Fantasy and Healing

Healing can be so hard some days. Some days you just exist trying to get through the headaches, nerve triggers, and emotional strain of living a half-life. When you survive a brain tumor your abilities can be greatly diminished. I know many who have recovered faster than myself, I also know many who struggle more who do not have support. For those dear friends, relief can be found in simple living. Respite can be found through fantasy, fiction, and living through others. We reach out but with diminished abilities and challenges reaching out can trigger collapse or, for some, seizure where brain function will cease for a period of time.

 

The reality of MRI's, medical bills, brain injury, and the daily knowledge of our own mortality sets us up for emotional distress, over and above the physical changes to our emotional chemical brain. Magic and fantasy, classic escapism, but it can become necessary to make it through the overwhelming days. To have adventures in safe space, to begin to reach out first through illusion, and then with others.

 

Fantasy offers respite and escape. It is easy to become trapped and stuck in this cycle, but if you always remember that it is respite only, a short break from the pain and distress. If you use this time to open up and re-engage, fantasy and fiction are positive. They offer a refuge in the midst of trying circumstances. Find magic and embrace it as part of your own. I play, I imagine, I paint. Anything to find space away from trauma. But, I always come back ready for another day. Imagine and you will get through the bad days.

 

Find heroes and villains. A friend of mine has named her tumor Voldemort from Harry Potter. Another calls her tumor Darth Vadar. Using fantasy in this way to address what scares us gives us strength. Both Vadar and Voldemort were defeated. My friends will also overcome any challenges they are presented with, why? because they believe that they can. They use fantasy as a way to gain power to fight the pain and stress, the trauma. We know where the real world is but storytelling, imagination, these are ways to address painful circumstances that otherwise are overwhelming.

 

God bless and keep you. You can get through bad days. If it takes a Lord of the Rings marathon, so be it. Tomorrow will be better. Live long and prosper and may the force be with you.