Disabled Embodiment Through Presence
Integrating the Lessons of The Great Mother
This publication is lovingly crafted by a single pair of disabled hands. I am not fast, because sometimes I cannot use my hands, or sit up, or even breathe properly. If this work speaks to you, consider showing your support through becoming a paid subscriber here, my Patreon, or simply giving an offering. Also, giving a like, commenting, & sharing this essay are completely free ways to help my platform grow.
I awoke with a stiffness reminiscent of when I was a bodybuilder, working out twice a day. My neck seems morally opposed to holding up my own head. My head, annoyed by the fact that it holds a brain that acts as an antenna for storms. I know one is coming hours before I hear the thunder. Closing my eyes, I can tell it’s gonna be a big one because it’s hard to keep them open.
Embodiment has been a pretty common topic over the last few years. Countless people have discussed the importance of feeling safe in the body, somatic healing, & the power of the present moment. I started learning about embodiment almost three years ago, after my concussion, & during a convalescence that lasted much longer than expected. My left arm reminds me that my disabilities have shared this journey for even longer than that.
I was almost completely bedridden for 18 months, unable to do most anything that makes life worth living. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t draw. I couldn’t type. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t hold a book. I couldn’t watch tv. I couldn’t play video games. I couldn’t leave the apartment. I couldn’t even hold my phone. All I could do was lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying not to move too much because the pain was too great.
I began to devour podcasts & audiobooks. There’s only so much time you can spend with every one of your personal demons before you begin to unravel in the mind. The Come To Your Senses podcast by Mary Lofgren was my saving grace. She taught me about presence, cultivating pleasure, & making life beautiful. But my present moment was filled with limbs that couldn’t move without pain, pain that not even painkillers or deep breaths could touch, deep breathing that easily became wheezing, & a desire in my heart to figure out a way to escape this nightmare, wondering what I could’ve possibly done to deserve it.
Whenever I describe how my life was during this time, now that I’ve had a year of very slow, intentional movement returned to me, more than one person has said that it sounded like torture. Still more have said they would’ve killed themselves rather than live in that personal hell for even an hour, let alone a year & a half. I wonder what they expected me to say to that.
Of course I thought about it.
Being in pain, every single day, with no way to alleviate it, with precious few things that bring joy, will naturally lead to that conclusion.
Genuinely, I thought, this must be the Bad Place.
The principles of embodiment are true regardless of who implements them, though it will be harder for some than others. Ask me how I know. My body had been whispering that my life was moving too fast, that I was being too dismissive of my pain, that I needed to make changes soon or I’d regret it. Of course, I didn’t listen. It didn’t matter what my body was saying. I had bills to pay, things to do, people to see.
Oh, dear reader, if your body is whispering to you that your life is not aligned with your values or your truth, please listen before it starts to scream. My body started screaming the moment the leg of my desk chair unfastened from the base, & I fell, smacking my head on the wooden coffee table. I’d hit the thing so hard with my skull, a plank of the tabletop was pulled up by the nails. I apologized to the table. My body never stopped screaming.
The universe literally had to smack me upside the head to get me to change my disembodied ways. I live with pain every single day now. Pain that I cannot ignore. Pain that simply moved in & rearranged everything. I used to fight it, but goodness it is a pointless fight. Pain is stronger than me.
Without a job to go to, without anyone expecting much of me, without anything to mark the passage of time, every single day was the same. That was nearly harder to grasp than the pain. There was no difference between Monday or Friday or Sunday. I realized that this was actually what freedom felt like, & it was deeply unsettling. I had complete control of my time, & I had no idea what to do with it.
I’d been an astrology enthusiast for a long while, but I decided to turn to it in the ways the ancients did: as a way to make sense of the Saturnian burden we call time. I started with the days of the week, focusing on the themes of the ruling planet & where that planet rules my chart. Then I began following the cycles of the moon & the Wheel of the Year. I didn’t realize how much the earth & the cosmos were speaking to us til I slowed down enough to hear them.
