Grief. Rage…Propulsion

I saw a hornet at the window yesterday.

He was getting fighting mad at the light of the frosted glass: knowing it was light, believing it was the way out. If only he tried harder.

He went up.

He went down.

He went side to side.

He went straight at it, as if force alone could bust him through.

But he didn’t.

He couldn’t.

He knew his way out was light.

What he didn’t know was that the light he thought was freedom… was not.

Just eight inches away, waiting patiently, was the opening.

If he could have pivoted ninety degrees, just one clean turn, he would have seen it and been free.

I am that hornet.

I see a way out. I know I’m close.

I am.    

I am…in reach.

I can sense it.

Smell it.

Taste it.

Feel it.

But I’m not quite looking in the right direction.

Close. So close.

I can sense that I’m one pivot away. Maybe more. But I’m at the door. I just need to see the lock.

I’ve spent years finding

and building

and creating

and learning

which key is me, and which doors are real. Every year, I learn more.

I grow.

And I rage, like that hornet, when things don’t work.

I rage at the glass.

I beat my head against the places I thought were openings, only to find they were not.

My stubbornness has kept me there longer than I wanted, sometimes.

But here’s what I’m learning, and what I wrote about before, when I wrote about rage as part of grief:

Rage isn’t just destruction. It’s propulsion.

Every time I slammed into what I thought was the opening, the impact bounced me back just far enough to see more.

Wider.

Broader.

Deeper.

Each collision gave me a glimpse, a peak, of the actual opening.

Each bounce backwards added a layer.

And those layers, slowly, painfully, moved my healing forward.

I’ve learned many things on this journey that have moved the needle. And now, I find myself standing in front of another door.

This one isn’t brute force.

It isn’t willpower.

It isn’t “trying harder.”

This door is layers, sequencing, timing. And listening to what the body is actually saying.

Over the past six years, I’ve lived inside post-infectious illness.

I started with lung damage and post-infectious asthma (not being able to breathe).

I recovered, only to unknowingly push myself into “getting stronger”…

Which landed me crashed. Immobile. Severe heart palpitations. No answers. And a world that didn’t understand.

Medicine now has names for most of it: dysautonomia, gut dysbiosis, mitochondrial dysfunction, mast cell activation, vascular instability, heart palpitations.

I have almost the whole constellation of life stealing, invisible, unknown chaos that is Long Covid and other post infectious conditions.

Through it all, I have been both practitioner and patient.

Living inside this illness teaches you things no certification ever could.

When you’re raw, tired, and just done

Rage shows up…

Bouncing off of the glass into a new perspective

Showing an opening with just a pivot.

I’m now in the process of creating personalized pathways for people with Long COVID and post-infectious conditions (not one-size-fits-all protocols), but ways of helping people recognize their patterns, their blocks, their next turn.

Because recovery isn’t about smashing through the window.

It’s about learning how to see the opening that’s been there all along.

Sometimes rage is what gets us to turn our head just enough to notice it.

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If this resonated, the sense of being close but never quite free, of trying one thing after another while your care stays fragmented, you’re not alone.

I’m currently working on ways to reduce that fragmentation and lack of coordinated care in Long Covid and post-infectious conditions.

If you’d like to follow along as this takes shape, as well as receive insights and guidance I don’t share on social media, please sign up for my monthly to biweekly newsletter below.

Always,

~ Dr. Rachael