Still not Yoda

Or: how I'm thinking about a sucky situation, wrestling with Buddhism, and (trying) to move through a crappy medical diagnosis. Maybe there's some wisdom here. Maybe not. You tell me.

Andrew stood as I shuffled into the waiting room from the back reaches of the doctor’s office. The guy sitting next to him, jocular and bearded, commented “Nice of you to drive your mom to the doctor’s, man.” He was obviously talking to Andrew—there was no one else near. Andrew pretended not to hear.

To be fair, Andrew’s mom probably looked pretty spry compared to me in that moment. Still, it stung. I felt old as primordial ooze and having some stranger notice made the feeling seem like it might just be a reality. The last thing I needed was for my sudden geriatric state to become more real than it already was. Not just for me, but for Andrew. Anyone who’s ever had a health crisis knows there’s an odd tension between needing to lean into your partner and, at the same time, not wanting them to see you looking like their eighty-year old mother. Cause, let’s face it, that rates a big fat zero on the sex appeal scale. And I’m pretty sure you can’t unsee that kind of thing after it’s been conjured in your imagination.

So I tried to play it cool. As cool as anyone wobbling over a cane (or two—I can’t remember if I’d gone down to only one by then) possibly could. Maybe I raised an eyebrow. I’m not sure. My perception of my body—where it was in space, how it was moving—was way off. It had started a few weeks before. I’d been watching tv and suddenly my eyes wouldn’t track properly. My vision stuttered to the left, the tv looking like the passing windows of a train. Within minutes I had lost all proprioception: where was the floor? My feet? The edge of the sofa? The movement of air into my lungs, the rise and fall of my chest, began to make me nauseous. My senses blurred. I was sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool, everything muffled and muzzy, pressure pulsing in my ears. Panicked, I pulled out my phone, but couldn’t make out the numbers to dial.

This was almost exactly a year ago. Andrew had been out of town and I was alone on the mountain.

Thirty minutes before I’d been congratulating myself on how well I’d managed the week. The dogs and I had just come in from a walk down to the stream. Feeling very competent and self-satisfied, I’d fed them, gotten a box of logs from the garage, stoked the wood stoves, made dinner for myself then settled in to watch The Newshour. I was halfway through the program—David Brooks and Jonathon Capehart were discussing Fox new’s false claims of election fraud—when the screen shuttered to the left. I closed my eyes. Opened them. It happened again… And again… And again.

There was no warning: I was fine, then I wasn’t.

I’d been previously diagnosed with an inner ear condition called Ménière’s disease. The initial event—the one that earned me the diagnosis—was significantly more mild than what I was experiencing. But I recognized the symptoms enough to know I wasn’t having a stroke. I (literally) crawled into bed and hoped it would pass by morning.

No such luck. I spent spring of 2023 having a series of procedures to help me regain my equilibrium. And when I say “I lost my balance,” I’m not just talking physically. Having my perception of the world so seriously altered was unbelievably exhausting. My brain just didn’t have the juice to power me through a day. I became a blunt instrument, incapable of subtlety. I damaged friendships. Letting Magic In was edited in this state and I’m still terrified to reread it.

So this past week, when my ears started to once again feel over-pressured, I quickly made an appointment with my Ear, Nose, and Throat doc to get tubes put in. The tubes are what finally broke the vertigo last time around. According to my doctor, they shouldn’t have worked (then or now) but I had an inkling that they would and I’ve long since learned to trust my inklings.

Before setting the tubes, the doctor rolled his stool over for a chat. I ran through all the research I’d done and the experiments I’d laid out to see if, over the next few months, I could gain some clarity on what triggered the Ménière’s and what eased it. He nodded along and then did something he often does (one of the reasons I appreciate him immensely): he “took off his doctor’s hat.”

"Maybe,” he offered, “It’s time to stop working so hard to understand this. To move from your head down to your heart. This is a horrible condition and you need to treat yourself with infinite compassion.” He passed a tissue as I started to cry. “The suffering comes from the struggle. Maybe you can work on acceptance.”

I’ve never asked my doctor about his relationship to Buddhism but I suspect a bit of that philosophy has worked its way into his thinking. What is suffering? Does intellectualizing increase suffering? When should we accept and when should we fight? Is this a different way of saying “what you resist persists?”

I thought about this on the drive home. In some sense, the way my doctor uses the term acceptance is similar to my concept of the river: When you relax into your boat on the river, you go where the river takes you. This has long been my metaphor for feeling in-flow with my own life. There’s a sense of rightness and a willingness to be along for the journey. When I’m in this sort of flow state, I don’t fight the current, I don’t disembark and hack my way along the bank: I go where the river takes me.

