My two week winning streak ended in a double header loss on Saturday.  What this means in migraine-speak is I had not suffered a migraine attack in almost 2 weeks (well, 13 days, 23 hours and 54 minutes to be exact), and then Saturday at 11:54 am standing in the bike shop with my boys, sizing up our son for his first big boy (gears and hand brakes) bike, that familiar blind spot popped up in my sightline. Noooooo! my being cried out, I am doing stuff right now and I have more stuff to do after this stuff! I was leaning in these past two weeks, enjoying the migraine free life (I used to take for granted) being productive and thoughtful and just doing stuff! And if that wasn’t enough upon my hurry home, with confused dog expecting a walk in the back of the Subaru, taking an antihistamine (upon the recommendation of my biofeedback specialist) and a handful of almonds to sleep it off in my dark room, I woke two and a half hours later only to have another migraine another hour later.

It’s a good thing that I have written things about beingness and hope, leaning in without fear of the shoe-drop, and forgiveness because I have needed to do all of these things the past two days.  Time to take some more of my own advice and it’s all right here in neat little word packages on my blog.

So I have been trying to forgive my brain for surrendering itself to the beastly migraines and giving myself the time my body has needed to recover since it felt like I had been hit by truck, a really really big 18 wheeler.

Meanwhile the side-story playing out (well, one of them) in my life is the doctor appointments to keep my medical leave paperwork up to speed.  As you may remember, I had to switch my doctors back in October when this migraine business began as the original doc subscribed to a medication only approach.  I was able to get into a new one (new to me and I think very new to the medical profession – aka super young) and she was more open to the different approaches I was working on to improve my health.  She has been great in letting me take the reigns as she follows my lead, even admitting that I knew more about “this stuff” than her, so she would support how she could.  At the time this was okay with me.

It has now been 5 months and she too feels that my time is up.  At the very least to return to work part-time (which is what my contract was – 70%), she wanted to see me try 1 day a week.  Posing the idea casually, “Don’t you think it would be interesting to see how you would react after the progress you have made so far?”  My response, “Um no, I don’t think it would be interesting.”

I don’t believe it will be interesting because I am not really feeling like being a science experiment for myself, her or my students.  I don’t believe dropping into my classroom to try things out only to risk that they don’t pan out as something I have great interest in.  And finally, I am still attending weekly massage, Chiro, therapy, and a visit from the migraine fairy every 4 days (last 2 weeks excluded).  I am more interested in following my intuition, my gut who says you aren’t done this work yet Sarah, you still need to stay focused on healing.  Do not fall back into your old habits of splitting your attention and intentions.

So this is big for me, bigger than 2 weeks without migraines, bigger than 2 migraines in one day.  I am getting off the ideal that I must have someone else’s permission to take care of myself just because they have certain credentials and degrees and whatnot.  It has taken hard work and dedication over the past 5 months to allow myself this belief and I am ready to accept this responsibility.  The responsibility is, I take responsibility for myself, I give myself permission to take the time and space I deserve to heal and find my wholeness.  This is my permission slip.