Soul Mosaic

“Moments of Respite”

The last two weeks have been extra stressful with some medical things going on with my husband. While all remains “stable,” ever since he nearly died in the early 2000s after a “routine one-day surgery,” I never take those for granted.

Given the trauma from his medical emergency back then, on top of all the abuse trauma I carry, it is not a surprise that I don’t handle new “possible stressors” with ease.

It is also true that writing these memoir entries now about the deep emotional pain I felt in the EMDR sessions is hard. I re-live those emotions. It is necessary to write about those times and to extract new meaning from them. But it is also necessary when things get too intense to just take a breath and resort to one of the tools I used to survive all those years of abuse: Moments of Respite.

I have mentioned them briefly earlier, and I will talk more soon about them — what they are, and why I love them as a coping mechanism. But for right now, given that I needed to resort to that tool with current goings-on, I will share a sample of my newest one – a little “break in the action” for all of us.

The chaotic mess of mammalian breathing

So, we all breathe. Big deal. Inhale — diaphragm pulls the thoracic cavity down, the lungs expand, oxygen-rich fresh air flows in. Then the diaphragm snaps back up, forcing air out of the lungs. In the middle, red cells get rid of CO2 and take in fresh oxygen. Sounds simple enough. But in reality, it’s a pretty chaotic process.