By my tree, connected to the earth and looking at the sky
By my tree, I lived happily...
Years ago, in the days of my crazy hyperactive life, I would sometimes go to a friend's house in a mill in the forest of Compiègne at the end of the week, and I would take refuge near the fire, with a glass in my hand, and when the host proposed the traditional Sunday outing in the forest, I would decline the offer with disdain: "cold, wet, and all this green, what a horror!
The years have passed, and how can I ignore it, in October 2014, a blow of the scalpel may have changed the meaning of my life.
I came home to Garches hospital, on a sunny day, standing up and almost trotting happily. I woke up, #moellepierced, no longer walking, no feeling below the waist. There followed long weeks lying in a hospital bed, months, without moving, and from my immobility, #paraplegic, I could see through the window a single large tree receding. Weeks later, my physiotherapist took me out in a wheelchair, wrapped up, on a morning just before Christmas, in the courtyard of the hospital: the magic and emotion of the winter light, the fresh air, the sight of #trees.
Since five years have passed, where I was re-educated to my new state.
I adapted to a new, fragile but real #verticality, preferring to the search for a just and perfect balance, the ease of a realistic adaptation to my muscular weaknesses, of an overadaptation of what was working at the expense of the parts of my body, extinct, injured and absent. I was acclimatized.
Life has been generous in offering me the chance to become otherwise #aligned, in coherence with who I truly am, through writing and transmission: I have become a "#passenger of words".
I appreciate it.
My body quickly stopped progressing, in about a year, and I settled into this accepted physical minimum, which was quite liveable.
I can go outside, but without #real independence, with a cane and the presence and hand of a companion, I can bathe, but with a belt, and still #assisted by someone, I can go out in a VTC as long as I am accompanied from the car door to the front door. Limited, but #debout, these last five years.
Penalized by a huge #disability, intense pain, a precarious balance that few people know how to guess, understand and accompany. I don't count the number of times I've been jostled in the street, at a reception, uncomfortable in a crowd or in a restaurant, weakened in company. #Invisible disability, The paradox of disability I have already mentioned.
My shoulders and arms are twisted with #pain, my legs give out or twist and my feet are buckled and laced with injuries and strains. More progress, and it seemed like a done deal.
While in my life, I had found a meaning, a verticality, roots, an anchoring, I became a #writer with Le Roseau Penchant and a #lecturer with a TEDx that exceeds one million views and is even subtitled in Japanese
I felt a new horizontality blossoming in me, born of sharing, authenticity, the link to others, the #transmission which is my mission, and which, by offering myself in sincerity to others, frees me and makes me move forward. As I connect more and more deeply to my values, and as I share them, I place myself in a larger and more intense world. Where #everythingispossible. with writing
The very possibility of finding a more agile and free body came to challenge me.
The fall strikes came, and added one more #fear to my life, as well as to the lives of thousands of people with limited mobility. This is a fact, not a political judgment. Entire neighborhoods, including mine at times, have become off-limits to me, because they are too dangerous due to the outbursts of the demonstrations. The crowd is naturally a danger for me, who is hesitant and stumbling. For days on end, I could not go out every week, because of the same transportation difficulties. No one could come to me often either, and I stayed at home for days on end, not walking enough, with new pains and a low morale.
At some point, we had to find a solution because I was regressing and wasting away.
And I was fortunate to be able to intensely practice a mix of #yoga and #Pilates, with an amazing young woman - I'll get to that - at home almost daily, which led me to reconsider my muscle and neurological deficits in several stages.
First of all, to wake up, notably through #visualization, some parts of my body, totally switched off. And to reinforce those that were already reactive, but that my forced inactivity was weakening.
In a few intense weeks, I was doing the first postures, including the sacred #plank. I became more and more aware of what I could do precisely and how, and what I could not do anymore and where and why. I was analyzing the #strengths and #weaknesses of the different parts of my body, with totally different strengths and difficulties, far from any logic, very incomprehensible.
