I woke up with a migraine this morning that felt like it was going to take my head apart. It has slowly gone away but the "aftermath" fatigue has set in and I am just sitting with it.
I have had migraines before and usually can pinpoint a cause...I can today as well.
I watched the movie "Impossible" last night. Have you heard about it? I have been interested in seeing it since I heard it was being made. It is truly a stunning telling of one family's experience with the Christmas tsunami in 2004. They were vacationing in Thailand when it hit.
I went a year later to Sri Lanka which was also hit. I have a speciality in trauma with children and went with an agency to work with folks who were still living in refugee camps. The country was unofficially at war with itself which only added to the drama.
It all seemed surreal to me that I was there at all. I grew up and now live again in my hometown which is in Wisconsin. That I would be a plane going more than half way around the world to offer to support to people was never something I imagined I would be doing. Seeing my name on a plane ticket that included places I had only read about...again unreal.
But I went and did the work. It was rewarding, an eye opening and scary. We honestly had moments when we thought we would not make it home. And when we were leaving it was the same weekend that the guy tried to set off a bomb in his shoe on a plane in London and security world wide stepped up to a very scary level...and we were caught in it.
People crying at the airport begging to get on planes...it's all a blur really. All those jumbled experiences and feelings put in a box and tied with a ribbon and put on a shelf when I got home. I ran a crisis agency at that time and I needed to get back to work when I got home. No real time to process what had happened. On to the next thing...
I may have put those experiences and feelings in a box on the shelf...but what I know and sometimes forget it that all those experiences are stored in our bodies at a cellular level. They are there waiting to be triggered.
Sometimes we get a debriefing after an intensive experience and that can do a lot to release the most toxic part of those memories. But if we don't have that chance...and a lot of "helpers" folks don't...we carry those experiences only to have them surface later.
That's what happened to me during the night. I remembered a lot that I had forgotten. There was a bit of a "stress overload" and that resulted in a migraine. So today I am spending in quiet. Remembering the good we did and that we all got home safe. And knowing in that time and space we did what we could to reach out to folks that needed help.
And remembering once again that the body my spirit lives in has taken me to many wonderful places and allowed me to experience life like I never imagined I would. For that I owe it my thanks and a commitment to treat it more kindly than I do most days.