The Mind and the Body are One

I don’t know why it has taken me 65 years to question my addiction-like draw to toxic stress. It was easily fueled during my park ranger days, with a portable law enforcement radio microphone cord woven through an epaulet on my uniform shirt, feeding me a stream of law enforcement contacts and radio calls, or driving around in a patrol truck with a police scanner as my ambient background noise. Jacked up was often my state of being. We were trained during our defensive tactics practice that the “mind and body are one,” according to the martial arts instructor, Rod Stanford, who helped create the program. It didn’t really mean that much to me at the time. I was a busy mom. I was physically fit.

It wasn’t until I contracted Lyme disease on the job, when I was in my late 40’s, and there was a delay in my treatment, and my mind and body both crashed, that it started to sink in. I had to struggle to relearn even to walk again. I was angry at my body and about my lost career. Fifteen years after retirement, as I have continued struggling with numerous autoimmune diseases and organ damage that developed after, I’m starting to figure out that the negative thoughts I think, and the political and environmental online doom-scrolling that has replaced police radios, are directly proportionate to how badly my symptoms are flaring and my ability to cope and be resilient.

Come with me on my journey while I figure out what helps with overthinking and insomnia, and facing aging and life-threatening conditions with at least moments of gratitude and courage.