Moving The Balancing Path and General Update
I must apologize that things have been so quiet around here lately, and even quieter over at The Balancing Path on Patheos Pagan. Part of that is due to the tasks involved in moving The Balancing Path to this site, but there are many reasons for lack of posts, including my health, so towards the bottom of this post will be a general health update for those who are following my chronic illness journey.
Moving The Balancing Path
One of the primary factors for moving The Balancing Path is changes at Patheos. Back at the end of April, the manager of the Patheos Pagan channel stepped down and Patheos took direct control of the channel. The transitions was… let’s say, less than ideal, and the opposite of communicative. Contractual obligations prevent me from “disparaging” Patheos or its parent company (which is evangelical Christian), so I cannot go into detail, which is also part of the problem for me. One of the primary ways I have dealt with my childhood trauma is with complete honesty. I do not keep secrets, and I do not tolerate dishonesty or obfuscation from anyone or anything in my life, because those things are stressful and triggering for me.
Since I prefer direct and complete honesty, I have been unable to sort out a way to publicly express how I feel about the changes without traipsing into the territory of arguably or definitely “disparaging”. I am upset and frustrated, and it shows. That frustration and upset means I cannot ignore their behavior and continue as I have in the past without causing myself harm and violating some of my core boundaries.
Mortellus of A Crow and the Dead was able to express some issues in a way that is far more eloquent than I can manage, so if you are curious, I encourage you to read their post, Feeling Really Positive (that this is click-bait). While you are there, their blog focused on death, grief, and trauma from a pagan perspective is top-notched, and I highly recommend it.
Every single article I had posted to Patheos is now available to read on this website, add-free, and indexed. I made small typo and link edits to almost every article, and a handful received larger edits that are noted as such. Re-reading and editing every post took a fair amount of time and energy, but it was worth it. Not only will finding, sharing, and reading my articles be easier, but this will make it easier for me to keep some articles updated with current links, like Spells for Black Lives Matter. That part of my website even has its own URL to take you straight there: http://TheBalancingPath.blog/
All future writing I do will be posted in full, directly to this blog, and indexed with the old articles so you can browse by topic in addition to searching the website for exactly what you want. If you share any of my articles, please share the version here on this site, instead of the Patheos copy.
Zoom Presentations and Writer’s Block
I would like to say that doing Zoom presentations, like at Between the Veils or being a guest on CTCW’s Otherworldly, was partially responsible, but honestly, I think that is only a minor factor. If anything, having those scheduled commitments ensured that I still did something in May and earlier in June. Under normal circumstances, having that kind of a commitment would cause a small hiccup in posting, just because it takes energy that I might otherwise spend writing, but I have had writer’s block something fierce. I honestly do not think I would have been able to write anything anyway.
Sometimes I respond to stress by writing up a storm. That was what happened in the early part of the COVID lockdown. It helps me get everything out. For some reason, in recent weeks I have had a maelstrom of thoughts running circles in my head, but have not been able to coherently put them to words. It is frustrating, but I also know it will not last forever.
To make things even more complicated, I have also been having cognitive hiccups that sometimes make it difficult to write coherent sentences, or cause me to write one thing when I am thinking another, or make me type like I was just learning how. This is directly related to my health problems, which I will get into below, and it has meant that on days when I did try to write, I sometimes ended up with gibberish, or something that is painfully less eloquent than I prefer. That includes multiple attempts to bring you this update in the past month.
So Much On My Mind
I also have had a lot of things going on in my life in general, and a lot of things on my mind. Each of those things is that much less energy that I have to spend on writing, because in all honesty, I do not have very many spoons to go around. Most days I have 1-6 usable hours total (not predictable how many on any given day), which includes taking time for essential tasks like cooking, eating, and cleaning up after myself.
If I end up spending all of that energy on things not related to this blog, as has usually been the case in the past couple months, then there is nothing left for writing, even if I technically “have the time”. This has also been the main culprit for why I have not yet finished the book proposal so I can submit Toxic Blood to publishers, and why I learned many, many years ago that I should avoid deadlines whenever possible. It only leads to disappointment.
I know that is awfully vague, but honestly a great deal of what has been on my mind involves reevaluating parts of my practice, how I work with deities, and whether or not to work more closely with a couple of them. I cannot write about any of it effectively while still in the middle of sorting it out, and although I do not keep secrets, I also do not put the energy into fully online documenting everything I do in my practice. That means I may or may not ever write about it in detail.