And I decided to let go of the path of #comfort, that of #adaptation to my body in a state accepted as such, out of ease and also out of resignation, to choose the steep and exciting path of true #rehabilitation, that is to say, the understanding and implementation of a physical and mental work , I chose the steep and exciting path of true #rehabilitation, that is to say the understanding and the implementation of a physical and mental work, precise and specific which is adapted to each part of my body, by working finely the most #subtle way to accompany it in a #strengthening which is proper to it, to the millimeter, in consciousness, in deep link with each part of each limb, each vertebra, each organ, each hemisphere,..
A week ago, I decided to take the path of autonomy, going outside with two canes to ensure a better stability, in a more autonomous and balanced way.
Still accompanied, but walking alone. There are new fears that are expressed, on which I start to have a small idea. To be continued.
#Vulnerability that challenges me, at the very moment, when I have to anchor who I am today.
At a time when, in public, opportunities are opening up for me to go further in #sharing and #transmission.
And today I'm back to the trees, my original point.
Today, February 21, 2020, was a beautiful, clear, sunny winter day, the day Florence Karras allowed me to reconnect with the forest that I had loved so little and so badly.
We didn't know each other very well, Florence and I, when Alice aux merveilles allowed us to meet one evening. A friendly meeting. I follow the activities of Canopsia, and this side step makes me dream in these first days of 2020: with these strikes, to go to breathe, to go out, to walk became a dream, almost a fantasy. Sometimes, I cry to be locked up like this.
Florence, with her deep generosity, suggests that I take a date, a day that for me, as soon as possible, with my difficulties. There is the cold, the storms, the rain, and it was today.
For several days, I have known Florence to be as happy as I am about this adventure, but I discover with amazement that she is preparing a cocoon of security and comfort for me, which overwhelms and amazes me:
At what time I can leave, what I need, we will have a complaint chair, Florence will drive across Paris to pick me up and bring me back. We share our lives, our hearts, our passions, our joys, our difficulties. As with a sister that I do not have. We have lunch and equip ourselves at her place.
And 1:30 p.m. is the #forest. And then I didn't look at my watch anymore. Or my phone!
We tenderly made, hand in hand, the presentations, the acclimatization: the sky, the ducks, the trees, the stump, the lake. The breathing calms down, but I know in #consciousness what is inside me and that I have to put down, my stress, my sadness, my fears, my fatigue. We move slowly, time is absent, I am in total #confidence and #security.
We enter the forest, as one enters a #cathedral, impressed by the place, respectful, attentive. Florence checks my #balance at every step.
I, who am profoundly visual, am surprised that I could have ever not been amazed by these multiple sparkling #greens, these traces, these mini lichens and pretty mosses, these tiny Japanese gardens, the mosaics of bark. Florence brings me to the infinitely #small, and the infinitely #big.
We walk, we climb, I slalom between the branches on the ground, on a carpet of crunching leaves, with the ease of a woodlander. I am well.
I hear the leaves, I rest against a trunk, I lose myself in it, I caress grasses, trees, leaves, the air blows on my face, the birds sing.
I discover a thousand forms, unique, vibrant, we land between trees for a long time, I rest, I weigh on them, they support me, and these small disparate muscles which constitute me, are relaxed, stirred, welcomed, heard. I am deeply refreshed.
In some of them, I escape, I meditate, I calm down. A stop to regain new energy, with the pleasure of a tea.
A tear, it must be the cold!
So many other things to tell, but let's keep secrets.
We will leave the forest by a staircase of earth and logs, majestic.
It's 5:30 pm, but is it the same day?
I feel good, my body is unified, I no longer feel that familiar impression, for the past five years, of being an accumulation of disparate parts of the same body, I am in a beneficial, soothed, serene globality. Exhausted and nourished, in full capacity to be on the stage of the #Zénith on March 8th at #DeboutCitoyennes with Eklore. Confident.
I want to stay with Florence, to find this haven with regularity and the peace that resides there.
Thank you Florence, and long walk to Canopsia
Maybe. Soon.