But as I float, I also observe. I note the fish swimming under the river’s surface, the color of the rock formations, the types of trees rooted along the banks. I’ll pull out a guide book and learn the names of the birds flying overhead. I’ll study the stories of the river and the towns I’m passing. There’s a joy in seeing and making sense of my surroundings. In other words, I follow the pull of my heart but also engage the crackling energy of my mind (when my mind has enough energy to crackle).

In the moment of a Ménière’s flare up, just like in the moment of the migraines I’ve had most of my adult life, I get that what’s best for me is to accept—to be in the river of the moment.. and probably to set-up an auto-responder that says “moving through life like a hephalump right now. Will get back to you when I’m safe to be around.” Wishing I were elsewhere or berating myself for the meetings I might have to cancel or the things I may have inadvertently done to trigger the attack increases my mental angst, no question.

But, for me, this level of unexamined acceptance is a coping tactic. It’s laying in the bottom of the boat and watching the clouds float by, just allowing the images to drift across my retina, not wondering whether they are cirrus or cumulus. Eventually, though, I’m going to want to hop up and learn something about clouds, consider whether a storm might be incoming, and if I should set up a rain shelter. When I think about researching cloud formations, my chest expands and my cheeks lift: I love learning. Ferreting out details is fascinating. My best intuitive hits come, not from my heart alone, but from the dialogue between my head and my heart.

Searching for answers is not denial. In many ways it’s the ultimate acceptance: yes, this is true and real and I want to know it in a multi-faceted way.

But a multiplicity of things can be true simultaneously. Even contradictory things can, and often do, co-exist. So while I’m accepting I’m also remembering that time is a moving beast and what is real and true in this moment need not be real and true in the next. What other truths exist? How can I shift this situation to one that suits me better (I mean, I really see no need to simply allow myself to go deaf in both ears)? What other realities can I create? And what are the tools I can use to craft change?

This is what sent me to study with an herbalist in Ireland all those years ago. It wasn’t an abiding love of plants or a desire to become a woman called witch. It was instead a deep seated need to find balance for my own mercurial physicality. By both accepting and seeking I found so much more than I ever imagined.

What will I find on this new health journey? I don’t yet know. I’m still coming into an understanding of both the boat and the river. I’m still in and out of fear and brain fog and feeling like my energy has been sucked through the swimming pool’s filtration system.

I keep reminding myself that when life throws a curve ball and we find ourselves taking a journey we didn’t intend, it’s easy to bemoan the narrowing of our choices. Now that vertigo is imminently possible, other things are less possible. I’m not Yoda about this. And I’m not sure I should be. (“Do not go gently into that good night!”) But I’m also trying to remind myself that this narrowing of choices is always true—any path (chosen or not) makes some things more possible and some things less. Once I chose to commit to Ireland, studying in Ecuador became less possible. Once I chose our house in the woods, a loft downtown became less likely.

Maybe this is the heart of acceptance: not resisting where you are right now and not fighting against the narrowing of choices that always happens when you move from the crossroads onto a specific track. This kind of acceptance doesn’t preclude curiosity, searching, or seeking. Quite the opposite: part of being present in the moment is noticing and mapping the terrain that you’re crossing through.

My hairdresser, another force in my life, said “Girl, you have to crowd source this! Someone out there has a solution and you’re only gonna find it if you ask.” So if anyone else has walked this path before me and has some words of wisdom, I’m all ears. (See, I can even joke about it!).

xx Maia

What I’m listening to:

This song! Yes, I know Needtobreathe is a Christian band. And maybe they intended this song to be about god. But for me it’s such a gorgeous description of friendship, which is something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit. When I told my writing triangle I might go deaf, they said well, then I guess we’re all learning sign language. Everyone should have people who will be the banks to their river.

What I’m reading:

I bought this book after having dinner with the author, Jason Mott, at a literary festival. He was engaging and effervescent; I wanted to support him so bought his book… and tossed it in the TBR pile. I pulled it out this week and, y’all, I gotta tell you this is a hell of a book! If you’re looking for a delightful read that makes you think and feel and think some more (and who isn’t?), I highly recommend.

from Jason’s website. Click through to learn more!

What I’m working on:

First, a rebrand here. There might even be a new name.

Second, a new book! Can’t talk about it yet but wanted to put it out there to y’all to help build the energy.

And, finally, a Substack read that hit home this week:

Lisa Olivera

starts this post talking about feeling like a pendulum, swinging. I read the first bit a few times and I’m sure I will read it a few more.

A pendulum, swinging