the aneurysm was a cocoon, a cave, a secret summer hideout where I waited, surrounded by soft walls

notes after brain surgery

To my paid subscribers: I have suspended payments until our workshops resume, probably in October¹. Thank you for being there. It has meant the world to be accompanied by your quiet and supportive presence.

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To get through brain surgery, I needed information and silence.
I needed to spin myself into a golden cocoon where I floated, guided by whispering trees and TV shows. I needed one good book, many gifted healers and the abiding presence of the friends and family members who floated in and out beside me.

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Two days ago, on Monday at 9:00 am, I went into the hospital for embolization of the aneurysm that was discovered when I had a stroke in June. (If you missed that story, follow the links in the footnotes²) During this procedure, in the least invasive way possible, a tiny incision was made in the groin³ and three microscopic ‘coils’ were placed in the tiny bubble in my brain. A few days following the procedure, perhaps today, the aneurysm will be, in the words of my surgical assistant, ‘obliterated’.

I’m home now, recovering. There is virtually no pain - just mild effects from the anesthesia. In a week, maybe two, they tell me I’ll be back to work.

How strange that this was so simple. How strange (and miraculous) that brain surgery can be done this way now.

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After the stroke but before this week’s surgery, I sat by the window (as it rained and rained). On fair days, when it wasn’t too hot, I sat in the healing house that my husband built for me. behind the back door, guarded from view by enormous cushions and strategically placed red parasols, I read and slept. Cocooned, curled inside of myself and feeling fragile.

I did not listen to music.
I did not distract myself (too much) with TV.
Mostly, I napped and invented fairy tales.

When people offered to visit me in the hospital, No, I said.
When people offered to stop by the house, No, I said.

“Don’t you want to see us?” a friend asked. Baffled. “People always want visitors in the hospital.”
”No,” I told her. “Not now.”

I didn’t need comforting.
I didn’t want them to see me.
I was moving through something I had to do alone.

Writing this, I’m reminded of a time 20 years ago when my son, then 16, was in France. On a three month exchange program, he was desperately homesick, calling me every day at work to complain about his host family. They were rude, he said. The food they served was never enough. The language was impossible. The walk to school was too long. One day, after three weeks of this, he told me, “The bed is too short,” and, worried, I said, “Let’s bring you home.”

“No,” he said, firmly. “I’m not finished changing yet.”

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Sometimes, we have to go away to a new land where we can more easily transform.
Sometimes, we can’t do that in front of the people that know us.
No matter how much they care.

We need time to turn away and turn inside.
Like my son, I had to do this my way.

On the surface, I was going through two things at once: recovering from a stroke (very quickly) and integrating the reality that I had an aneurysm (very slowly). Though doctors assured me there was no risk that my aneurysm would rupture, I did not believe it. My mother’s best friend had died from an aneurysm when I was in my twenties and, that being the first time I’d even heard the word aneurysm, it was implanted into memory. This was something people died from. Suddenly. Inexplicably. I didn’t want to do that to my children, my husband. I wanted to live!

At the same time, inside, I was going through a deep change. I was 66 and, just before the stroke I’d told my daughter, my therapist and a friend that, “This is the first year of my second life. I am starting over.” I wasn’t sure how I was planning to do this but I was absolutely certain it was happening.

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After the stroke, as I waited for the aneurysm procedure, I felt myself shrinking. Tiny enough to climb inside of the tiny bubble in my brain. I imagined I was sitting in there, where time was slower and everything rippled through multiple layers of visible and invisible worlds.

I did not feel ready to go to my favorite cafe.
I did not feel safe driving long distances.
I did not want to talk on the phone.

I needed and I wanted to float. A process which involved losing and then, regaining my own wisdom.

I was a dolphin, diving under blue, light-streaked water, disappearing and reappearing.

I was a metronome, swinging between opposites. Feeling perfectly fine and weeping uncontrollably, I oscillated between unfathomable terror and bright, inexplicable joy.

I was a needle, diving between the layers and quilting together the medical and the mystical, two seeming opposites which, until now, I’d held completely apart.

Before this, I’d been hospitalized only three times. At age 8, for a tonsillectomy. At 31 for a C-section. Most recently, at 63, for an ocular migraine that put a spinning rainbow in my eye. I did not have regular medical testing, did not take pharmaceutical drugs. My care team consisted of two women: an acupuncturist and an MD who practiced as a homeopath.

I was a stranger in a strange land.
I was a pilgrim - learning along the way.

