Cuts Deep
You have passed the low point of a dormant, stagnating situation. Improvement will now come naturally … a turn for the better is occurring without anyone’s having willed it, planned it, or arranged for it. It occurs on its own, in its own slow time, in its own quiet way …. Fu Returning – IChing reading, May 31, 2008
It had all the earmarking of a mythical wound, the inch long deep gash on my leg that had reduced me to crawling on all fours. In the moment the cup handle fell away from the mug (as if it was just time to do that) and I stuffed it and the mug down into the trash bag, something was being lined up. A few days later, I was carrying the bag down the cellar stairs, feeling distracted and irritated, when it swung against my leg (in the area of the Achilles tendon) and stabbed me.
I called for help as the blood gushed. “Joe, I need your help! I need your help!” Putting my thumb on the site of injury to stop the bleeding, I was stunned to feel how deep the cut was.
A sprinkle of Cayenne instantly stopped the bleeding. A butterfly-band aid held it closed. Later, after cleaning it with saline solution, fresh comfrey compresses and antibiotic cream would be used.
A few hours after the injury, I limped off to Zephyr Farm for my girlfriend’s son’s college graduation party. There, I complained to anyone who would listen that injuring my left ankle has been a reoccurring theme in my life, one that I was trying to better understand. “Some women repeat getting involved with men who abuse them, I just injure my ankle,” I said to someone. I knew that, according to psychology, negative life scenarios are repeated for the chance to heal them. I suspected that my reoccurring ankle injuries played into an unconscious belief, programmed in early childhood, of being powerless and helpless.
I was told by two physician’s assistants at the party that my leg would feel worse the next day, and it did. I woke up the morning after the accident and discovered that I couldn’t walk. I laughed out loud to myself at how ridiculous I must have looked crawling to the bathroom on my hands and knees. The act of crawling immediately connected me to an old memory.
At the age of seven, while visiting my grandparents in Hialeah for the summer, I sprained my ankle and couldn’t walk. For a couple of weeks, I limped around or let someone older carry me. My foot hurt and my play was limited, but at the beach, I was amazed at how buoyant I was in the ocean. In the water, I felt like myself, at home again. My happiness didn’t last. Towards the end of the day I looked around and discovered that my grandfather and the cousins I had come to the beach with were gone. Maybe they had carried our stuff to the car and were planning to return for me. I never did find out. In my seven year old reality, they had forgotten me. I was crying and crawling on all fours in the sand when a woman and her husband came to my rescue. They carried me to the parking lot where I was reunited with family members.
Being left on the beach when I was seven wasn’t a primary trauma. It was a re-enactment from when I was truly helpless and was left as an infant for weeks at a time, first in a hospital (for burns that resulted in a ring of scars around each ankle) and then with a family friend. Emotional hurts can create lifelong sensitivities and like physical hurts they tend to get bumped into over and over. Since the beach episode at seven years old, I’ve broken my toe, cut a toe, and had another serious ankle sprain (all on the left side). All of these injuries oddly occurred days before I was due to go to the beach, the place I feel most at home, having grown up on a small beach town peninsula. The morning I was stabbed in the ankle, Joe had announced an opening in his schedule and his plan to drive us to the beach. Could his announcement have inadvertently bumped the replay button on an old unconscious program?
“Adults help children. Even Strangers. I’m an adult who helps children,” I wept to my husband after retelling the story of being left on the beach. We were sitting on the porch. He, a trained counselor, was administering EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing), a therapeutic technique that involves focusing on a traumatic event while simultaneously following the movements of the therapist’s waving and snapping fingers.
He reminded me how powerfully I had called for help. Not only did I acknowledge with full body knowing that I was no longer a helpless child needing attention, I vowed to use this last injury as the impetus to heal both my physical and emotional wounds.
