{"id":2444,"date":"2013-07-13T14:21:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T18:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2013-07-13T14:21:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T18:21:56","slug":"a-healing-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/a-healing-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A healing journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"L5
\nNothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to learn<\/em>
\n~ Pema Chodron<\/p>\n

W<\/span>e looked at the X-rays together, my son Jack and I.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is last August,\u201d the orthopedist said, pointing to the image on the left, showing two clear fractures in Jack\u2019s L-5 vertebrae, fractures that, after 6 months, were showing no signs of healing on one side and only a minimal feathering of bone growth on the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is now,\u201d he said, indicating the scan from last week. \u201cCompletely healed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can tell you,\u201d he said turning to Jack and raising his hand for a high five, \u201cthis hardly ever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember my very first glimpse of my younger son: the dark, cool room; the ultrasound wand sliding through the goop on my swollen stomach; my husband peering over me to get a look at the shadowy little curlicue of a person floating deep within my belly. It was, I am suddenly realizing, twenty-one years ago this summer \u2013 my son\u2019s entire lifetime ago, and yet still fresh and vivid in my mind\u2019s eye. The technician asked if we wanted to know the sex of our baby. Steve and I looked at each other, but he waited for me to say yes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a boy,\u201d she said, sliding the cursor over, showing us. I can admit it now: one brief tear slid out of one eye, for the daughter we would never have. And then, in that same moment, we began to imagine our future as the parents of two sons, a family of four. By the time we\u2019d walked back to our car, Jack had a name.<\/p>\n

A<\/span> couple of weeks ago, on the 4th of July, I sat in my brother\u2019s living room watching his little boy do his six-year-old version of a hip-hop dance. Gabriel knows the words to \u201cStronger,\u201d (though, thankfully, not what most of the lyrics mean) and he has some nasty moves. \u201cWhat doesn\u2019t kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taaaaa–ller,\u201d he sang along with Kelly Clarkson, dropping down to the floor, swinging his legs around, thrilled to have an audience.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an old saying, probably true. \u201cWhat doesn\u2019t kill you makes you stronger.\u201d Character is built by adversity. And yet, as my exuberant nephew and his younger sister danced with abandon, all I could think was how beautiful they are in their perfect, tender innocence. And how hard it will be for all of us who love these two children to stand by and watch when, inevitably, life starts roughing them up a bit.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s human nature: we want to protect our offspring from pain and struggle for just as long as possible. We want their lessons to be painless, the road to be smooth, the waters calm, the sky clear. When the challenges begin, we want to do everything in our power to take the sting out, to ease our children’s way.<\/p>\n

How many times did I field calls of distress? \u201cI left my math homework at home\u201d; \u201cI forgot my lunch\u201d; \u201cI lost my sweatshirt\u201d; \u201cMr. D. was mean to me in class.\u201d My natural inclination, always, was to rush to the rescue — to jump in the car with the forgotten homework, to deliver the lunch, to replace the missing sweatshirt, to make the phone call that would make things better.<\/p>\n

Did I do my boys any favors by helping them avoid some of the bumps and bruises of childhood? I\u2019m not sure. Perhaps I made things too easy for them, delayed their understanding that every action has a consequence, that people aren\u2019t always kind, that sweatshirts don\u2019t grow on trees.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, perhaps there\u2019s something to be said for knowing, when you\u2019re young and impulsive and distracted and forgetful, that there\u2019s a safety net in place, ready to catch you if you fall.<\/p>\n

Eventually, though, life delivers its hard lessons anyway. Kids do stupid things and then have to pay the price for their mistakes. Bad stuff happens, and they must summon enough resilience and moxie to pick up the pieces, dust themselves off, carry on. Our children reach, and fall short. They try, and fail. They hope, and have their hopes dashed.<\/p>\n

And somehow we parents must learn to step back and allow them to absorb the hard knocks of growing up. Slowly, and with more than a little heartache, we figure out what our job really is: not to prepare the world to meet our children, but to prepare our children to meet the world — in its splendor, but also in its dark places.<\/p>\n

