There Comes A Time

by Julia Tuchman

I have never been very good at surrendering.

I have been the fighter—the hold on to the side of the cliff, fight for your life, never give up and never go down with the ship kind of soul. It was exhausting work.

Because surrender is one of my bigger lessons, I have had more opportunities then one should be given. But I am stubborn. The lessons kept coming. I had to fight for my life.

At 20, I was forced to leave college with mononucleosis. I planned to return back to my studies the next semester, healthy and strong. The mono symptoms never seemed to leave, and I was bedridden. Like dominos falling, the mono progressed to a viral syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome. My immune system was compromised to such an extent that I developed severe environmental illness, so sensitive and allergic to the modern world, that I was homebound for much of a decade. When I left my environmentally safe house, I had to wear a specially filtered mask. I fought. It kept me alive. I never gave up.

Due to some strange medical fluke, some sort of neurological damage from the virus, I was left for nine years unable to eat solid food. For those nine years, I have had to survive on liquefied food. I have been brought to my knees, but I am thankful for my blender.

I lost a chance at college, career, children, weddings, parties, and a nice plate of lasagna. I have had backs turned to me, betrayals, lost opportunities and a hunger I can’t even describe. Twenty years had gone by. I was a Rip Van Winkle of sorts without the sleep. I was the Mrs. Haversham from a Dickens novel stuck in some time warp. I cried out many times in my life wondering if perhaps God had forgotten about me.

A few weeks ago, on the way to yet another doctor visit, I walked on to the elevator on the 23rd floor of the building I live in. The brass doors closed, and I pressed the lobby button. As I straightened my coat, the elevator began to wildly shake back and forth. My heart shook with it. The elevator then dropped a foot, rose again and dropped even more. In my mind I imagined the elevator hanging by a thread. It was going to fall 23 stories down. I had no control.

My hands reached out frantically searching for the emergency button. I pressed every button I could, until I found it. I screamed for help. My voice echoed back to me in the small space, and I was surprised how much I sounded like a frightened child calling out. “Help! Please someone!” The elevator sunk and shook again.

A static-filled male voice came through the tiny intercom. “We see you. Don’t worry you are ok. We are going to get you down!”

I was not alone.

“Please help me.” My voice sounded like a whimper now. If I did survive this, my heart felt as if it might not.

As the elevator continued to shake, I had no sense of where I was or what floor I was on. The doors opened on the fourth floor and I automatically fled. The voice came back over the intercom “No, stay on the elevator. I promise you are okay. We are going to get you down.” I stepped back into the car. As the elevator doors closed before me, I questioned my decision. It could fall again. But, in a few seconds the doors opened in the lobby. I was safe.

Later, my partner Adam asked me why I had not just gotten off on the fourth floor and taken the other elevator—the “safe” elevator. “I don’t know,” I answered. It was a reasonable question. “I guess I just felt I had to trust.”

That Sunday, I am sitting on a bench at the end of my block facing the East River. I watch the murky brown water as it flows effortlessly between the concrete of Manhattan and the smokestacks on Roosevelt Island. I notice a beauty in the ripples and rhythmic movement as it glides. It is polluted, yet it still flows. What man has done to this river has not stopped its graceful purpose. It continues on as buildings fall and rise again around it, it continues on its way. As I watch, I let go and feel myself flow along with the currents.

I can feel the years of trauma—the illness—the fears, abandonments, the hungers and desperation. I let it all go in acceptance and I imagine it flowing down the murky river.

I can also see all the times I have not been there for myself and all the moments I have not shown myself compassion and love that I so deserve through all that I have been through. I have no control over what has happened or how others might have treated me, but I have often been my own worst enemy. I was often the one who forgot about me.

Later in the day, I read a piece in the New York Times about Jesus’ last words on the cross. It is Easter Sunday and the article is in the beliefs section. At the end of the article the writer writes of Alton Logan, a man who was wrongly sent to prison for 26 years. Another man had confessed to the crime, but that man’s lawyers chose to remain quiet until after their client died. They did not want to violate the attorney-client privilege. They left Alton in prison for years even though they had the information that would have set him free.

Mr. Logan spoke about the anger and abandonment he felt and how he ultimately surrendered. ”We need to trust that although God may be testing us, he never abandons us. We need to do what Jesus did when he said with his dying breath “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.”

This man, who had many years of his life taken away when others could have saved him but did nothing, saved himself in surrendering. He saved his own spirit. Once again, I am shown the graceful healing of surrender and trust.