June 3rd, 2008 12:25 pm
Glad you see a tad of humor but isn’t that a freakish accident. I can think of worse scenarios though like had you fallen on the bag, hit your face or an important neck vein- I bet it is throbbing- I see you , too are a believer in cayenne- I have digestive problems as a result of cancer and cayenned sometimes is the only cure- and for an infection that lingers..bye now the old wife..
June 3rd, 2008 12:26 pm
The Achilles Tendon is a really bad bad place to cut or inhure in any way,….(Perhaps you sould see a doctor…? Sorry, I’m sure you know what you need to do, my dear…lol)
I have a friend who hurt his Achilles Tendon and had to be operated on and was in a cast for 6 or 8 weeks….!
Interesting about your childhood traumas, and their possible future ramifications. Hope you are able to exorcise these things in a way that makes your present and future better.
June 3rd, 2008 12:36 pm
It didn’t cut my tendon, only the flesh and some of the muscle at the Achilles tendon area. It would be much more serious if it had.
June 3rd, 2008 1:11 pm
No wonder I like Joe so much – I’m an EMDR therapist too. It’s great great stuff. Really changes people’s lives. I’m am doubly glad you have him.
Oh, I am so sorry you are injured. So very very sorry. What an awful thing. ((hug)) I do hope your ankle, and your heart, heal.
June 3rd, 2008 2:24 pm
Sorry about the cut but love your insight! I’ve been pondering similar things of late.
According to Louise Hay, author of “You Can Heal Your Life”, ankles represent the ability to receive pleasure. You should say this affirmation:
I deserve to rejoice in life. I receive all the pleasure life has to offer!
Love,
Susan
June 3rd, 2008 2:38 pm
Thanks, Susan. I would think that ankles also represent the ability to stand on ones own two feet, and stand up for something.
It’s amazing to me how life’s events dovetail meaning.
June 3rd, 2008 5:23 pm
Fascinating. I have been mantraed by an old friend that life delivers you the same challenges until you learn from it or a new strategy to deal. Hadn’t heard it from any other direction but him before.
EMDR sounds fascinating too. Everyone’s working thru some things on a few levels. All is remedy of thrash for it in one direction or another, or a way of thriving despite. Situ or filters being relative.
My mom proudly retelling how they abandoned me until I freaked out to teach me a lesson about straggling probably had as big of effect in her reciting it to me as the original experience. Her informing me that I was a naughty child and a properly fearful child after that was priming that until the paint filled in all the delicate carving…but each day we scrape back what other’s actions paint us with and recarve and redecorate ourselves how we choose. It’s a process of covering and recovering and uncovering.
June 3rd, 2008 6:30 pm
Your feet look just like Daddy’s in this picture.
I hope you are on the road to recovery in all aspects!! Love you xo
June 3rd, 2008 8:18 pm
I have to remember the cayenne pepper thing! Bless your heart I hate you got hurt. I was in the hospital for a month when I was 18months old for burns. But I don’t remember anything but I know my mom wasn’t able to visit (she kind of had a nervous breakdown kind of thing) and my grandmas took turns caring for me. I didn’t like to be alone until I was older. Over 30 I guess. But maybe that is why I am not the touchy feely kind? The EMDR stuff sounds intriguing!
June 3rd, 2008 8:48 pm
I get a bit nauseated just thinking about the whole incident. I don’t do pain well. Feel better soon and check in Friday…I’ll be posting about the medical qualities of pepper.
June 4th, 2008 12:11 am
I hope you’ll be okay, Colleen. What a freak accident that was. I have injured my left foot 3-4 times. I always wondered what that meant, too.
June 4th, 2008 6:31 am
so sorry to hear about your accident and pain. i injured my achilles tendon a few years ago – a bad strain of the tendon. it took right at 2 years for it to totally heal, even with physical therapy and gentle stretching exercises. it did not hurt as much after 6-8 months, but there was always some level of discomfort for about 2 years until it was fully healed. muscles heal fairly quickly though, much more quickly than tendons…so your pain hopefully will be gone in about 8-10 days.
i wonder if you have experienced amplified fears of abandonment as an adult since you had those experiences in early childhood and infancy? seems like they could leave their mark. i had an early hospitalization (3 yrs. old) which i think affected me long term.
