Over the last few weeks, I have developed a sore and tender knee, and in the last few days this has been joined by some lower back pain.  I’ve tried all my usual tricks, moving with it, massage, trips to the chiropractor and acupuncturist, which help in the short term, but today I have woken up with more pain.

I’ve been noticing that I look older and it occurs to me that holding this background pain makes me feel and look older.  I notice lines on my face, and the tension in my body holding on overshadows everything. I feel grumpy, and irritated.

In the past, I have sometimes managed to dialogue with certain parts of my body that were suffering and received so much useful information.  So today playing detective, I took myself on a bike ride, since I know this is one of best things that helps my knee.  And as I’m biking along, I asked my back ‘What’s going on?’

The message that comes is that I’m “backing up” too many people in my life.  That hits home.  That I’m backing up my ex-husband, filling in the spaces when he doesn’t show up.  I’m backing up my kids, to try to buffer them from the suffering arising from their parents getting divorced.  It’s true, I’m spinning plates fast trying to fill in the gaps where once there were two parents.  And I see how much I am doing to try to control and mitigate these events.

Somewhere in there, another voice, less comfortable asks ‘how is this serving me?’ and I recognise that if I stop spinning these plates, I will have the time and energy to show up in my life more, to show up in my studio, to do the things that resource me.  If I answer to the call of my back, I am answering to myself, calling me back to my own life.

I could choose to stop buffering events.  I will lose the control I am now holding with a cast iron grip. But I do want to soften.  Well its true, I acknowledge to myself, I will lose control.  Things may happen that I don’t like.  There may be more suffering, upset, tears, anger, disappointment.  I take a deep breath.  I sense the void of the unknown, the darkness of ‘I have no idea what is going to happen next’

I have a vision of myself, standing on the side, listening with compassion.  I could disappear into philosophy if it were not for my back pain, calling me back into the present, and the critical point that I have got to.  Surrender control, my back is saying, let everyone be, stop trying to ‘back up’ everyone, and breath.