Healing in the water.

I've always been drawn to water.
As a young child I learned to swim easily. I remember feeling completely at home in the water until I was asked to compete on a swim team, and  then the desire to be in the water was over. I had more "periods" than any girl in the early 1970's to avoid wrecking my hair in high school gym class, as a period was the only excuse not to get into the water.

Later, I was a dutiful mom, making sure both my kids knew how to swim, or at least felt comfortable in the water. And they still do.

In Sussex, we had an oversized Jacuzzi bathtub, and a pool, but raising two children in a newly blended family left little time to enjoy either one.

I noticed, as life went on ,the amount of spiritual comfort I felt from a hot bath after a long day. During my first year of teaching eighth grade I contracted whooping cough, and the hot steam of the bath was the only place I could find any relief.

After awhile  the bath tub became a place of refuge. I designed my own shelf to hold a candle, a glass of something and whatever magazine I wanted to read. Glenn switched the drain around in the house I live in now so that the auto-overfill was at the top, allowing me more water in the cheap shallow tub.

I dreamed of an outside hot tub/ spa. So did Glenn. We shopped for tubs that he could access easily. He lived, I realize now, in constant chronic pain .He was never far away from the pain, and being in the water would have helped.  But the tub wasn't in the budget at the time. It was a "someday" purchase. Again. Beware of waiting for "someday".

And then he died and I was alone with that trauma. I couldn't breathe. Truly I couldn't breathe.  I found some relief  in my little shallow bathtub but I knew that I needed to buy the hot tub for my own healing. I was afraid people would judge me for a frivolous purchase but I  just needed to breathe.

It never was  a purchase of frivolity. In the early days after Glenn's death, whenever I felt an anxiety attack approaching, I literally dove into the warm water until the panic feeling passed. It worked. This winter, as long as the air temperature was above 10 degrees F,  I was in the tub,almost daily, remembering, thinking, dreaming, planning.

Tonight I figured out how to attach my IPhone to the built in sound system. Oh my, that  was fun. As I soaked, and floated and enjoyed the freedom that only water allows,  I listened to songs of the past and of the present and all the attached memories and present meanings.

The mood tonight in my tub was not one of personal survival as it was before, but rather one of celebration; of life and the promise of the future. I sang along to the music, and played with the lights, but mostly I did this.....

I breathed.

Big life affirming breaths.

With no reminder. It finally comes  naturally again.

Continuing ....
On the journey.