Lessons from my Lungs

I am a naturally optimistic person.

I see the bright side of things and truly believe everything is happening for a reason and everything is happening for us, even when we can’t see it at first.

My mom taught me to choose what is important and to put your attention on that.
She led by example, lying with MS for thirty years and never once complaining or playing a victim.

Rather, being graceful and saying aloud how grateful she was that the physical, and later cognitive, challenge she was faced with did not cause pain; so many people have pain, she would say.

I have always tried to emulate what she taught me, both in how I live and how I am raising my son.

It seems, however, somewhere along the line, I missed something.

The reason I know this to be true is that I recently got sick, felt sick, became sick for the first time in my life.

About three and a half weeks ago, I started to feel a slight cough along with the hint of a slight cold.

Typically, this happens about once every 5 years and I acknowledge it, take my natural and homeopathic remedies, maybe bring my exercise down a notch an move on. It’s usually gone within three days.

This time, this was not the case.

The cough got worse and worse, so bad I could not sleep, due to waking myself up coughing. Futile attempts at sleeping sitting up, propped with five pillows behind my back and neck did little to create an opportunity to rest.

Energy was a bit low and the truth is I’d been feeling emotionally run down for months, yet no other symptoms presented.

With a trip planned to visit my Dad with my son coming up, I decided to see my doctor.

Lungs were clear, throat, ears and nose looked healthy; it was likely a virus.

I had my first ever immune boosting IV drip, bought a nebulizer so I could inhale ozone twice per day and began mega dosing vitamins C, D glutathione and colloidal silver.

Appetite decreased more and more and all I really wanted was hot tea and water.

I refrain from saying nothing worked as perhaps I would have felt even worse without those.

With only a day left before travel, I considered changing my plans. All things considered, I opted to keep things as planned, remembering there was a reason things were working out this way, and being with my Dad in my childhood home being taken care of, while Yves could spend time with his Grandpa sounded more and more appealing.

So we packed (including a mask for the plane; this situation felt like one that made sense), and off we went.

The next morning, I woke with the word ‘pneumonia’ in my consciousness. I looked online and saw I had only one of the symptoms, yet the feeling was too strong to ignore.

I went to urgent care and asked for a chest Xray; sure enough, I had double pneumonia. My Oxygen Saturation was down to 93% and I was gettin winded doing the simplest of things like walking up a flight of stars or bending to put on a pair of shorts.

This was also a time when taking an antibiotic made sense, so I began right away, along with my five times per day albuterol inhaler.

I was tired to the bone. And I’ve never felt weak in my life before. And I never really rest. Never really stop.

At this point, I had not choice and I did not resist one bit.

Everything went on hold knowing, that Yves was in the best of hands, Grandpa and his step Grandma, I actually rested.

Meanwhile, I had to get to the bottom of this. What caused this? I had not been around anyone with bacterial pneumonia that I knew of.

I pieced it together with the help of my doctor; I must have had a legitimate virus indeed, which must have weekend my immune system which must have made me susceptible to pneumonia.

Was that all, tho?

I don’t believe so.

I had to dig into the metaphysical.

Once I began to learn about root causes of lung issues from another perspective, all the boxes began to get checked off.

“Spiritually, pneumonia is often interpreted as a physical manifestation of deep, unprocessed grief, emotional suffocation, and a feeling of being overwhelmed by life’s heavy burdens.

Lungs are energetically tied to sadness and loss.

Pneumonia can symbolize a lifetime of suppressed tears or a recent sorrow that feels too heavy to breathe in.

Feeling Smothered: The respiratory distress mirrors a sense of being choked or restricted by your current life circumstances, relationships, or environment.

Carrying Too Much Alone: It often reflects a deep-seated belief that you must handle the world single-handedly, acting as a spiritual wake-ond call to ask for help.” (1, 2, 3)

One after the other, everything on every list I read, whether from a search with the words pneumonia and ‘spiritual significance’, ‘Chinese Medicine’, ‘Metaphysical’ and “energetic’ ALL pointed to the same thing:

I had not been dealing with sadness and grief and morning.

For years.

And then the tears started.

Sometimes for no apparent reason, Other times for something seemingly so minor.

Being in a safe and comfortable place, I just let them roll.

Was it the fire that abruptly stole life as so many of us knew it in a single blow?

Was it my mom’s physical death?

Was it the thousands of times I pushed things inside that felt sad that I told myself I didn’t want to focus on, thinking I was taking the higher road by not doing so, even though each time I did it, my gut feeling grew stronger and stronger that something just didn’t feel right?

Probably all of the above and more.

So many things I thought I knew to be facts and things to be depended on have turned out to not be as I thought they were.

I now see why this all had to happen; a break to get my stubborn attention and force me to stop and rest.

I must add that despite how awful I felt, I did hold a perspective close to my heart that was a tremendous gift; my sickness was a transient, self-limiting issue that my body was strong enough to fight and recover from.

We all have friends, family members or even strangers we read about to stuff everything in and their wake up call comes in the form of a far more hideous and perhaps even untreatable physical presentation.

I have friends who’ve suffered through tremendous bouts of illness; some who made it through an others who have not.

For this I have immense gratitude.

Often when I write an article, I like to conclude with a concise ending.

I don’t have one this time as I’m still in the middle of it.

I feel physically better and still weak.

I am drawn to learn and incorporate more types of healing, acupuncture and cupping in particular

I feel the pieces of the things I thought I knew that broke falling away, making room for new, different experiences and opportunities that perhaps I might not have seen, had I continued on with the same old stoic march I’d been on for so long.

Why did I write this?

As with many personal things I share; if one single person reads this and realizes that they’re going through something similar, and they’re not alone, if it helps even one person… then that’s why I write.

Over the past year I’ve read several non fiction works that have to do in general with some of the things that I’ve been going through in my life, and that is exactly the effect they had on me.

One thing’s for sure- we are not alone in this and the more honest we can be with ourselves, and deal with our feelings at the time of, the more we can move through the hard things smoothly and move on to the brilliance on the other side of every challenge.

 

(1) https://rhmdb.irs.kg.gov.ng/kg-news/lung-problems-spiritual-meaning-and-holistic-healing-1764797685

(2) https://energetic-wisdom.co.uk/the-spiritual-cause-of-pneumonia/

(3) https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/spiritual-meaning-of-lung-issues