just needed a few seconds before I went down for breakfast.

I rolled over and let my eye lids fall back to their most habitual position: closed. It took only a few seconds and I was once again in a dreamless sleep.

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My world was coming back into focus. Drifting open, my eyes took in the bright sunlight peaking around my curtain. “Oh darn it,” I moaned, realizing what had happened. Snatching up my phone, the bright glare of “11:05” stared back at me. It would be another day in the world of slow and late.

I thought of all the things I used to be capable of: waking up at 7 or earlier, hopping out of bed, joyful for another day of fun and challenge. Scurrying through my morning duties and ready for my school work at 8 on the dot, like a young soldier ready for combat. I felt envy for those who could still do those things (even at the age of 17), disappointment in myself for not forcing myself to do those easy things that now seemed to difficult, and a tiny pinch of self-pity. But most of all, I felt like a failure.

I will try harder today, I thought. But in the back of my mind, I knew that today was not going to be much different than all the rest. Even on the rare good days when I could get things done without much difficulty, it still never made up for all the days I lost that could’ve been good.

I sat up and made myself get out of bed. I stumbled to the bathroom, splashed water on my face and then put my contacts in.

Some days I barely recognized the girl staring back at me in the mirror. Eyes that used to be sharp and lively were now tired and black rimmed. Her face was puffy with a lack of expression. And that mouth did not smile enough.

“That’s not really me,” I’d say to myself in the mirror. “That’s just the body I’m in. I know I’m in there somewhere. And someday when I start to show, people won’t even recognize who I am.”

I just prayed that that “someday” wouldn’t take forever to get here.

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Looking back, I was about the age 15 when I really starting going downhill. My school work started to become more difficult. Not because I was getting into higher grade work, but because my concentration was getting worse, and my eagerness to learn seemed to be melting away. My ambition and drive began to slowly vanish, and I became more withdrawn from everything. I pretty much had no interest to do anything. Oh, I still had dreams of the things I would’ve liked to do, but it was way too much effort to even attempt anything. It just seemed like I was drained of EFFORT.

I developed anxiety, low self-esteem, and began chewing my nails more than ever.  Migraines became the agony to dread, and I had trouble falling asleep into the dark, lonely depths of the night.

No more was I the girl who would run and play outside all day, building forts in the woods and letting my imagination run wild. No more was smile and laughter a frequent occurrence. I was not depressed in the normal sense, but I felt like my whole body was being depressed. 

Everyone else seemed to grow smarter and their personalities bigger. But me, I seemed to be at a stand-still. It seemed as if the world was holding up a gigantic STOP sign for me, while everyone else got a green light.

Each day I felt like I was getting smaller and smaller on God’s map. Life literally felt like it was passing me by. As the days floated away one by one, I’d find myself wishing I could’ve actually lived in them, rather than just endured them.

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I am a severe nutty nerd when it comes to natural health and natural healing. I do not believe in using medications to suppress symptoms, because that does not cure the root problem: it only lets it worsen until the medicine can no longer curb the symptoms and suddenly you feel worse than ever. I believe that if you have some negative symptoms, it is your body’s natural way of telling you something is wrong with you. Then the cause of the symptoms should be found, and the root cause repaired.

Doctors these days of western medicine seem as if that is all they can work with: medicine. They can find symptoms and treat the symptoms with medicine, but they rarely treat the root cause and cure it. This causes you countless trips to the hospital, years of medical bills, and continued pain and disease, while the doctors get rich and you get poor. I am not trying to dis doctors here and what they do for their patients, but I feel like doctors and people alike are both slightly naïve to a point. And while they are honestly working from the heart and doing what they believe to be the absolute best for themselves and others, they have only been told and taught half of the story. There are of course those few fantabulous doctors who go beyond their college schooling and research and learn on their own.

I could go on for hours about this and end up way off track, so let me get on with my own health story.

I was about 13 or 14 (I can’t remember…my memories of my early teens are kind of jumbled together) when I took my mom’s Natural Home Remedies book off the shelf in hopes of finding a cure for my migraines.

I had been having severe, debilitating migraines for some time, and they were—and still have been—the worst pain I have ever endured in my life.

First, my right hand, the right side of my tongue and the right side of my face would go numb. Then my eyesight would go weird, and my depth perception would be way off. I would also get a little blind in my right eye. I wouldn’t be able to think straight, talk straight, read, or write anything that’d make sense.

