The Unraveling
One year ago my life changed suddenly, sending me on a journey of discovery, newfound understanding and healing. An unraveling.
Three minutes from presenting at a board meeting and I couldn’t help but notice my phone ringing incessantly. Glancing at my screen I saw multiple calls from my doctor’s office. Checking my visual voicemail I saw the words that would crack me open to my core.
We found a tumor. Need you to come back.
My heart started racing as I felt the air leave my lungs, struggling to make its way back in. My mind jumping through the questions violently assaulting it, one after the other. Shaking, I left the room, locked myself in a bathroom stall and told myself to hold it together through the end of the meeting. Catching my breath, calming the tremors in my hands, I walked back into the meeting in time to present.
I’m not sure what I said, if it made sense or even mattered. I mustered every ounce of strength I had to remain composed.
Two days earlier I’d faced down some of my biggest fears as I went in for what was supposed to be a simple procedure to remove a cyst on my scalp. It had been growing for years, but every time I had it checked I was told it was nothing more than an annoyance, nothing to worry about — but if it bothered me I could have it removed. There was just no assurance that it wouldn’t simply grow back.
Over time I detached from some of the shame around this abnormality, jokingly naming it my horn, learning to cover it and the resulting bald spot with my hair. But in time it became more than an annoyance. It became painful, as did the smaller cysts that had begun growing over the years. It became a focal point drawing my energy to it more and more until I finally decided to face my fear of doctors, pain and all things medical, and have it surgically removed.
In the final stages of moving to Israel and giving up my San Francisco apartment, I’d planned it just right, scheduling it with enough healing time to get home for Thanksgiving and just enough time to have stitches removed, get back to Israel and leave for a wedding in India a few days later.
I’m not sure what I expected going in but I know I wasn’t expecting what was to come.
I was petrified going into the first procedure. My body was so tense I was shaking as my partner, Yaron, held my hand and talked me through the injections. Ever my grounding force, he gave me strength and did his best to calm me as I lay there totally vulnerable — fully conscious of the coming assault on my body. He stayed as long as the doctor would let him, uttering words of affirmation and helping me call on my inner strength as I attempted to stay calm.
As he left the room I wept, hearing and internalizing the sounds of them slicing my scalp open and trying to pry this mass from my head. I tried to calm myself. I tried to self sooth, but instead I simply left my body, unable to stay present in that moment as my body was being assaulted by modern medicine.
I became aware again just as they seemed to struggle putting the stitches in to close the gaping wound they’d left me with. Yaron returned to the room, again soothing my soul, reminding me it was over. The worst was over.
Two days later, Yaron no longer by my side and I’m on the phone with a physicians assistant telling me they found a rare tumor — a proliferating pilar tumor. While not malignant, it exhibits malignant behavior, spreading like cancer — with the looming threat of becoming cancerous over time.
The worst was not over. I needed to come back in. It needed to be removed.
My mind immediately went to my perfectly planned timeline with no room for error. How was I supposed to have another surgery and stick to my timeline? My fear of disruption so great, I didn’t even stop to ask more questions, to second guess their directive or at least be sure they’d thought through every angle.
After many mental exercises through various timelines I agreed to come back in on Monday — three days before Thanksgiving to remove the tumor.
Calling Yaron, now in New York, he started to ask, “Do you want…” before simply saying, “I’ll be there.”
What I came to understand during those early days was that a tumor is simply a group of cells that stops receiving new information; a confusion of matter, or as I believe in this case, a physical manifestation of the spiritual. Through this journey I have gained a deeper awareness of my energetic makeup as I’ve learned that the lived trauma I remember so acutely was present even as my genetic makeup began to form.
The day prior to the first procedure I’d begun training for my Reiki Level II, an experience meant to deepen my spiritual grounding and bring me into greater relationship with reiki while undergoing a journey into distance healing; reaching beyond the boundaries of time and space to bring healing to the deepest parts of ourselves or others.
I instantly felt a deep connectivity to the past, surfacing childhood memories locked deep within my stored memory as I tried to make sense of the rapid fire images coming to the surface. Over the course of the coming days, after the revelation of a tumor and through the second procedure, I couldn’t help but feel this interconnectedness linking the past with my present reality. I felt a lifetime of hurt, shame and sadness rising to the surface, begging to be released. The unraveling was beginning.
