My grandmother used to utter this phrase throughout my early adolescence... all the way through my twenties and up until the time when her dementia had taken such hold as to make personal observations on the world more disjointed and fearful.
I understood what she meant; and I instinctively knew (even before my counseling training years later) that it communicated a very important component of her worldview and cognition/perspective on her aging. She was tortured by getting older. She found the journey rife with disappointment, fear, pain, grief – and ultimately approached it as something to fight against with an incredibly stubborn yet sad sort of acceptance. She believed she had no control, but rather had been consigned to a process of slow and steady devolution against which she was trapped and inert.
So I got it—as an outside observer and loved one who tried to stay as patient and present as possible, all the way up until the end. But I didn't really understand the true weight of that statement until this past year. 2012 was the year of bodily revolt; a year that began a deep questioning as to my livelihood, my sense of self and identity, my ability to care for my family, and a fear of the future.
I had always considered myself healthy. I had a early adulthood filled with physical performance, dance, an active lifestyle, and the complete absence of worry that I might ever be physically impeded. I had a relatively successful pregnancy, and our daughter was born healthy.
And then it all shifted. Not necessarily suddenly, but in the distorted-over-the-shoulder view of hindsight, it felt like falling down a hole. A deep, dark hole with no discernible bottom.
It began with my feet. The anchors of stability I always took for granted. With increasing pain, they stopped working for me... became so tender I could not walk for more than 500 feet or so, let alone dance or teach others to dance. I had to buy all new shoes; got fitted for orthodics; rearranged my schedule and routines to account for limited mobility; went to PT twice a week for months on end, still waking up each morning to gingerly hobble out of my room and attempt to begin my day on feet that did not feel like my own.
This was the lesson: An opportunity to relearn the concept of "my," of permanence, of fixed identity and self-description as truth. What's remarkable is that I began this post in 2012, and I'm finishing it in 2017. The lesson continues. The journey has morphed and twisted and gone places I could not have anticipated... but the lesson continues to be one of making peace with frailty and accepting impermanence. Particularly when it comes to an aging (and it turns out, ill) body.
May your frailties bring you revelations. May you make peace with groundlessness.