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Preparing for brain surgery, I found myself turning to three stories: Katherine Genet’s Wilde Grove series, the weirdly addictive “Royal Pains” on Netflix, and just before I entered the hospital, I began re-watching (for the zillionth time) “The West Wing” on HBO/Max.

Each, in its own way, is a fairy tale journey.
Each journey has its own world, language and symbols.
Yet each seemed to be telling me the same tale - more Wizard of Oz than Hero’s Journey.

In Wilde Grove, a young woman, adopted at birth, receives a letter from a strange address. She has inherited a house from a grandmother she never knew. On a whim, without telling her fiance or her parents, she goes to see the house where, guided by a mysterious woman named Morghan and her own strange dreams, she discovers she is more than she thinks she is.

In “Royal Pains,” after being fired from a New York hospital, an enterprising ER doctor starts a concierge practice in the Hamptons. All of this happens like an unfolding dream as one mysterious coincidence after another leads him exactly where he needs to be: catering to the wealthy and privileged as he builds a new life, healing his broken family at the same time.

In “The West Wing”, a group of idealistic and brilliant legal scholars navigate the fairy tale of US politics. Where “The West Wing” is sophisticated, riddled with intellectual puzzles and tightly crafted, Wilde Grove is (very) simply written, drifting along without bothering to fill in story holes or inconsistencies. “Royal Pains” is just plain silly sometimes.

Together, all three stories guided me, each exploring from a different angle my lifelong question: Is there a place for a person like me? And if so, how might I live as a creative, smart, spiritual person inside of our modern, materialistic culture?

The night before my surgery, I sent myself, by email, this sampling from The Rising: Wilde Grove Book 3 by Katherine Genet

‘When we are faced with challenges–as we all invariably are, over and over, we must . . . journey one step at a time . . . There are things you cannot run from. Things that will strengthen you if you face them in the depth of your practice, if you keep your practice during the hardship.’

‘And if I don’t?’ Erin asked, shifting her feet uneasily on the path. ‘If I can’t bring myself to do it?’

‘Then what are you here for?’ Morghan questioned. ‘What purpose does your life serve? The cycle only repeats, Erin, until it is dealt with. . . ’

‘That’s not fair!’ Erin protested.

‘No,’ Morghan said. ‘Perhaps not, but it is what it is . . . Stand up anyway. . . with the trees at your back, and your song on your lips, and give it everything you have, because you are playing with your life, for your soul.’”

As I set out on this life changing summer, I was naive in the ways of the medical world but I was not inexperienced like Erin. At this stage of my life, I am more like Morghan, the teacher who leads the younger woman onto the path. I have dreamed deeply. I have visited the realms of forest and fairie. I have returned with gifts to guide me but I needed Erin’s innocence to guide me, too. Her courage and willingness to step off the path of the familiar, into the deep woods.

“Grandfather Oak. King of the Wildwood. Father of the Forest. She’d gone to him then and lifted her hands to touch the rough bark of his skin, and instead of pressing her palms to his wooden flesh, she had stepped inside him. And inside him it was dark and warm, and she’d lost her own shape, had become part of the old oak tree, part of the forest, part of the magic. After what may have been five minutes, or an epoch, she found herself back on the carpet of the forest floor, an acorn in her hand.”

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This week, in the hospital, as nurses woke me once each hour for cognitive questions — What’s your name? Touch your nose. Flex your toes. — I stopped trying to sleep. I moved between Wilde Grove (on my Kindle) and “The West Wing” on my laptop.

Wilde Grove kept me securely stitched to magic . “The West Wing” helped me to laugh and to remember there are ways to get through anything with friendship and humor.

With these tools and my chosen companions, I got through it and now I am home.
Grateful for what I’ve learned (so far) and eager for what is next.

One foot in the mystery.
One foot in the medical.
My life in the miracle,
moving in the realization of soul inside body.
Of everything embedded inside of soul.

A friend sent me this image in an email. I loved it. Using Google Image Search, I found the artist and I ordered this print from her. (Image: “In the Poppy Field” by Catrin Welz-Stein)

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FOOTNOTES

1. Probably. This shift has its own rhythm. I cannot plan right now, only receive. We will complete the constellation workshop. We will begin a new journey together. That’s all I can predict.

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2. Summer Posts:

The first post about what happened.

The second post after it happened.

The fairy tale that I found in an old notebook as it was happening.

The poym* I wrote from inside of my healing house (Note: The word Poym is not a typo. It’s the way that my mother, a ‘poyt’ from Illinois, pronounced it.

3. If you’re science-y, here’s a link about aneurysm embolization from Johns Hopkins Medicine