The Difference Between Fixing and Care.

 

While Jesse and Ruth and Elvis sleep (all of us are currently in the same room at night), weaving their soft snores into some perfectly braided harmony of slumber, I grind my teeth like a beaver. 

 

I have spent the majority of my adult years mincing/shredding/crushing/grating some unseen entity in my mouth while I sleep. My unconscious brain works with such aggressive rigor that I've had multiple surgeries for gum recession and many of my teeth have tiny shatter-marks like broken glass, if you look close enough. The big teeth in back are getting warn-down like the tread on an old pair of shoes. I wear a nighttime mouthguard religiously, but that does nothing for my constantly aching face muscles. When I am still and settled, I can usually feel my masseter muscle (think chewing muscle) twitching, a tangle of nerves and fibers in a perpetual state of clench. 

 

(Makes me remember how, as a kid, I would shine a flashlight under my chin so you could see the veins and red hues in the flesh, like a smidge of x-ray vision. Now, when talking with others, I often wonder if they can see the ache in my TMJs the way you could see the pulpy-insides under the Coleman-flashlight like when I was young.)

 

And then there are the subsequent headaches. I have had headaches off-and-on for the past decade. At best, the headaches are an annoyance, a distraction that keeps life at arm’s length. At worst, I feel blind to much of anything but the pain. Nausea elbows its way in, and I am desperate for something to ease the discomfort. Headaches can last anywhere from a half-day to many-chunks-of-days, stretches of time that feel wasted like delicious food left on the plate because of a stomachache. 

 

(I also probably don't need to mention that I am not at my best as a mom with the headaches. The focus sinks to an all-time low of just getting through until the next meal. Blec.)

 

Over the years, I have spent an inordinate amount of time "staying on top of it." I do yoga. I have had multiple massage therapists work on my mouth—inside and out—my neck, shoulders, back. I've gotten acupuncture, seen a chiropractor regularly and took expensive CBD oil. Everything helps for a bit, then it doesn't. 

 

Then came COVID.  At first, I was petrified that I couldn't see my chiropractor, as I had done weekly, then monthly, for years. I was certain I was doomed to weeks-long headaches until the end of this pandemic story. So I did more yoga—perhaps a bit desperately—kids, can't you see mommy's trying to RELAX??!!  I luckily stumbled on an anusara yoga class online that chilled me the fuck out and brought my focus back to what was on the inside. I began starting each day by tuning into my breath, my headspace, but ultimately returned to trying to GetItBetter so I could carry on with the momentum of my life as a mom at home with two young kids during a pandemic. 

 

Then, one fateful day not long ago, I was sitting in the dentist chair. The hygienist commented on how my masseter felt "like a brick" and "refused to budge" as she massaged it for a minute.  

 

I teared up, unexpectedly. 

 

The pain was intense enough to dig out an abrupt bit of emotion, but it wasn't that. The tear came from feeling cared for. The hygienist's voice was so warm and concerned, as if to say oh honey, what's going on in there? 

 

And, in that teeny-tiny bit of clinical nurturing, my insides started remembering what is so easily forgotten, especially for women who spend the majority of their time doling out care for others: the difference between Caring and Fixing.

 

We are still swimming in a pandemic that will likely continue to confuse and confound for months and months to come. The recent presidential election was terrifyingly close and I still don't trust that the transition will happen without even more mass-chaos and disruption on the calendar. The term “off the charts” no longer applies—we need new, more robust charts in order to measure the amounts of continuously-rising stressors. 

 

Even as I sit here, my instinct is to try to work out the morning-kinks of my neck and jaw—to stretch, manipulate, massage, poke at, with an underlying tone of FIXING IT so I can get back to showing up fully for those around me. 

 

So, I ask for help. I invite the archetype of the hygienist to shrink and sit on my shoulder and talk to me in that soft velvety tone that unlocks all the doors and windows that ever were. The way I talk to my children most times. The way my husband talks to each of us. 

 

Oh honey, what's going on in there? I’m listening.