Other things I am working on have to do with shadow work and processing of childhood trauma, which is a lifelong endeavor. Having Toxic Blood ready to send to publishers prompted me to get involved with online support groups, and the interactions I have had in those groups have helped me to come to terms with more issues, including investigating the likelihood that I have CPTSD. What of those issues I decide to make public will likely be incorporated into Toxic Blood before publication, or make their way anecdotally into related articles.
COVID Vaccination
I received my first shot at the end of March, and the second shot at the end of April. I want to make it clear that I am very glad to be vaccinated! I will get a booster if and when the CDC says I need to!
If you are not vaccinated, do it as soon as possible! It may save your life and the lives of others!
Because of my autoimmune health issues, it is extremely likely that catching COVID would kill or at least further disable me. I truly do NOT need that on top of the rest of my health problems. However, also because of my autoimmune issues and my body’s intolerance for the kind of hormonal fluctuations it causes in people who menstruate, the vaccine kicked me on my ass. Seriously, I have to avoid all soy products because the hormonal influence adversely affects my symptoms, and that is far less impact than the current COVID vaccines.
After the first vaccine I felt slightly under the weather and had a very sore arm. No big deal. After the second vaccine, I got the roller coaster of 36 hours of misery, which although far preferable to the real thing, was not fun. That, however, triggered a serious uptick in what had already been slowly worsening symptoms from my chronic illness.
This was not unpredictable. My body is autoimmune in a way that means it refuses to stop freaking out about things it really does not need to worry about. Whenever something happens that is worth my body worrying about, be it a cold, a bumped shin, food poisoning, etc., it predictably goes into overdrive. If I have a physical cause for pain, it amps up the chronic neurological pain. If I have a headache that causes brain fog, it amps that brain fog into overdrive. Then, it takes my body far longer than it should to turn off the alarms and calm down, long after the initial injury has healed.
General Health Update
If you are curious about my chronic illness saga, you can read about it under the “health” tag on this blog.
I have had to admit to myself that my health is once again declining, albeit at a much slower pace than when I initially fell ill. My recovery peaked about three years ago, and I have been declining for about two years. I can no longer dismiss the downswings as the typical ups and downs of having a chronic illness, combined with protracted times of stress.
Stress is my single biggest trigger for high symptoms, so the slow decline was easy to dismiss as a result of the fascist slide in the USA, COVID, and financial stresses that prevent me from engaging in full treatment for my illness, let alone being able to fully mitigate my disabilities. At this point, though, the USA is at least for the moment standing still. We need things to move in a positive direction (i.e., abolish the filibuster) in order to avert a fascist takeover in the future, but standing still at least is a chance to breath. Also, since I am fully vaccinated, I am no longer living in terror that I might catch COVID and probably die.
So, although I am still stressed, it is nowhere near the levels of stress that I had been enduring for years. I expected that would improve my symptoms, but instead I have been experiencing the opposite.
Overall, my pain and fatigue levels are higher on average than they were two years ago. The sleep disturbance has been horrible with increasing frequency, even though it had almost gone away. I have also seen a return of symptoms that I thought had gone away entirely, like seizures and cognitive hiccups.
Seizures
The seizures are the most tangible illustration I can give for the overall decline in my health. I had not had any seizures in a couple years. They returned about a year ago, but happened infrequently, maybe a couple times a month. Towards the holidays, the seizures would happen in spurts, like they did when I was at my sickest. I would get a bunch of them for a few days to a couple weeks, and then be seizure free for a few weeks.
This meant that the tremors in my hands, which had also gone almost entirely away, came back as bad as ever, fully preventing me from doing any drawing or artwork, no matter how much I would like to. It is bad enough that you can see the shakiness in almost all of my sigil drawings from the past year.
A couple weeks after the second vaccine shot, the seizures started happening daily. Sometimes it was multiple seizures in a day, or seizures that would last 30-90 minutes, and trust me, that eats up all my fatigue-addled spoons for the day, no matter what else I wanted or needed to do. The worst bout was preceded by a seizure that included pain manifestation, which has never happened to me before. And all of this is despite being on a high-CBD marijuana tincture daily for pain, which also helps with most types of seizures.
Thankfully, I have only had one short and mild seizure in the past week, so hopefully I will be getting a longer break from that.
