Managing Set-backs

This blog began with a very real shift:  Plan BE made it possible for me to believe it was time to begin feeling better.  Earth Day was my point of reckoning ... from here I launched new beginnings.  I told myself new stories and re-entered my community believing I could be part of it.  I filled this new blog with examples of the new stories and success to Plan BE.  I have felt better and better for three months.

Last week-end I tried to do more than I could manage without tipping the new beliefs into territory filled with old triggers of over-load.  Freeing up myself from years of old experiences is still a process, successes build new foundations in increments, but there are no teams of elves laying in the corner-stones and fill overnight.  Walking into a department store, and staying in there (with my mask) for thirty minutes is a legion feat; riding through banks of Scotch Broom lined highways where newly sprayed Round-up edges are evidenced with the inimitable dead-brown tint; and then visiting friends in their new and wonderful for them kitchen set off the set-back.  Topping it all off, my long-additive choice to comfort myself with wheat (bread/toast/cookies) finally laid me back.

Recovery and healing from the effects of multiple chemical sensitivities is a multiple and unique journey.  My experience with the process re-introduces the methods of coping emotionally and physically with symptoms:  first, do I recognize the triggers; then, how do I respond(or react, each verb is different); do I give myself the compassionate gift of 'time' to accept what is happening.  I'm hear to put the process down so I remember that this set-back was not gracefully accepted.  I resist, and want this to be over so I can get back to the better-and-better feeling life I was having.

"There's no rushing the river."  Life if it is a river will flow or trickle with seasons.  All around us the forest has grown from hibernation to shoulder-high Bracken and boisterous berry bushes filled with bell-shaped blossoms and airports of bees.  I want to feel better now, but it will need to be in increments, sequentially-accessed by going through re-entry.  Count the blessings, and the goodness and use it as mortar in the foundation re-laid so far:  two days without wheat makes a difference (I go through with-drawal like an alcoholic freshly sober); Round-up doesn't clear quickly (I know that) I am weak and my nervous system quivers from head to toe; avoidance is still a necessary coping and healing strategy.

We were at MK's celebration yesterday.  Her beautiful photography was receiving the praise and attention it deserved.  Masked and present outside the home-office where the party gathered I sipped a glass of raspberry seltzer and felt part of the celebration.  How long had it been since I'd help a real glass of anything at a party?  Long enough ago that I don't remember. Two of the guests stopped to ask about the mask.  Both of them aware of chemical sensitivities they shared of other experiences with someone they know who lives with the condition.  "Until you know someone, you just think ...'ah, come on!!" one of the guests said.  A big old diesel truck drove past, but not until it had stopped at the STOP sign while I stood on the porch outside the front door chatting with a friend.  It was just minutes too long, that truck, that chat in the same place. 

Managing set-backs is a sequential access experience.  We have often described our life living in tiny spaces with multiple sensitivities using that description.  Seems it remains so still.

Are you easy with set-backs?