Holiday Season is a Time to Cherish

As always, I value the kinship and closeness my family and friends mean to me at the season of gift-giving. These days of sharing our time, gifts and meals is an ingrained ritual in our Judeo-Christian cultures. I like it, as a chance to draw near and be attentive to each other, and for many to show reverence to their faith.

These past few days I have been observing how much healthier and balanced I am from 7 years ago, when Lyme disease had me bedridden and bereft. I was forced to sell my treasured, wonderful home in the woodlands to pay my treacherously steep medical bills. I had lost my vital career years prior, along with my marriage and well-being. My mind was shot, my heart vulnerable and my hope for recovery slim. Yet, so desperately I did not want to be an invalid forever. With the help of a savvy Clinical Nutritionist and Integrative Medical Doc I was starting my healing journey. It took 5 years, and I am well and thriving again! I am deeply grateful and also proud of my tenacity and perseverance.

With this in mind, I wanted to share a passage from my memoir, OUT OF THE WOODS, which helps to remind me and show others that personal inner healing tools are invaluable when moving through chronic illness. Please enjoy this portion of a chapter titled “Moving”.

Near Christmastime, Eli, Hunter, and I venture out to buy a tree. This is a first for us, as I’ve always cut a Charlie Brown hemlock from our woods in years past, adorning the tender finger-like limbs with the Delancey Street market, Hungarian ornaments of my childhood. Now, we mount a generously stout fir, its needles feeling brush-like and full, the wintergreen aroma filling our dollhouse in minutes. Hunter strings up colored lights, weaving the mass through the fragrant branches as Bing Crosby croons carols on the stereo. As woozy as I still feel, my energy dipping and rising with no rhyme or reason throughout the days, I feel a warmth of gratitude within. 

After a very long struggle I sense that I’m marking progress in my healing. Three months on cat’s claw and I’m climbing up from the worst of its clutches. Small signs of improvement bolster my hope: a clearer mind, less stomach upset and a faint glow of strength in my limbs. The tune from “The Wizard of Oz” has been tumbling through my mind for weeks now: I’m out of the woods, I’m out of the woods, I’m out of the woods…. 

Santa arrives, leaving a slew of boxes. Eli’s eyes are star filled as he rips off the vibrant paper, new board games and ice hockey sticks cluttering the room. The quarters are so close we have the Christmas tree placed on top of the coffee table and pushed up against the wall. Teaspoon size snowflakes drift down outside the windows. Lucky is festively attired, coyly wearing a brown velvet antler headband. 

“Mommy, Mommy, get the camera!” Eli chants. “Take a picture of Lucky and me.”

It is a moment of perfection.

We close the day with a banquet of food, family, and chatter at Hunter’s sister’s home up the hill. Children, grandparents, and adults with cocktails in hand gather around the burgeoning oak dining table, our number swelling to over twenty. There are smiles and warmth, the feeling of generous embrace from a clan other than my own. There is love.

Today, I take my first steps into tomorrow. I reach way deep down inside into the core of my being. From the pit of my belly I draw forth my formerly sagging will. Making a personal pact of intention, I close my eyes and see myself standing upright and strong like a broad-reaching copper beech tree. I’m smiling and radiant. I look and feel healthy and strong, confident and happy, successful and powerful. 

I will heal completely, I tell myself. I will beat the Lyme disease. I will regain my health, strength, and stamina and be be whole, happy, and successful. Starting now I leave the past behind and step into a new and better future. I will be guarded and protected.

From today forward I begin to recite my pact of intention each day in my morning meditation, at first prone on the sofa, then sitting, and eventually standing. I refuse to slip back into the downward spiral of all the cataclysmic tailspins over the past five grueling years. I’m determined to heal. No one will stop me. It will be.

May your healing journeys bring you to the close concert of inner resources I discovered. Willpower, intention, faith, self belief, love and openness can create room for change and healing. I send you strength and grace.

Katina

OUT OF THE WOODS is Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Out-Woods-Healing-Disease-Body-Spirit/dp/1600700713

Winter Solstice, a Time of Reflection

As we spiral our way into the core of darkness here in the northern hemisphere, winter solstice marking the end point to sunlight’s lowest ebb, I cannot help but reflect on the significance of this annual passage and all that accumulates around it. This year feels more poignant than many, with the ghastly murderous tragedy in Newtown, CT, USA coloring our lives; shock, betrayal, grief and anger now our table-mates this holiday season.

For twenty years I have consciously honored the winter solstice, in fact I got married on it one year! Usually, I light a fire and burn a piece of paper with all that I want to ‘let go of’ in my life written on it. The older earth based religions of the world, Mayans included, celebrated this night of extreme darkness, as over the next six months it was all about the joyous movement of daylight’s growing expansion. A time of reverence for me, I take some time on December 21 to review my year, take stock of my choices and achievements, assess my health and peer forward into just what I elect to do or not do in the year ahead.

Always I give thanks for the opportunity of living, the people dear to me and the guidance and protection I feel graced with. And yes, there a few pieces I want to let go of; each year this varies. They are placed on my paper to burn.

Tonight I sit snugly in my simple, yet comfortable home. Our newly adorned fir Christmas tree twinkles with baubles and light. My family is fed and safe. I feel deeply satisfied with the enormous amount of energy and heart I have put into lyme disease education- thirty seven lectures, sixteen radio shows, five national network TV programs, eight front page newspaper features, endless articles, blogs and tweets- all in one year! My life is full and I am healthy. I am proud of “Out of The Woods” and blessed by the amazing connections it has woven in my world.