L<\/span>etting go means putting our trust in the rightness of their journeys and our faith in their resilience. It means remembering that there are larger forces at work in our children\u2019s lives, carrying them to the places they need to go.<\/p>\n

Watching my athletic, active, competitive son live with chronic pain over the last eighteen months has taught me a lot about letting go. It was hard to see him suffer. It was just as hard to accept my own helplessness in the face of that suffering. I could make him dinner when he was home, give him some Reiki touch, love him, encourage him. We could pay the medical bills, the physical therapy bills, help out with expenses when he couldn\u2019t work. But whether he recovered or not wasn\u2019t up to us.<\/p>\n

Jack has spent much of the last year, while his friends were off at college, on the floor, stretching his hamstrings \u2013 the only way to bring the broken vertebrae into proper alignment so they could have a chance to mend. At one point, discouraged and wondering if he would ever again be able to move through a day without pain, he pointed out that at least if he had a broken arm in a cast, people would be able to see his injury. They wouldn\u2019t expect him to lift heavy boxes or carry groceries or shoot hoops. Jack looked<\/em> fine. He was worried that, to rest of the world, he also looked lazy.<\/p>\n

In fact, there was a lot of invisible work going on, and not just in the hamstrings and L5 vertebrae. Much as I might have wished my son to have traveled a different path, much as my \u00a0heart hurt right along with him during the hardest times, I\u2019ve also come to see this: what he learned this year are lessons that only a dark night of the soul can teach.<\/p>\n

He learned that he can do hard things. He learned that pain is often invisible. He learned that empathy begins with the understanding that there is always more going on than meets the eye. He learned that even when dreams shatter and plans go awry, life continues. He learned (a lot<\/em>) about anatomy. He learned that the rocky road he\u2019s on has its own beauty, its own logic and shifting landscape, its own rightness for him.<\/p>\n

L<\/span>ast week, when he was home, Jack spent hours outside in the driveway shooting baskets. He played before breakfast in the morning and under the lights before he went to bed \u2013 happy, sweaty, grateful. Nothing like a year of not moving to make every dunk or rebound cause for celebration. He is twenty, and I\u2019m pretty sure he will never again take feeling fine for granted. In the meantime, his plans have changed. In the fall, he\u2019s going to Atlanta, to major in exercise science and nutrition in a pre-chiropractic program at Life University. \u201cI like the idea of helping people,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen someone comes to me in pain, I\u2019ll know how they feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

How little I knew twenty-one summers ago, as I gazed at that first hazy gray picture of my younger son, floating in amniotic fluid. All I could do then, as he grew deep inside me, was say \u201cyes\u201d to him, to the mystery of \u00a0this unknown being, to my innocent faith that things would all work out. They have. They do. In ways I never could have anticipated, never would have chosen, wouldn\u2019t change.<\/p>\n

What doesn\u2019t kill you makes you stronger, stand a little taller. Yes. And this, too, from poet David Whyte:<\/p>\n

To be human
\nis to become visible
\nwhile carrying
\nwhat is hidden
\nas a gift to others.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

(And thanks to Jack for giving me permission to share his X-ray.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to learn ~ Pema Chodron We looked at the X-rays together, my son Jack and I. \u201cThis is last August,\u201d the orthopedist said, pointing to the image on the left, showing two clear fractures in Jack\u2019s L-5 vertebrae, fractures that, after 6 months, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,35,8,9,10,14],"tags":[99,144,173,209,263,301,324,336,354,445],"class_list":{"0":"post-2444","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healing","8":"category-letting-go","9":"category-parenting","10":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","11":"category-parenting-teens","12":"category-soul-work","13":"tag-boys","14":"tag-david-whyte","15":"tag-faith-2","16":"tag-healing-2","17":"tag-letting-go-2","18":"tag-motherhood","19":"tag-parenting-2","20":"tag-pema-chodron","21":"tag-reiki","22":"tag-touch","23":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}