There are many times in my life when I have felt hemmed in without a way out. It was certainly that way as a child growing up in an abusive family. As an adult, making the commitment to do the extremely painful work of healing trauma and reuniting my dissociative parts often left me feeling overwhelmed with no exit from the struggles, especially as a low-income single parent living at one point in a homeless shelter.

I’ve learned over the years to not let those overwhelming feelings swamp me. Instead I call to mind some of my most difficult hiking days when all I wanted to do was give up. Remembering how I kept going then helps me now. Rather than focusing on the difficulty, I learned to put my attention on remembering all the kindness and beauty I have experienced during my 21,000 miles of backpacking.

I reminded myself to focus on gratitude for what I had and was able to do, even if it was only putting one foot a few inches in front of the other when pushing through an extremely difficult bushwhack or over and under miles of fire blackened fallen trees. As long as I kept moving a tiny bit I eventually got to a better place.

I put this wisdom to use recently when I really was hemmed in. After 31 days when it didn’t get above freezing and was often well below zero, it was slightly warmer out. (A whopping 34°f which made a big difference for my foot which gets painfully cold since some of the insulating fat layers were burnt when the insole exploded.) I decided it would be a good day to bring more wood into my basement. The problem was I literally could not get out of my house. Despite having four doors, I couldn’t get out any of them. I had not shoveled the snow away from the basement door, and as the storm door opened out, I couldn’t budge it. It was the same for the door going out through the greenhouse. I had shoveled the porch out my kitchen door, but since then snow had fallen off the roof and formed a large ridge of ice outside the door, only allowing me to open the door about 2 inches. My main door has a roof over the porch, so snow was not the issue. The problem there was that with all the cold temperatures the porch had frost-heaved and would only allow me to open the storm door about 4 inches before the door jammed on the risen porch deck. I was trying to do something positive for myself by bringing in wood, and I couldn’t even get out of my house!

Frustrated and on the verge of tears, I distracted myself by putting a few pieces in a jigsaw puzzle I was working. I learned when stuck doing a difficult puzzle, if I walk around to a different side of the table and look at it from a different perspective I am often able to get unstuck and make progress. I decided I would do the same with my doors. I realized I could squeeze my shoulder out the front door enough to get my broom through. By using my broom, I was able to pull towards me a tool I keep on the porch for chopping ice. I brought that tool into the house and opened the kitchen door the few inches I could. Then with slow, painful maneuvering I was able to chop some of the ice away to get the door open enough for me to squeeze through. Then I shoveled off the rest of that porch and my basement door. I actually managed to bring a few loads of wood into the basement before I had to stop because my burnt foot was screaming at me.

I felt proud of myself for having kept going and found a way out of my predicament, but not long after I was again thrown back into feeling completely overwhelmed. After days of struggling to keep my foot warm while clearing snow from my solar panels and doors, I noticed the carport I put up this fall was starting to collapse from the weight of the snow. Because of my foot, I hadn’t stayed on top of clearing it, so I pulled out the roof rake and spent a day shoveling off the carport roof. The whole time I was gasping for air. While slowly improving, breathing issues still are the norm since breathing in the lithium ion battery smoke when I was peeling the burning boot off my foot.

While shoveling the roof my foot kept shooting random sharp pains which have become my new normal. Sometimes these cause me to jump, and doing so while shoveling off the roof caused me to fall. I landed hard on my back. I heard a crunch inside my body and think I cracked a rib because it is now painful to move or breathe deeply. I also smacked my head and my teeth came together hard. That night I woke up with a really bad toothache. I fear I may have cracked the tooth but after a few days it has settled down so I am leaving it for now.

Just like in childhood, I became overwhelmed by the sense that nothing ever felt easy and I was all alone in this world without anyone to help or care. On some level I knew this wasn’t true. I had people who care about me, but when I was exhausted from so much bodily pain and overwhelmed by the work and medical bills starting to fill my mailbox, all I could feel were those overwhelmed Little ones inside. I decided not to fight anymore and stepped back to allow those overwhelmed parts to be front and center. I let go of Mary Badass and felt I was giving up. Rather than feeling gratitude, I sat in that overwhelmed place. I remained there for a few weeks, not sure if or how I would ever get out of it. I became conscious of many more childhood incidences which had left me wanting to die. I tried to give them as much space as I could. And by doing so I found yet another door which is teaching me to see things from a new perspective. By welcoming ALL of the feelings and not only focusing on gratitude I have become more deeply united with my lost parts. Thus, when the next crisis came my way, I was more prepared. But since this blog is already long enough, you’ll have to wait for the next one to read about that.

#healingtrauma #dissociation #kindness #ptsd #thruhiking #pacificnorthwesttrail #pnt #iat #iceagetrail #cdt #continentaldividetrail #nationalscenictrail