Wellness and Writing Connections Conference 2008 Friday

Acrophobia
Altophobia
Hypsophobia
Vertigo

I feel like singing “One of these things is not like the others.” Often when I tell people I have vertigo they immediately say, “Oh. So you’re afraid of heights?”

No. I have a healthy respect for heights, meaning I don’t like to hanging by my fingertips from a cliff or stand on the window ledge of a skyscraper. Then again, who does? What having vertigo means is that inside my head I get signals, mis-messages [sic] that say the floor or chair or bed is moving. Constantly. I have good days and bad days but pretty much deal with the constant ebb and flow of my misperceptions.

This also explains why I found the Wellness and Writing Connections Conference exhausting. Between sessions I dealt with the visual stimulus of people moving and the distractions of talking. And there is so much for me to share that it will be hard to touch on it all.

The opening keynote speaker, Dr Luciano L’Abate, spoke about using writing to facilitate therapy. I remember when I was seeing a counselor at Kennesaw State University, I was also journaling a great deal. The counselor once commented on this, saying that during our sessions she would often feel she had pushed me too hard only to have me show up for the next session, having worked through so much more in my journal. What Dr L’Abate described was obviously more guided than my filling pages of my typical stream-of-consciousness stuff.

The first break-out session I participated in was with Julie Davey who volunteers at the City of Hope where she leads a “Writing for Wellness” workshop. This was the perfect starting point for me because it offered a warm introduction to the topic of writing for wellness. She shared how she became a volunteer and some of the writings of her participants. She then passed out some leaves and encouraged us to write about the leaf. Afterwards, we were invited to share our writing. I did not share what I wrote. In fact, I didn’t share anything I wrote at all the entire conference. It was enough for me to be there and writing.

The next break-out session was with Gail Radley and here is where I began touching my own pain and frustration. I chose this session knowing I would learn something that I could carry away because the focus was on “chronic pain and other health challenges.” My mother ‘s neuralgia and my vertigo are both chronic. She discussed the human need to make meaning out of experience and led us through a wonderful guided meditation.

I was able to fight the tears but they were absolutely present, something I could not hide from Ridley who approached me afterwards. What I learned is that I am not ready to accept my vertigo is incurable, that I will never be free from it, and that I feel like crying. Maybe because I haven’t given it any meaning in my life yet. Some things just take time.

The third and final break-out session for the first day was with Debra Moffit, a very soft-spoken woman who had us sit in a circle. This was challenging for me because the chairs did not have arms and without a table to lean on and with more than a little tiredness blurring my walls, I started feeling a little nauseous.

She led us through a guided meditation in which we thought about our sacred space. The place that immediately came to my mind is the yoga facility at the New Age Health Spa. I almost resisted it but then embraced it. While not my ideal, it has a quietness that I would hope to develop in my own sacred space.

After writing about what we saw/experienced during the meditation, we paired off to discuss what we wrote with another person. I was graced with sharing with Julie Davey who listened with great openness. When she shared her writing, I literally got chills at the last sentence. So beautiful was what she described, full of metaphor and inspiration. The next day she autographed a copy of her book for me in which she wrote that she would picture me in my sacred space.

By this time, I was simply too tired to remain. I would have loved to stay and watch the movie Wit. It was beyond my abilities. I went outside to wait for Rob and was joined by a lizard who bravely waited near me, shifting from bright green to a dark brown. Eventually it went away when Debra Moffit and another presenter came down the stairs.

When I came home, Rob made me something to eat after which I passed out because I was simply too tired to stay awake. I had hoped to watch Wit but I didn't even have the energy for that.