The numbness in my hand and face would last about 5 minutes, and then as it receded the pain would start. (I later began to recognize the numbness right away, and would be scrambling to find pain killer—even though it never worked—and to let Mom know that I was getting a migraine.) The pain would be mostly in my left temple—a throbbing, pulsing pain that was also constant in a weird way. It literally felt as if a giant, metal hand was holding me by the head and squeezing. It’d be so bad that when I would “cry”, I could only whimper.

When I think back to those days, all I can remember is the pain. I was usually quite out of it (I couldn’t read, couldn’t have too much noise going on, too much light was unbearable) and was in bed all day when a migraine happened along, and so all that I felt, heard or saw on those days was pain. You can imagine how frustrated I was when pain meds did nothing, and high caffeinated drinks only shortened the length of the migraines.

So when I saw the Natural Home Remedies book on the shelf, out it came and immediately I was searching for a cure.

I found out that zinc helped acne, cooked oatmeal put in a tub (eww…) gave you soft skin, and vitamin E oil helped sunburn, but nothing on migraines. Then I happened across a section on vitamin B-complex for headaches.

Of course I started taking B-complex as soon as I could get it. My migraines became fewer and far between, until guess what? They went away altogether! It was a major improvement to my life to say the least.

I have only had a couple migraines since then these last few years, and I can pretty much say why I had them (experimenting with L-tyrosine for energy, and too little sleep coupled with caffeine.) I have also found a natural pain killer that works a thousand times better than Ibuprofen or Tylenol for me: DPA.

Around 15 and 16, I started getting so fatigued from the smallest things. I would wake in the morning tired, be tired all day, then go to bed exhausted. It got to the point where I had so little energy, I had to take breaks walking up the stairs. Just the thought of having to go downstairs stressed me out, ‘cause then I knew I’d have to walk back up again.

I could barely do my school work, I ended up doing way less than my share of the chores (sorry kids! I would’ve done ten times my share of chores if I could’ve had energy in exchange…), I had to cut down work to two or three 3 hour work shifts a week, and even that drained me to the point of almost falling asleep at work.

I wasn’t depressed, but I just didn’t have the energy to laugh or have fun anymore. I started spending so much time in my room, because it was too much effort to visit or do stuff, and the noise and bickering were too much for me to handle.

I had to stop going Kyds, and I ended up having almost no social life at all. When I would get so stir crazy that I just went Kyds anyway, I would have hardly any fun at all, because I’d just end up being too tired to have fun anyway. I’d also end up paying for it for the next week by having even less energy than before.

I started getting tension headaches which would start every morning and sometimes even last through the night. My knee joints would ache, my neck and lower back ached, I had acid reflux and some nasty burps, IBS, bloating, I would get foot cramps and Charlie horses in my legs, heart palpitations, panic attacks, shortness of breath, and at times when I would get so tired that all I could do was lay down and feel my blood pulsing through my body, my whole body would ache like one big, decaying tooth.

I went to a very good Natural Holistic doctor, and she put me on a diet of no grains, no sugar, no caffeine, and I ate fruit, veggies, meat, and a little dairy. I started taking 3,000 mg omega-3 worth of fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D, liposomal vitamin C, an adrenal complex, and I continued taking my B-complex (ain’t no way you’ll ever get me to stop taking that!).

Within two months I found myself running up the stairs at times. No more did I have to take breaks! I was able to work a little more, and though I still was not able to get much school done, I found I could concentrate better enough to notice. I was sleeping better at night, I started spending more time with the family, and I started sitting up at the table rather than leaning against the wall. I started laughing more, my eyes stopped looking quite so tired and the black rims underneath disappeared. ALL of my other symptoms went away. It was so drastic and amazing…I still say that if the only thing that had happened in those two months were the headaches disappearing, I would be happy. Of course it was way better than that, and I am so grateful!

Still to this day I eat a million times better than I used to. It is still strange to me sometimes when I eat something sweet and it does not even taste good. Or when I drink pop and I can taste the chemicals in it. Or how I actually like salad and vegetables and I prefer them to pizza or a greasy burger with a huge bun.

Of course I eat something crappy now and then, but whenever I do, I find out how it was nowhere near as good as I thought it was going to be, and I go back to the more satisfying food. And obviously chocolate will always be in my diet (the darker the better!), but it’s not like I feel the need to chow down a whole bar like I used to do.