June 4th, 2008 7:08 am
What a bad thing! I hope you feel better soon. Your insight is very … insightful. 🙂 You’re lucky to have a husband who can help you out. My hope for you is that your left ankle never again experiences trauma.
June 4th, 2008 10:53 am
I never allowed myself to let my abandonment issues surface, so I wasn’t aware of them, until I got with Joe and in the safety of his love they came up and we have been working with them ever since. I am so much better now than when we started. Acknowledging and being aware of these issues gives me some control over them. They are just an aspect of me and do not define the true me. In fact, I have gotten to the place where I have seen those events as something like a necessary life wounding (specific to me) to strengthen and shape me, giving me the right sensitivities for being an advocate for children.
June 4th, 2008 3:37 pm
Ohhh ouch Colleen! Would you believe my daughter did a very similar thing to her left leg just two weeks ago? She was cleaning out empty beer bottles to send back to the distributor for her boss (she bartends). He suggested to her that if she take them into her own car she could cash them in and keep the money (because he hated waiting for the distributor to get there for pick-up). So she was dragging the bag out to her car and apparently one of the bottles had broken inside. SCRAPE… deeply into her left inner calf. What a mess.
I NEVER heard of this cayenne thing. Clearly it works great! Can you tell me more? Doesn’t it burn/sting? Is it typical cayenne that you buy off the supermarket shelf? She bled for three days from this wound. The doctor couldn’t stitch it becuase it was so wide. Finally butterflies and a stress bandage helped.
Poor you. So glad it’s not more serious!
June 4th, 2008 3:51 pm
Is she walking yet? Did she need an antibiotic? I had to up my Vit C to a gram every hour because the red was spreading and I was feeling slightly feverish.
You can use regular powderd cayenne from the spice rack. Just sprinkle a little on. It stings at first but it is not abrasive, so it doesn’t burn and the sting doesn’t last. It’s amazing. I don’t travel without it. Google it.
Four days into it, I still can’t walk.
So good to hear from you, Weary!
June 5th, 2008 2:40 pm
Colleen, how could you go and injure yourself when I’m not around to play scrabble with you? I’ll call you for a game as soon as I’m back in town. The ocean is wonderful and Kyla is a born again mermaid. We miss you, though! Hope you’re healing well. See you soon.
June 5th, 2008 2:54 pm
Hi Mara, I was just emailing Kamal (physican’s assistant) to find out if I can put my leg in the ocean. We’re supposed to be headed that way on Monday (if I feel up to it) so that Joe can get a meeting in on the Teen Meditation Retreat (the sponsor lives near Virginia Beach). I know the ocean will do it good but I also know the butterfly bandaid shouldn’t be taken off for a couple of weeks. I had to start a short round of antibiotics. In one day it has helped my stamina. I guess I was dealing with a low grade infection or fighting one.
Mermaid Power!! Scrabble heals!!
June 8th, 2008 6:19 pm
Hi Colleen… just an update – SJ’s injury is better, finally. It cost her two nights from work but then she had two days off so altogether the four were enough to regroup.
She did get antibiotics and a tetanus shot too! The scar is pretty ugly…
Thanks SO much for the cayenne tip! I had no idea… I will be sure to keep some in the house.
June 9th, 2008 10:08 am
Like Susan I am always curious to see what Louise Hay has to say about the various parts of the body affected by illness or injury. She doesn’t address the Achilles per se, but says legs carry us forward. Lower leg problems are connected to a fear of the future, not wanting to move. And feet (ankles being that place where the legs meet the feet might be a combo of things) represent our understanding of ourselves, of others, of life. Looks like you are trying to “stand-under” this experience to gain your best understanding. I hope by now you are feeling better.
Love,
Rosemary