The back story - lessons from a wilful spine

By Virginia Winder

Izzy the smoocher, caused me to trip.

Each time I’ve had a back injury, I’ve been taught a lesson.

The first time last August after a slip on the back deck and an injury that threatened bladder control, I learnt about trust.

I had to hand myself over to the medical people – the nurses, ED doctors, air ambulance folk and neurosurgeons. They fixed me up fine and sent me home, my water works intact.

During a non-painful recovery period I learnt about patience, about the importance of inner core exercises and the wonders of pelvic floor workouts. I rested. I read. I recuperated and I also worked. I was determined this incident would have little or no impact on my output.

Then on January 28, I hurt my back again. This time in a Pilates class and, as the days went by, the pain from a compressed sciatic nerve became worse and worse.

Once again my patience was tested. But more than that, so was my endurance. This event led to three-and-a-half months of pain that sometimes hit the 10 out of 10 mark. I survived. I can even say I thrived.

Again, I was able to work, to write lying down, do many interviews standing up and I just gritted my teeth and got on with it. We don’t know what we can handle until it’s handed to us.

I had to rest a lot because lying down eased the pressure on the nerve. As a result of that, and repetitively doing mindfulness meditations, I became extremely laid back. The opiates I was on probably helped too.

When I recovered, after another surgery in Wellington, I still felt laid back. Life was good and I was just cruising along. But there was something missing – adrenalin.

Instead of being hyped up by deadlines, I was meeting them with ease and still felt as laid back as a hippy on holiday in Hawaii (I do love alliteration). I just had no urgency, and weirdly, stories were proving ridiculously easy to write.

Then I went to a writer’s group and one of my mentors gently, subtly pointed out that maybe I was a little off my game. I didn’t get upset (too laid back for that), I went away and reflected. I knew I was lacking something. Some edge. The ability to lose myself so totally in words that nothing else exists.

The rogue washing basket I shouldn't have carried.

Then last Tuesday I was carrying a heavy washing basket down the hallway when I tripped on the cat. I shouldn’t have been carrying the washing basket anyway, but obviously, there was more for me to learn. I went to bed feeling a little troubled because my back didn’t feel so good.

In the middle of the night I got up to the loo and I felt pains shoot down my right leg. “Oh shit,” I thought, memories of those months of pain flooding back in an instant.

The next afternoon I hung out at the Ozone Bean Store with a couple of photographer mates. We shot the breeze and I felt increasingly uncomfortable – not because of them, but because of my back. They left and after doing some work, I hobbled for the door.

I started walking up nearby stairs and could barely lift each leg because my back was going into spasm. Half way to the car, I was hit by pain so bad I thought I was going to pass out. An embarrassing mental image of being tended to by ambulance officers in public, pushed me on. Through white face and gritted teeth I limped to the car.

At home, I staggered inside, lay on the bed and called my husband to come home. “You need to take me to A&E.”

I went straight in and put on a bed. Great service, I must say. There, the doctor from Florida decided – rightly – that this injury was muscular. Yes, it did have some of the same symptoms as my previous incidents, but this felt different.

After just three hours (pretty damn fast for A&E), I was sent home with Warren as my nurse. He stayed home to look after me because I couldn’t get out of bed by myself.

But this time, I discovered I couldn’t be laid back any more. The more sedentary I was, the worse I felt.

Also, I had to push myself through two major deadlines on Saturday and Sunday and it felt fantastic. I had adrenalin. I couldn’t lay about; I was active and on to it.

So there it is, the back story is I’ve found my words, my verve, my edge. When I wrote my garden page and stories for another publication, I lost myself in the words. Even this blog is from that “other” place that brings me as much joy as finding flowers to photograph.

My back gets better day by day now.

Now I have a message to my wilful spine – I’ve learnt my lessons thanks. Get back where you belong.

Tell our tales - differently

By Virginia Winder

We are the stories we tell.

That means we have the power to change them.

If your story is getting you down and when you repeat it you feel yuck, stop sharing it or tell a different story.

I did that about the year from April 2013 to April 2014.

It was the worst 12 months, a time filled with anguish and anger, depression and despair, misery and meanness.

When I used to talk about that time, I immersed myself in the woe-is-me story and the gloom would descend again. Even writing these last two sentences has my gut churning.

Then it came to me – I could tell a different story.

So I did. First, I sat down by the sea with a mentor and we talked about what I’d tell people about leaving a job that had seemed like a dream position.

We decided to say that the job just wasn’t for me, that I preferred writing and I wanted a different future. He was a wise man, a good man and he helped me immensely.

In the past few months, I have wiped that time off my CV, Linked In and all social media. I purged it from my past and it made me feel light and free. I realised I had made a mistake in veering off the path of journalism and writing – it literally nearly killed me (more gut churning).

Now I mostly talk about the life I have now, although I have shared aspects of the past with pain and passion – I have done so many wonderful things that make me smile – and of course there are my darling parents.

Along with living in the now (bit of a mindful mantra that), I still dream. The other day, creativity guru Wayne Morris asked a friend thinking of a career change: “What do you want your life to look like?”

That got me pondering.

It’s pretty much what I want, but there could be more creative writing in there (on the faltering novel), more blogging (hence this post), more overseas travel and an uplifting exercise regime. Maybe I could see my sister more and talk to my brother more, because they are my beloved whanau.

All the rest is pretty damn fine. I’ve got great relationships with my amazing-cook teacher husband and our crazy creative grown-up kids. I’m doing lots of art with my friends Cheryl and Jayeta, and on the journalism front, I’m writing about meaningful things – charities, gardens, food, art, the community and mental health.

There are times though, when stories have to be told because they are so close to the heart. They need to get out or you’d burst.

When Mum and Dad died in a car crash in 1999, I wrote about them, at the behest of multi-author David Hill, although I did so publicly. He wrote me a beautiful letter at the time, but I think he meant me to write just for myself. I do tend to be an out-there kind of gal.

I’ve tapped out stories about having bipolar, although I feel like I’ve been in remission since mid-2014. It’s just not a big part of my life, but every hint of feeling down gives me a fright. And when I’ve had six days with crap sleep, like now, I worry about going up. Still steady though.

I’ve also shared a blog post about trying to take my life (more acid in the gut).

Writing about painful events and getting them out can be useful and can help others. But there is a time when that story wears out. You’ll know, because you will have told it again and again, and in doing so you’ll feel crap about life or yourself.

So stop.

Do as Wayne suggests, sit down and write about what you want your life to look like.

Or reword how you tell it. A friend of mine, Shirley Vickery, told me tonight that when she used to tell people she was a secretary, they would switch off.

So she changed her job description. When people asked about her job, she would reply: “I’m the personal assistant for a community activist.”

People would say: “Wow that’s amazing.”

It’s all in the wording and what we tell ourselves.

We write our own stories.