Little Hope

I want to start this entry with a joyful and whimsical blessing to each reader for a blessed Ostara and a beautiful Spring.

If I’m honest—I don’t think this will come as a surprise nor will it be out of step with what perhaps most people are feeling—joy and whimsy have been elusive lately. Depression has been a logical response to the ever deepening crises around us. That’s hard for me to admit. Optimism has been a source of strength for me, what has so often felt like the only alternative to surrender. Why bother if we don’t believe we can correct our course?

I hold onto a shred of hope the same way an old man hangs onto the frayed edge of a mostly disintegrated baby blanket, but its presence doesn’t dominate. It doesn’t fill me with strength or brighten my vision. It just keeps me moving forward, and it has moved me all the way to today, to a new season and to a fresh turning of the wheel.

It’s more than a new season, some traditions say. It’s a new age, perhaps, we hope. Saturn and Neptune find themselves conjunct just where we find the Sun, here at the beginning of the wheel in the sign of Aries. This celestial occurrence at this precise spot, whether or not you traffic in astrology, is unprecedented in recorded history. Perhaps it is indeed a dissolution of the structures that have formed all aspects of our experience. Perhaps it is cause for hope.

At the same time, it is big, too big for my little mind to grasp, just like God or self or why save for fleeting moments in the dark. The challenge of staying afloat in a time of such deep grief, such limitless unknowing, is embedded in the traditions that teach us to take care, that turn our attention to the small, close rhythms of life, the breath, the beat.

We find Truth in the present moment, the only thing that is really ever within our reach. The secret, one I have come nowhere near discovering, is to give that moment our attention, even when we have not been pushed to it through overwhelm. Presence is not an anti-anxiety tool—it’s the Way, something we’re called toward with every breath, even if we’ve learned to ignore the voice.

So for me, today, I am looking for the small things, the things one thread at a time to weave a scrap back into a blanket. I’m honest, the small things would probably be big things if the much bigger things weren’t looming. A new job, a semester of academic distinction, twelve years in a relationship, each precious milestone of our children’s lives. It’s hard not to attach a caveat to each. (In late capitalism), (full of doubt), (without fanfare), (as time rushes forward).

Today, the small thing is a good doctor’s appointment. The bigger thing that looms, the caveat attached is the broader context of autoimmune dysfunction, the years of whack-a-mole and answers that beg more questions. But today, I had a good doctor’s appointment, and it came with those rare definitive answers.

Several months ago, bedridden by stomach upset and pain from my period, it occurred to me that my digestive problems were pronounced and reliably cyclical. Paired with the volume of blood, the size of the clots, things that had increased significantly over the past few years, were perhaps signs of a problem. I called my gynecologist’s office and persuaded a skeptical nurse that I, at 38, was confident that my symptoms correlated to my period. Her first inclination, despite being a woman who works in an office that serves exclusively women, to assume I was mistaken and ask if I’d ever been checked for IBS. Ultimately, she agreed to schedule me for an appointment in two months.

Before that appointment ever came, I found myself in the E.R. with intense pain in my upper right abdomen. I was dizzy and nauseous and anxious, and it felt much the same as the appendicitis that led to an emergency appendectomy a few years earlier did. The doctors first checked me for gall bladder issues, then for pelvic ones. They identified an ovarian cyst and told me it was likely causing referred pain in other parts of my abdomen.

I wasn’t surprised by the cyst diagnosis. In college, a trip to the E.R. with pelvic pain led to the same diagnosis. At that time, they told me it would either rupture or shrink away on its own. There was nothing more to be said or done. No one ever mentioned that ovarian cysts can be related to endometriosis, or that endometriosis exists.

This time, the E.R. released me with some naproxen and nausea meds. They also left me with the images my doctor needed to schedule a laparoscopic surgery. The plan was to go in and remove the cyst. From there, she would look for endometriosis and excise any she might find. Since I am not having more kids, we also decided to remove my tubes to lower my ovarian cancer risk.

Ultimately, a general surgeon also entered the mix after additional tests confirmed I had hyperkinesia, which just means it squeezed too hard. Unlike gall stones, doctors don’t seem really sure if hyperkinesia is a problem, but evidently it’s a “might as well” sort of situation. (I am not sure if I agree with that, but I’m trying to minimize the number of surgeries I need over a lifetime.)

So, at the end of February, the day Saturn moved into Aries, I had the surgery. Saturn is the planet of cutting, of concision. Aries is a ram, shaped like a womb, carrying the fertile promise of new life. I was groggy that day, but my husband informed me they’d found endometriosis and removed it. I later read the surgical notes but didn’t have a very clear picture till my follow-up appointment today.

In fact, today, I very literally got a clear picture when my doctor showed me what they’d excised. Large cysts that outsized my ovaries themselves sat on each. The back of my uterus was adhered to my bowels. My pelvis was full of freestanding blood. It was both gross and cool to look at.

It was definitive. Unlike the constant unknowns of autoimmune disorders, faced by so many women I know, this diagnosis came with an explanation for my symptoms and a plan for the future. It’s been just three weeks, and I already feel much better than I did before the surgery. It’s hope.

I can’t have any more kids, but my husband and I took other steps to close that chapter years ago. I thought I might mourn that a bit all the same, but I feel alright about it. If anything, I’m wrapping my head around the extent of the scarring in my body that means I probably couldn’t have had any more kids anyway.

There’s much to learn, and there are many unknowns about the relationship between endometriosis and other autoimmune issues. I won’t get unrealistically hopeful, but it’s possible that this improvement may lead to cascading positives, something I’ve rarely allowed myself to imagine.

Maybe part of that cascade could be giving a little hope to someone else. I’m sure if we mapped out the last 20 years, there might be some missed opportunities for answers, some avoidable pain. On the other hand, today, I am feeling better than I did, and today, I know more than I did. Maybe the more of us know more, the less other people will suffer. It’s possible. It’s hope.

So I am going to put my face to the sun and breathe in the air of a new season. I won’t forget the looming caveat, the climate collapse, but I will try to attune myself to the rhythms, to the moments. I will try to listen. I think if I do, my actions in each moment will be my best efforts, whatever I can do that might lead to cascading positives, that might shine one beam of light into the looming dark.

In Gnostic mass, we say:

What makes us free is the gnosis

of who we were,

of what we have become;

of where we were,

of wherein we have been cast;

of whereto we speed,

of wherefrom we are redeemed;

of what birth truly is,

and of what rebirth truly is.

One definition of rebirth, I believe, lies in each moment as it unfolds, in presence. This may not be our most joyous Ostara, maybe not by a longshot. Our hope may not be great, but it is enough, just for now.