This little piggy had bacon.

I had just been gratefully counting my blessings with Craig about how neither of us had falling ill this year. That even though Spring was around the corner we should keep our immune systems boosted and that we'd get away scott free from sickness in 2012.

That was 2 weeks ago and literally days after declaring my triumph, poor Craig got flu and he got it bad!  So there I was, being the amazingly supportive Florence Nightingale archetype that I am, mending my man to good health. Boiling down his groans and growls to 'man flu', you know - the worst kind - until I got sick a few days later. Believe me, this is one aggressive little bug.

Within a few hours of feeling a bit off, I went from lathargic to down right deadbeat and by morning I was losing a battle to a bug that just wouldn't back down. That was on Sunday evening, Monday morning wasn't fantastic and Tuesday was really yuk. But Wednesday was different. Wednesday found me in a whole different funk of fever induced agony, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to function. You would think that 3 days off sick would be better welcomed, put the feet up, catch a movie - not this time hunny, this little piggy had bacon and bad!

Back to the doctor I went with the silent hope and determination that she would in fact book me into hospital this time and put me out of my misery. My skin was sore, a rash had appeared on my neck and tummy and this fever was messing with my mind. "Nothing I can do", she muttered. "You've just got to ride it out". Words, I did not want to hear or accept. A virus as vile and putrid as this MUST have had some narcotic nemissis, right? Wrong.

So back to bed I went, a pile of voiceless, speechless human matter. A shell of a person, riddled with more apathy and disgust in how my body had failed me than I could articulate. I wanted; to die. Quietly slipping away into an abyss of cotton candied peace, nothing dramatic, thats all I wanted - just peace.  At one stage I had managed to talk myself into believing that the cacoon of blankets I had huddled myself into was in fact a tank of healing warmth where no pain could be felt. No nausea and no discomfort. My body relaxed and went along with this clearly fever induced thought process and finally I fell asleep for the first time in 3 days.

It was in the late hours of Wednesday afternoon, that while staring at the wall at the end of my bed I had realised exactly why I was in the state I was in. In Martha Becks book, "Finding your way in a wild new world", she puts into words a very simple state called "Wordlessness". A state whereby we stop using  verbal communication and simply slip into a wordless state of awareness. In this centered state one is able to both identify and find solitude in ones personal concerns. The answers come through wordlessness whereby the brain as we know it keeps quiet as the solutions find us.

I realised that without my voice, without my ability to even think straight I wasn't able to worry. My ability to actively be concerned with life's issues wasn't possible and for days I was forced into simply 'being'.

Although physically compromised my mind seemed to rest or those few days and as I healed so I found the voices and distraction getting louder as 'life' started happening again. Almost as if one transition into another.
So, my new strategy for the rest of 2012 is to stay in that mode of Wordlessness by stretching out with Yoga and Pilates in my home. I'm getting back into meditation and back into listening to what my body is screaming out to me. 

"Keep calm and center yourself - balance!"