Born to a late stage alcoholic mother and an absent father, my childhood was riddled with chaos, abuse, bouts of homelessness and more traumatic stimuli than I have been able to fully process and release even to this day. As I spent months consulting with doctors and trying to wrap my mind around various treatment options I was called to better understand my early years — years of my life that felt lost to me, particularly as many of those closest during that time have since passed away. But in asking my mother to recount her own memories, her words stopped me dead in my tracks as she shared that she only discovered she was pregnant with me while in yet another detox program. Battling for sobriety and in the midst of a custody battle for her other three children, she said:
“I don’t know what it’s like for a tiny developing person to be in the body of someone who has exploded into complete hysteria. I am sorry tiny baby.”
Receiving those words after a particularly difficult day with doctors I understood. I understood that this tumor was not my own, but a spiritual manifestation of generations of trauma and heartbreak. Absent and broken mothers, abandonment and an ongoing fight for survival. I’d survived the trials and tribulations of my life thus far, building a life so rich with experience, love, friendship and opportunity that it defied reason. But I had not escaped unscathed. It seemed there was still more work to be done to release myself from my own ancestral trauma.
This message has come to me again and again through a variety of mediums, and through three different intuitives in the past year alone. Each devoid of any context for my life or medical condition, they have each responded to witnessing me by acknowledging a shadow around me — insisting it is not mine even as I am the only one who can release it.
As I prepared for the second procedure, Yaron by my side, I felt the floodgates opening as I found myself fully held for the first time in my life. I laid in bed crying, vocalizing my fears and insecurities from the past while drawing a point of connection to this alternate plane of being I was experiencing — sharing with Yaron one of the nearly unspoken truths, one of the few things I still struggle to admit out loud. In that moment of absolute vulnerability he again met me with nothing but love. Hearing it, holding it and sweeping it aside because for him it had no bearing on the woman in front of him. He still only saw me.
He then slowly, surely and steadily nudged me to prepare as I again let myself be led to the doctor for what was again supposed to be a simple enough procedure.
I again tried to channel a sense of calm as Yaron held me tight, again bracing for the injections and this time for the re-excision of my head already swollen and reeling from the trauma of the previous week. Again I heard the slicing, breathing through the fear and horrific sounds both heard and felt deep within. I repeated the shema — Judaism’s central prayer — as I simultaneously called on spirit, understanding this to be a part of my spiritual journey and path of growth.
Fourteen staples later and Yaron again returned, showing just a touch of discomfort for the first time as I forced him to look at my wound and document the horror. In that moment I knew it was worse than I’d anticipated but it would still be many more days before I would understand how much worse.
I made it home for Thanksgiving. Traveling through airports and airplanes with a head-wound, fully wrapped in gauze, makes you realize fear and fragility in new ways. I traveled through each step with caution, conscious of the throbbing pain in my head and terrified of someone accidentally bumping into me. I was wounded. For the first time in my life I felt feeble, nearly helpless as I forced myself to exert every ounce of energy I had to make it home.
Everything hurt. Moving. Stillness. Trying to eat. I was in excruciating pain. But with each layer of pain came a deeper level of opening as I stepped deeper into reiki. Grounding myself. Soothing and healing myself from the inside out.
I cancelled my trip to India, understanding my body wouldn’t be able to handle it. In that moment I didn’t realize I’d also be losing a relationship I’d held dear for the last many years — but I’ve learned that the universe sometimes brings us the lessons we need to learn when we least expect them — learning that with each closing a new opening is waiting to appear.
Returning to San Francisco my timetable was back on track as I packed the last 7 years of my life into boxes. Sorting through what to keep, what to donate or give away, I realized how much of my core had been attached to physical things — and the physical structure of the home I’d built for the last 3 ½ years.
For so much of my life all I’d dreamed of was a home. Growing up in chaos — the absolute absence of stability — I craved what I never had. The only time I seemed to have a stable roof over my head and food on the table were the times I found myself with extended family. My mom again disappearing — jail, treatment — all I knew was that she was gone until she’d magically reappear and the fantasy would begin again. Perhaps this time it would be different, she’d be different. But one by one every chance turned out the same, always with her drinking, often with us homeless, reliant on one random man or another.