I did see a neurologist about the seizures several years ago, and he was able to determine that they are not causing brain damage. I thought I had posted about this as a health update on my blog, but apparently not. I was having a lot of cognitive hiccups at the time, so I really should not be surprised, but I am disappointed.
Essentially, my seizures are mild enough that without brain damage the neurologist could not diagnose me with a specific type of seizure, although he did verify I was indeed having seizure or pseudo-seizure events. Essentially, it will affect only one or two muscles at a time, causing them to contract. This yanks the whole muscle group in the direction of the contraction, but the other muscles in the group are working normally, so I do not lose complete control. I lose fine control, and will jerk around as I relax to try and help the seizure pass. If I tense up enough, I can even prevent most of the jerking, but that is exhausting in and of itself, and only serves to prolong the total time I have the seizure.
So, no, I am not going to wound myself having a seizure, and I do not have brain damage. What it is, is insanely inconvenient, feels awful, is exhausting, and can prevent me from going to sleep if it happens when I go to bed, as is often the case. It also leads to increased tremors and cases of the dropsies, meaning I can sometimes break things I attempt to carry or hold.
Looking for a Culprit
Since the bacterial infection (anaplasma phagocytophilum, or anaplasmosis) that caused this whole chronic situation is long cleared out of my body, I believe this slow decline is probably the result of some other health condition that has crept up on me unnoticed, hiding in my chronic symptoms. This makes sense to me, since anytime I experience additional physical stressors, it always triggers increased chronic symptoms.
I changed insurance providers shortly before COVID hit, and was intending to do all the normal health screenings a person with a uterus should do in their 40’s. I set up with a new doctor, but when COVID hit I couldn’t risk going in. I live in a heavily Trumper, COVID-denying area, and have 0 faith in the humans around me taking sane or considerate precautions. Now that I am fully vaccinated, I can finally get going on those sorts of screenings.
First, though, I made myself an appointment with a dentist. I have a molar that has ached for years, and a chronic infection in a tooth or the gums can cause systemic stress and increased inflammation, both of which are core to my chronic symptoms misfiring. The tooth itself looked fine, and astonishingly I had no cavities, even though I haven’t been to a dentist in about 15 years (ah, the joys of being poor in the USA). My gums, however, need a lot of help. A simple cleaning was not going to cut it, and in less than a week I will be getting a deep cleaning and treatment for the generalized gum infection. They are expecting it to take 2-3 hours to clear the significant bacterial deposits that are under my gums.
It is my sincere hope that clearing up the problems in my mouth will be the key to getting back on track for my recovery. I should know in the next couple months whether or not that did the trick.
Regardless, though, I do still need to go to a doctor and get some health screenings. I am pre-menopausal at this point, and even though I am 43 I have never had a mammogram. It has also been more than five years since I have had a skin cancer screening, which as a freckled white person with no pigment in spots and more serious sunburns in my life than I could count, I should be doing very regularly. Seriously, I look wild under blacklight, with the spots of no pigment whatsoever shining purple like reverse freckles.
But, with my energy limitations, it has to be one thing at a time. So, dentist first, and then I will make an appointment with the doctor. Thank goodness I am on both Medicare and MediCal (California’s version of Medicaid), so I have the ability to see doctors at all. I just wish they did not make it so difficult to use.
Looking Ahead
I am expecting a significant amount of my energy to continue going into addressing my health, shadow work, and very personal aspects of my practice.
I am hoping that I will be able to get some of these thoughts out and present them to you on a more regular basis again. I am also always open to doing more podcasts and being a guest on vlogs. The open format is fun, and it has been nice to do things that are at least somewhat interactive.
I miss doing rituals and still love the idea of doing videos of my own, but given everything else I do not expect to have the energy for such things in the near future. They are still on the table for the further future, though.
I very much want to be doing art again. I have several pieces that are screaming at me, but with the seizures and tremors as severe as they have been, I do not see myself being physically capable of making them for some time yet.
I also very much want to put together a new bones bag for divination, but that, too, has fallen prey to not enough energy, and it is not a high enough priority to happen in the near future. Plus, I need new glasses to make it easier to see the detailed work of embroidery, so that is another thing to put on my mundane to-do list.
I will be posting some additional sigils and creating new sigil graphics for some of the older ones. I made a sigil in May that I have been wanting to share with you, and I have dug up a few older ones that might be of interest, most of which I created before I started The Balancing Path.
That is about all for now. Even if there are further gaps in my posts, rest assured I am not going anywhere, and have no intention of stopping for more than a needed rest.