My mind gravitates to the twenty eight homes in Newtown, Connecticut though. The degree of suffering and loss they are all experiencing must be bottomless. I honestly do not know how some of these individuals are enduring, their tender children and treasured friends ripped away so violently.

I know the USA is in mourning. We all feel a piece of the pain. Putting ourselves in their shoes, we feel the stomach lurching horror and heart-wrenching fear. This grizzly, senseless rampage has wounded a nation. Our hearts all tremble with the families in Newtown. In fact, I realize, when sitting in meditation, that in essence, the whole world resonates with this profound sadness. In a certain way, we have all been thrown “off center”.

As I prepare my thoughts for my annual winter solstice fire and ‘release’, this year I actually write more words about the world than me.

On my paper I write; bloodshed, guns, murders, mass killings, riots, hurricanes, economic collapse, lyme disease, ignorance, heartbreak, spiritual bankruptcy, and prepare to shed all the energy surrounding these conditions. We must release these vibrations, or our health will be adversely affected by carrying the catastrophic force fields within. I visualize joy, compassion, love, and tenderness filling me to the brim. I imagine these rounded, radiant vibrations soothing our citizens, the country, the entire world. We need this salve.

As the world turns in its everlasting patient revolution, I look towards the sunshine and all that it heralds. As we move out of this time of deep darkness, a time of mourning and desolation, we can be reminded that ever faithfully, we will be renewed. Just as we plummeted into tragedy and pitch black, we will expand into glory and light. It all comes around again.

I ask for grace. I ask for peace. I ask for safety, trust and faith. May there be love in our hearts. May we each let go of that which binds or wounds us and turn towards the sun and beckon in all that breathes life and joy into our souls.

Thank you readers, for your time with me here, for our shared communion, for the good you bring into the world. May you cherish the beauty of living, may each day shine with more light.

Respectfully,

Katina

The Quiet Gift

This lovely little piece I wrote appears in two magazines this month, Creations and Green Living Journal. Here it is for you all to enjoy now. In appreciation of the holiday season, this small, true vignette may warm your heart.

THE QUIET GIFT

At this season of celebration and sharing, many of us extend our love and care for one another with the traditional custom of gift giving.  Santa arrives with a slew of colored parcels or we carefully select the perfect something for a loved one during Hanukkah or Kwanza.  The preparation of cooking and shopping whirls our often hectic lives up a notch into a stratosphere of commotion.  It is fun and crazy-making both.  Amid, all the hub-bub, sometimes it is the quiet gift that reaches most deeply into our hearts.  I share my experience on such an offering.

Dashing amid the wheels of shopping carts, the grocery store is in a pre-Christmas skirmish of shoppers; hams and clementines topping the neighbors’ wares in the aisle with me. So much effort and love goes into these days of sharing and caring, it seems. I am a tad behind the curve this year, only selecting our tree this Sunday, actually finding the last one in town, my family due in town tomorrow. Now, its’ bushy branches hoist my childhood ornaments of 50 years ago and my son’s tongue depressor reindeer from first grade. Prettily our tree twinkles in colored baubles, filling our home with cheer and anticipation.

The thought I am percolating on though was prompted earlier today in the market. Reaching for a cart, I backed up and brushed the heel of an elderly woman leaving with her bags of food.  A mere brush of my shoe and somehow she went into stock still frozen mode. I moved ahead and then glanced back…She remained frozen. I turned and went back to check on her  sensing something was wrong.

“Are you Ok?” I ask.

“No. I have a back problem and now am in pain,” an icy voice and stoney glare ahead, not at me.

“I am sorry. I know about pain. Can I help you in some way?” I offer.

“No. No one can help me,” the tone is like cement.

“Should I help you wheel your cart?”

“No.”

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. My foot just skimmed by your heel,” my sensing words express.

Stillness…no words, no eye contact.

I weave my energy from my heart towards hers…I stay still, too.

She looks at me oddly. I smile. She glowers.

“I hope you have a Merry Christmas,” I suggest.

“Not possible,” she mumbles.

Am I daunted? Am I put off? A bit.  Then a thought arises in me. Her cart is shallow in groceries compared to the others. Maybe she is alone?

“So, do you have family to help you?”

“No.”

It was then that I felt her pain, more than the back or than the shoe skimming. It was the pain of loneliness. I knew that feeling.

I then heard odd words coming from me-“Well, I hope the spirit of your ancestors visit you this holiday. They can be a sort of company, maybe?”

“Yes. I have already lit the candles for them,” the crackled woman says.

Finally, her eyes meet mine.  I see the weariness in her soul.

I smile. She tries to. I nod. She moves on, and I hear very faintly-“God bless.”

Motionless, I absorb this moment of grace.  I turn and enter into the maze of aisles.  The holiday freneticism throngs, yet a quiet pool sits in my chest.  Two unsuspect strangers, threaded with a simple gift-that of human compassion.

God bless us all, alone, in company, in comfort, in peace, in need, in joy.  It is the gift of the heart that touches most simply.

Katina I. Makris, is an Intuitive Healer, Classical Homeopath, writer and author of “Out of the Woods; Healing Lyme Disease, Body, Mind & Spirit.”

http://www.creationsmagazine.com/articles/current_issue/Makris.html