I learned from a young age that while my mother longed to care for me she was wholly inept to do so. Instead I absorbed her. I absorbed her pain, her shame, holding it as my own so she wouldn’t have to carry the burden alone. I accepted what seemed to be my fate — to always be stuck in the middle — almost apologizing for whatever mess she’d get into by simply being quiet, always with a knowing that she couldn’t help herself. Her own wounds ran too deep. The pain too much to face. Too heavy to lift. So she escaped.
So as I sat packing my belongings I was conscious of the fact that I was actively moving through my greatest fears — relinquishing the grip I had on safety, my physical home and all the things known for the unknown that awaited me in Tel Aviv. I was making a bold bet and stepping into a journey of release, acceptance and love.
But the universe had more surprises in store. Just after returning from Thanksgiving, I received a message from One Medical, my primary care provider. My pathology report from UCSF was back. They’d failed to remove the whole of the tumor and I was being referred to head and neck surgery in UCSF’s cancer department. Aside from my emotional meltdown with Yaron, I’d tried to play the stoic ’til then. But in that moment I fell apart, fear taking over. This unexpected nightmare wasn’t loosening its grip. Instead it was pulling me deeper into the unknown.
Hours felt like days and days like weeks as I tried to make sense of the information. Unable to reach the doctor I started to spin out, desperately wanting to make sense of it all as I felt the walls of fear closing in around me.
Eventually I returned to the doctor to have the 14 staples in my head removed. Loathe to engage he would barely even look at my head. Scoffing at my questions about a CT scan or MRI, he fully dismissed me saying, “No, they’ll just go in there and take it out.” Funny, he’d said the same thing to me 10 days prior and that hadn’t exactly worked in my favor. Asking about the persistent swelling and the mass forming at the top of the incision he just gave me the same dismissive response saying, “It doesn’t matter, they’re just gonna go back in anyway.” Needless to say Dr. Neuhouse is not at the top of my referral list, but he did teach me a very important lesson. Ask questions. Advocate for yourself and never take a doctor’s word as the final say. As I’ve learned through this experience — months searching for the right doctor and treatment plan — most doctors are just making their best guess and hoping they get it right.
Fast forward, and today, one year later, I am having another surgery with the hope that they will finally remove the tumor spreading in my head. While I feel the weight of fear crushing my chest, there is still an understanding that this is part of my journey; part of the spiritual contract I signed before coming into this world. This knowing will remain my reservoir of strength through the hours ahead.
I have spent this past year wrestling with my past and present, trying to make sense of the overflow of emotions, past traumas and unknowns that have risen to the surface, challenging me at every turn. As I began to make sense of my physical predicament I came to understand and internalize the words of Caroline Myss who says “our biography becomes our biology”. I’d spent my life running away and hiding from my past, too ashamed to come close to it, afraid of what it would mean to hold the various sides of my being together as one. This tumor forced me to pause and not only consider what medical decisions were necessary, but what aspect of my biography brought this into existence.
When I first shared what was happening with my reiki teacher, she explained that the location of my tumor was situated on the kidney meridian which is tied to fear. While not well versed in the teachings of Chinese medicine, I still felt the power of this newly shared knowledge as I’ve spent the majority of my life in fear.
From my earliest years I understood that I didn’t have the luxury of expecting basic things to be true; a roof over my head, food on the table, agency of my own body or my mother’s wellbeing. Every time she left I was afraid whether she would come back, and with who. I remember being left home alone at the age of three, left in the back of cars for hours on end, knowing this wasn’t supposed to happen but without the power to change it.
Years later, at the age of 12, after early bouts of sexual assault and witnessing my mother in an abusive relationship that threatened to take her life more than once, I found myself out of school running the streets with drug dealers and gang bangers. This was a new dimension of fear. Fear of not being hard enough for the streets, while also finding myself in situations that made me fear for my life on more than one occasion. My fear of survival became so great that I continued to live my life in fight or flight mode well into adulthood. Long after escaping the perilous nature of my childhood — fear continued to plague me, physically manifesting in my body as pain, tension and perhaps the confusion of cells that brought this tumor into existence.
Today, far from the reality of my past, I’m facing a different kind of fear, but one that is forcing me to open — to unravel the layers — instead of retreating within in a fight for survival. While I cannot pretend to know what lies on the other side of this procedure, I am confident that this is a necessary part of my journey and intimately linked to my ability to release myself from the grips of darkness that have hung over me like a shadow from my earliest days on this planet. Another phase in the journey, another step in the process of unraveling.