“There comes a time when we must put everything back in God’s hands.” Logan added.

For me, that time is now. I have held on to it myself for far too long, and I am exhausted. I am still not giving up, but I am finally truly surrendering. It is the most loving act I have ever done for myself.

Julia Tuchman is a writer, Akashic Field Therapist and spiritual counselor. She is currently surrendering in New York City. Visit her at www.JuliaTuchman.com.

Personal | Political

Some of you may be wondering: what's with the thrive! journal header imagery? It has a very hippie-esque back-to-the land aesthetic to it. Why did you choose to use this visual to represent your website?

The brutal truth is this: it was not so much a choice, inasmuch as people suffering from chemical injury may not have much of a choice in where they can live, how they dress, and how they look. The header collage for this blog represents my life, as founder of the website and person living with severe chemical, electrical, and other sensitivities.

I was forced to leave my formerly comfortable suburban neighborhoods in search of cell tower-, WiFi-, and chemical-free living spaces. This is what it looks like. I am unable to get a haircut, as I can't be near a chemical-laden hair stylist for the 20 minutes or so it would take to get a badly needed trim. My boyfriend can only manage to shave his facial hair every two weeks, and he must do so without the aid of soap/shaving cream or lotions to protect his skin. Some of us must live in refurbished Airstream trailers in the middle of nowhere just to have a clear head the whole day through. My best friend (far left) is at peace only in the high desert where she can escape her neighbors' fabric softeners and pesticides which cause severe neurological symptoms that wake her up in the middle of the night.

These are the realities of living with chemical injury. We have no choice but to live with it, manage it, and learn how to thrive in spite of it. I could have used a more socially acceptable visual for this blog, but part of our mission is to make this condition more visible. We are people who are rarely seen in public, some of us relegated to the "safety" of our homes for years with little direct human contact.

The personal is now political. The collage at the top of this page reflects parts of my life and the world I have created through years of effort. I've worked long and hard to seek out and surround myself with amazingly supportive people, and live in an environment that adds to my health rather than detracts.

I dream of living close to nature surrounded by these friends, who have become family. I dream of a world where we can all live to our greatest potential rather than be limited by other people's personal care habits. This is my dream. What is yours?

Glass Half Full

Living with a chronic illness is not easy. Especially when your symptoms include severe depression and hopelessness. It can take work to turn the picture upside down and see the glass as half full. But I can tell you that the effort is well worth it.

On my bad days, all I can see is that I am in my sixth year living in near isolation, that I have two tolerable outfits to my name that haven't been washed in months, I have no towels I can use, no bedding or bed, I sleep on a cold tile floor shivering in the dark, and my health seems to be getting more fragile with each passing day. I have friends and a boyfriend, but due to our severe sensitivities to chemicals and other environmental influences, during the long winter we mostly have a phone relationship. I haven't seen my family in over a year. With these grey-colored lenses on, it's hard to see much reason for going on.

On my good days, I am ever-so-thankful. My house-prison is transformed into a safe home on 20 acres to buffer me from neighbors' toxic practices. This desolate area becomes a beautiful landscape that my dreams can find a home in. My connections to friends and my boyfriend are incredibly cherished and deep—the kind of relationships I always craved but could never find growing up. The restrictions of my illness force me to live in alignment with a value system I always had but was too lazy/cowardly/apathetic to enforce. The boredom of hours freed up from lack of career/social life/activity opens up a space where I get to share my voice and vision.

How can you transform those things that bind you and drag you down? I challenge anyone reading this to take a list of all the terrible parts of their life and create something beautiful about each and every one.

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And perspective/attitude is everything.

Planet Thrive rocks!

PlanetThrive.com is a grassroots community for personal wellness, with a focus on the health-environment connection. We offer a healing space for those on a personal health journey and those wishing to live a healthier, more conscious life.

Although our members may arrive for different reasons - some based on lessons learned from their own personal experience with illness and others due to their passion for environmental issues and natural living - they are essentially on the same path: uncovering hidden truths about the systems we were raised to believe in, making connections between big business, the government, the environment and our health, and taking their health care and lives back into their own hands.

With more and more chemicals being poured into the world everyday, more people will be getting environmentally based health problems (in fact, we believe that most health problems today can be traced to toxins in our environment!). People are going to be looking for answers and our medical system is not set up to answer them.

Planet Thrive is a place where environmentally aware and health conscious people can share resources and personal experience to help each other heal mind•spirit•body as we heal the earth.

Visit PlanetThrive.com today and see for yourself!