Opening to the Moment: A Response to the drawing “Healing” by writer Brenna Fitzgerald
Wesley Usher’s drawing “Healing” (Spring 2020 Intima) is a meditation on the power of pain and suffering to transform if we open to the vulnerability of the moment. Lilies grow from a spine broken by the “burdens we carry”-our own and those of others.
Two weeks into lockdown, I fractured my foot. In a fight with my partner, I lost control and slammed it into the floor over and over and over. The pain cut into my leg, my hips, my gut. I sobbed, fetal on the floor, while my partner curled his arms around me and said ‘let it out.’
In a sharp moment of pain, I became immobile. Then, the healing-the crutches, the x-rays, the MRI, the white-washed waiting rooms and examination tables. When the doctors asked me what happened, I said I landed wrong, too ashamed to admit that my anxiety exploded, that my bone was not the only part of me shattered to pieces.
But I did not land wrong. I landed right. This is what my healing taught me. I winced through weekly PT sessions. As healing took root, I messaged my doctor, worried every time I felt a new pain. Pain is part of healing, he said. Healing takes time.
Every day I woke up, sipped my tea, scrolled through my feed of photos, tossed my phone aside, flopped on the couch and stared at my orchids. Though their growth was slow, I knew in time the buds would open.
As spring progressed, I peeled off layers in the warming breeze and watched birds peck the softening ground for worms. I used to fast-forward through nature, my legs moving to the rhythm of racing thoughts. When I fractured my foot, I slowed down. I sat still. I took deep breaths. I noticed how spring unfolded in cycles of fleeting creatures: first the peepers and their pulsing songs, then the robins and the crocuses followed by tulips, orioles, hummingbirds and dragonflies. Spring came and went like a dance in many acts, a twirling swirling string of sensory details, and I a breathing presence in each moment.
Healing is in the moment. The moment is in the body — each breath, each heartbeat a reminder of how vulnerable it is to live in time and space. Moments pass as quickly as they arise. As Usher’s drawing reminds us, opening to the moment is both a letting in and a letting go. It’s a simultaneous opening to the wonder of impermanence and to the pain of loss. It’s a rediscovery of who we are as humans, an awareness that inspired my recently published collage “I Am Moments” (Fall 2020 Intima).
Watch as the orange-red colors of a sunset fade into dark sky. Feel how the heart aches.
Brenna Fitzgerald is a writer, editor, collage artist and creativity coach. She holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction and an M.A. in film and media studies. Fitzgerald has published written work in a variety of literary magazines including Creative Nonfiction, Stone Canoe and Ars Medica. She teaches meditation and finds inspiration in nature. Find her on Instagram @brenbrain. Her artwork “I Am Moments” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima
Originally published at https://www.theintima.org on January 15, 2021.
