Popular wisdom has it that we could not truly understand an event which we didn’t personally experience. While this truth is debatable, if one wishes to question it, one could. I belong to the group which is in agreement. The reason is simple: I know first hand that experiencing something on a personal level made me a better prepared listener and overall helper.
An example:
As a confused young mother I went to consult a psychologist. The first question I asked him was, “Do you have children?” At the time, I didn’t have a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and didn’t know there were many “schools of thought,” one of which was Freudian, and one of its basic principles was for the therapist to act detached, as a “blank wall.” When he refused to answer, I simply stood up and left the room.
Looking back from the perspective of a ature woman who raised two children and chose to try and understand the winding path of the human mind for as long as I could remember, I admit my first “qualifying” question should have been, “Have you helped other parents with this type of issues,” or, ” Have you had specialized training in this area?”
Why didn’t I ask those questions? I could come up with many answers but the truth is parenting two children, twenty two months apart, had nothing to do with logic and a lot to do with emotions and the need to be validated, understood and reassured that what I FELT was “normal.” I was not the only mother to feel confused after a sleepless night, that the focus of my universe shifted from ME to THEM, my daughters, and no matter how much I wished to shift it back to what it used to be, that was unlikely to happen! Little by little, with the help of my mothers’ neighborhood support group, we, together re-balanced our lives to fit the needs of our newly created “Suns” and “Stars.”
If you are still reading this article, you might ask yourself, where is she going with this…the title suggests death bringing us closer to life, not thoughts on motherhood!
If that’s what you are thinking, you couldn’t be closer to the truth, yet further from it!
They say, we are our thoughts but let’s explore what happens when what we take for granted, our capacity to think clearly, vanishes!!!
Close your eyes, take a deep breathe in and an even deeper breathe out and imagine… your brain as a shinny golden bubble, inside, there are small drawers and by God’s design, we know which drawer to open when and let out the right letters which instinctively know how to form the right words to take the correct actions at the most appropriate time.
Let’s go back to “what is the connection between motherhood and the title:
I chose the task of mothering as an example, because in my experience, there is no other more complex task in the world and it involves opening and closing so many drawers, I am in awe of all the millions of mothers who manage to juggle lives keeping some kind of order in their unique “bubbles,” as the balance of their Universe changed forever from “ME to THEM!
To accomplish this most difficult task of motherhood, our brain, our “bubble,” must be kept functional.
Now imagine, without a cautionary sign, the very mechanism which controls our actions, is shuttered! It happens so fast, you don’t know it is happening. Your “control panel,” doesn’t age slowly, it doesn’t change from gold to silver or cooper or rusts…It’s not one drawer which refuses to open, or some open, some don’t or they open half-way letting out meaningless crumbs.
In that moment, my world exploded! NO brain, no thoughts, only a billion pieces of particles, letters which desperately tried to get together and form words, meaning, to communicate! Instead, they floated around disoriented, unable to make a decision: Which way to look?
I was having a stroke!
I sat at the edge of reality not certain whether I should look down, in the sewer or up to the stars.
The sewer was closer, I could smell the odor of my own human despair and there was no fear, as I had no thoughts and all was instinct.
I was on the edge and my comfort zone was to let go and dive in the unknown, walk on the shifting sands and sink deeper and deeper until I were no more…
In that crucial moment, it wasn’t my brain, as there was none, that ordered me to look up and TRUST!
God was not done with me in this dimension, we call life! I didn’t THINK IT, I KNEW IT!
I trusted, looked up where GOD told me to look and live to tell how it feels to have a stroke and I ask you to trust in God and always look up!
Author’s note:
This is a true story.
On September 19, 2016 I had a stroke. They say, when it comes to strokes, “TIME IS BRAIN!” My symptoms started as I was driving down a familiar road and I wondered why, at 2:30 PM on a Monday, there were so many bad drivers on the road. I barely drove myself home but when I tried to get out of the car, I fell. My neighbors and friends ran towards me and I attempted to tell them I needed help but although in my rapidly deteriorating “bubble,” words were forming, they didn’t come out, just sounds of despair. They were enough and my neighbor took me to the hospital which was 5-minutes away from y home. The right side of my face was already paralyzed. I WAS BROUGHT INTO THE Emergency Room 20 minutes from when my symptoms started. Because of the timely arrival, the doctors were able to use a clot buster called tPA. Following the procedure I was in Intensive care for three days.
ALL MY SYMPTOMS WERE REVERSED!
I hope if you read this article to the end, you see the connection and why
I BELIEVE DEATH BRINGS US CLOSER TO LIFE AND TO GOD!
The Nude Truth by Rodica Mihalis 