A few other strange things about eating healthy are: I never stuff myself anymore. My body has learned how to sense when enough is enough, and I never feel over-filled or sick after eating (even on holidays.)

I have way less body and poop odor (sorry for the unmentionable word). Of course I don’t smell like a rose all the time (and my crap never smells like roses), but I don’t even have to wear deodorant all the time, and I don’t have to plug my nose on the pot anymore. If I eat crappier (more sugar, grains, processed food, etc.) then I can smell it on my body (or when I go bathroom!) the next day or so. Kind of strange, but that does tell you something about cleaner eating.

My teeth are way cleaner as well, to the point where sometimes I forget to brush. If I eat sugar or grains my teeth feel NASTY, and caked with plaque. I have only had one teeny tiny cavity that I got filled years ago without any shot or pain killer, and nothing more since, so I think that my teeth are doing pretty well and the amount of mouth bacteria is quite low. Yeah, I am kind of descriptive, oops.

In a perfect world, I would be totally cured, healthy, 100% happy, with a perfect life. The world is not perfect though, so that is not the case. I have tried yoga, breathing, Brainwave Entertainment (binaural beats), cleanses, thyroid hormone, a parasite zapper, you name it. I have also been to see a very skilled chiropractor and have felt better to some degree, but when something doesn’t really help then I stop doing it. (Said one wise person: When you aren’t getting the optimal results, you aren’t going to start getting different results if you keep on doing the same dang thing.)

There has hardly been a day when I’m not either researching different illnesses or health cure, or trying something new. Though I have come a long way, I still have quite low energy and it is still debilitating to a degree.

I have decided to take this year off from school to figure out my health, and to work and enjoy my free time, and that is exactly what I have been doing.

About a month ago, Mom started reading about the importance of reflexes, and reflex integration. When my mom has a question about something, she reads anything and everything she can get her hands on about that particular subject, until she has become pretty much a master in the field. (I happily announce that I have picked up this trait from her, though I am not as good at it as her yet.)

One day when I stopped at home to see the little kids and the rest of the family, she told me stuff about her new subject, reflexology. Of course it was interesting to me (anything natural health is), so I looked at the book a bit. According to the book—and some references online—I have (or have had) every single symptom of the Fear Paralysis reflex (FPR) and many of the Moro reflex! I was so excited. (I get very excited when I find out I have something wrong with me, because that means there might be some way to cure it.) I was even more excited to find out that one of the symptoms was fatigue. Gosh, I wanted to start dancing and singing. But I held my peace.

I have since been to a really amazing lady to help me with my reflexes. Turns I was right about both reflexes: neither one has been inhibited/integrated as they should have been as an infant or child. We are still in the process of integrating them (since they can take some time to mature depending on how under-developed they are), and it has been super-duper-extremely interesting to me.

The other thing that is amazing to me is how the psychological aspect is so tied into it all. I have always been shy, quiet and timid all my life, and though I always have more to say, somehow I just can’t let it out. Of course I will always have a more quiet, pensive side to me, and I will always need my alone time, peace and silence. But I have often wondered why it was always so hard for me to just speak up when I wanted to and how sometimes I became almost mute. Turns out one of the symptoms for the FPR are selective mutism!

The FPR would also explain how I was always more sensitive to everything as a child, and the smallest things bother me: I couldn’t handle Rush Limbaugh on the radio, I could only wear stretchy pants until the age 12 (I still prefer yogas), and the littlest things would/will grate on my nerves. Pretty much anything will stress me out…especially the unknown. Doesn’t matter how big or small it is: bringing out the garbage to going into a new store, getting gas or meeting someone new.

I am still in the early stages of working on reflex integration and learning about it, but I really do believe I have finally found the answer to my problems. I have been learning to trust my instincts, gut feelings and whatever intuition I have over the last year, and whenever I have a feeling about something nowadays, I’m usually right. (I hope that doesn’t sound pompous, but whatever.)

I am really excited for whatever results this will bring, and I truly cannot wait for all the good it will bring. I am waiting with arms wide open for my health and life to get better, and I am so ecstatic because I know it’s going to, and so thankful for all I have learned, for all the good that has happened in my life so far, and all the great things that are yet to come!

(I know this is a very long post, but the future ones will not be quite so long...well maybe they will, I don't know! Hehehe)

Love,

Linnaia