Gracious Gratitude

Gifts from Illness Part 3

I am vulnerable.

Every breath I take is a miracle. Every cell in my body, engaging with every other cell, creating organisms and collaborating as one body which in turn connects and dances with other life forms around it. Gravity holds this fragile form in place on a spinning planet in a galaxy that forms part of a multiverse…

I am vulnerable and I am a miracle.

Covid brought me into an acute awareness of my body. I like to live in a state of awareness, knowing that sometimes I am more connected than others, and body awareness has always been important to me. Then I had the experience of breathing and feeling as though there was no oxygen getting into my body. Feeling as though my heart was going explode in my chest because I walked from my bed to the en-suite bathroom. Feeling my joints screaming pain out into the rest of my body and my muscles fading away as if in a time lapse film of a decaying organism. Suddenly I was more acutely aware of my body than every before.

My physical body needed my help and I heard it. I ordered every supplement that could possibly help, I ordered wholesome food and juices and loads of water. I slept and then I slept some more. When my mind insisted I should be better, I checked in with my body before accepting that suggestion.

It might have been fever, or it might have been a fleeting moment of enlightenment but one day, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed focusing on deep slow breathing in the hopes of getting enough oxygen to the rest of body to be able to get to the bathroom; I suddenly felt the most intense feeling of oneness with all things. I was overcome by the feeling, by the immensity of all life, by the miracles that abound, by the fact that I was part of it all…my body, mind & soul - all the energy that is me, a part of this expansive expression of expansion and evolution. I felt it. Oneness. One with all.

Tears escaped my eyes and my face lit up with a massive, warm smile. I allowed the emotions to flow as I basked in the warmth of the deepest gratitude I have ever felt. I was in a state of grace in that moment. Realising the deadly potential of this illness, realising my own vulnerability, realising my own connectedness and oneness with all; I was washed clean with pure gratitude. Gratitude for life, for love, for every single experience no matter how I received it at the time - in this moment everything made sense, everything was perfect and I was part of it.

Each time I write about one of the gifts received from my experience with Covid, I want to write “this was the most important one” and yet I cannot do that because they are all important and intertwined, just as every part of the my body is as important and intertwined with Life as the next.

This lesson forms a beautiful container for all the others though…it hold and warms the entire experience and all the other gifts like a hand stitched quilt form a loving grandparent. I keep returning to it in my mind’s eye and tapping into this true essence gratitude. Gratitude for everything that is, as it is and everything still to come, as it will be.

Thank you Covid - you reminded me that I am alive and that I am Life.