The lessons of the Great Mother, the goddess of many names, are ones of subtle magic, of being instead of doing, of enjoying what is already here instead of striving for elsewhere & else-when. My hands pulsate with my quickening heartbeat, a gift from the coffee I made this morning, interrupting my thought process. I don’t often drink coffee, but sipping a hot, brown, morning potion is part of my daily ritual, & running out of creamer changes the taste of my yerba mate more than a mocha, & the autism would rather a different beverage than to make the usual wrong. This, too, is presence.
Understanding my disabilities, with patience & grace, because they are part of me & nothing can separate us, has changed so very much for me. Because my entire life revolves around what my body is telling me, I cause myself a lot less pain. Living with pain, instead of always trying to pretend it isn’t there, has made it more bearable, though I feel like that doesn’t make much logical sense.
Pain was meant to be a signal to us that things had gone off course, that we need to slow down, take care, & pay attention. But because of the Protestant Work Ethic that has permeated this country (speaking as an American), work has become the utmost priority. Especially now that damn near everything is a subscription. We own next to nothing, & the powers that be would like us to believe that any one of us, individually, could become a millionaire, so it would be beneficial to us, actually, if the ultra-wealthy paid no taxes & those tax dollars did nothing for us. We exist, in their view, as cogs in their machines, the only reason for our lives being to spend as much of it in their companies, or their factories, as possible. Then, entertaining ourselves with their streaming services & their apps, making more money for them even as we attempt to rest.
Disabled people are very inconvenient for that narrative. Many of us cannot work, or our work is so very different than what we have been told ‘work’ is supposed to be. I can only use my hands at a computer for maybe 30 minutes a day. The bulk of my writing is done on an ipad because it takes less effort for my hands to use a touch screen than to even press the smooth buttons of my hand-me-down laptop. When I put together episodes of the podcast, I have to do it at my desktop, which is doubly challenging because that includes sitting up in a chair. It takes me days or weeks to do things that many able-bodied people could do in an afternoon.
Even now, as I write about disability & the importance of listening to the body, my hands are beginning to ache, & my mind wants to keep going, to push through. I am a creative person, genuinely loving to make things, especially with my hands. Making myself stop before I hurt, before I put extra strain on them, & risk not being able to use them for days is really hard. I don’t want to stop. I want to just keep going & going.
I find it so confusing that people think the disabled are lazy, when I’ve found most of us would like to do a great deal more in our days than we are able. This essay by Vox explains that well & made me cry more than once.
But just think about it, dear reader, how much would you get done in a day if you couldn’t use your hands? If you had to ration how much activity those hands did just so you could keep using them for longer than a moment?
Every time you text.
Every time you type.
Every time you scroll.
Every time you hold a cup, or utensil, or book, or pen.
Every time you pet your cat, or dog, or rabbit, or snake.
If each one of these caused pain, how would you prioritize? Would you pet your cat less to get more work done? Forego eating to edit a spreadsheet? Not text anyone so you could write? And that’s just for the hands.
I got lost in my explanations of hand usage that I forgot sitting up is not an indefinite activity. Having to readjust, lean back on pillows because holding up my own head is a feat. It’s only when I lean back that I realize how much effort it took for my spine to fight the forces of gravity so as not to collapse in on itself. My hands tingle, beginning to shake slightly from overuse.
Frustration is a common occurrence in my days. I’ve realised that I’m never going to get back to pre-concussion level productivity, because that was an unsustainable pace. However, I do lament often. My left arm has stopped working for today, so I use only my right to finish this thought.
I spent so many years ignoring my body’s signals that it started to just shut things down to force me to stop. I took two weeks off writing this essay because I sprained my wrist, recalling all those times in my essays where I mentioned its pain, its whispers. Productivity is bullshit if you have to be in pain to do it, or cause your body so much damage it shuts down. This is one lesson I’m still learning, because it’s a hard one.
Your goals & ambitions are worthless if you have no body to do them in. Pushing through can only get you so far before you burn out, or worse. People tend to forget they can become disabled at any time. If you’ve ever wondered if you’d benefit from a mobility aid, or braces, or any other accommodations (even without an official diagnosis), do it. See how you can help yourself now, before anything gets worse. Able-bodied people rarely think about those things, & you are taking nothing from ‘actually disabled’ people by bracing your wrists when you type, or laying down more than you sit.
Always listen to the body.
Or else, it might stop talking to you.
