Mindful Keening

My entree into my 45th year is marked with a 5 inch scar--I broke my wrist just about 2 weeks after my birthday, and it required surgery. I'm considering it a mile marker.

Recovering from the break--I like to say I'm now officially in REHAB, though it's technically hand therapy --has taught me for the first time in life, really, that sometimes you have to work through pain. Before now, pain has always been a signal to stop. Now, the doctor and my hand therapist say there is nothing wrong with my fingers or wrist--there is no reason I shouldn't move them.

So, to regain normal movement, I have to move even when it hurts. Movements that make me suck in my breath and want to swear. Somehow I think it would help to swear really loudly during the hand exercises. But there's always a crowd in the hand therapy room and it doesn't seem appropriate. I think I'm going to dub this feeling of wanting to shriek as exercise keening or maybe therapeutic keening or perhaps more appropriately due to its silent nature and to give it a modern health flare, mindful keening.

A loud, vocal lament might be just the release I need to overcome the pain in my lower back, paunchy outer thighs, hips, and feet when I take even the shortest of walks. Knowing I've taken long walks before that were energizing, not painful doesn't really help. So, perhaps the best path is to just know I have to move through the pain to recover normal movement in my life.

And, trust me, the irony of the fact that I have loads of experience enduring psychic pain--pain caused from the self-hatred of overeating, of watching the scale return to the upper limits and beyond, and of hitting snooze instead of getting up to exercise--isn't lost on me.