The Excellence of Nature

I recently spent seven days on this river, the Middle Fork of the Salmon.

Turns out none of our group of seven was fully prepared for what the river had to offer and in spite of some grueling, frustrating, beautiful and warm, cold and rainy days, everyone in our group remained magically happy-ish.

I have never spent a harder week with more good-natured people willing to laugh at themselves and at difficulty.  I learned SO MUCH from being in that kind of situation with those kind of peeps.

And so, because I am way too exhausted to write much this week, I will simply say this:

I think I may have finally, finally learned that I cannot live my life trying to figure out everything on my own.  Healing, helping, living, growing . . . We all need support all around us as often as possible.  Sometimes that support doesn’t look or feel like support in the moment.  Sometimes support actually feels kind of painful and makes you cry because you want to punch the person who is giving it because what they are asking you to do to help yourself is so profoundly scary.  (Anyone else ever been required to jump off a raft across dangerous rushing whitewater in order to get out of an even worse situation?  Sheesh.  Makes the rest of my life look ridiculously easy.)  But back to the point . . .

If we’re going to endure, if we’re going to grow and change, we have to be willing to at least try things that make us uncomfortable.  Those things don’t need to risk life and limb.  But I know that for some of you touching and really engaging with your own belly, with your own pain, feels somewhere on this spectrum of risky.

Be brave.  Sometimes getting out of sticky situations requires leaps of imagination, of faith, of confidence.  I know you have it in you.  We all do.

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Isabel Spradlin

Isabel Spradlin is a Registered Nurse (RN), Licensed Massage Therapist (LMT), and abdominal adhesion specialist in Portland, OR. She specializes in educating people about manual treatment (massage) for abdominal pain and dysfunction, especially when it is adhesion related. Please see the "Programs" page to see her offerings.

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