In Australia, today is the King’s Birthday holiday. I think it’s typically the second Monday in June that we all get off work and school to celebrate the monarch of England who still officially “rules” Australia ever since it was discovered by Captain Cook in 1788 and colonized soon after.
With the public holiday comes the sad realization that today marks the 3-year anniversary of when I became aware that I had persistent pain in my migraine-eye.
Whilst the revelation makes me very sad, it also reminded me of a journal entry I wrote a few months ago about the June holiday in 2022. I went back through my notes and found what I had written. The words seemed to resonate with the complicated mix of emotions I feel most days; hope, frustration, a commitment to heal, the desire to help others…
So, here’s what I wrote about the royal day off:
*
There are times in your life when you stand on a threshold. One version of your life lies behind you, another in front. Sometimes, you recognize the transformational moment for what it is. Other times, you are not even remotely aware that you’re betwixt and between…
It was noon, in the middle of the long weekend in June, itself the middle of the year 2022. I was sitting on my front porch, neither fully inside nor fully outside my home. A neighbor sauntered over and said her daughter was bored, could she please hang out with my two daughters while she dashed into town to do some shopping.
As a 50-year-old woman, I have lived the life of an introvert for decades, jealously guarding my time and space from outsiders. Of course, I occasionally drop my drawbridge to let others in, but perhaps not as often as social politeness and good grace would prefer. The reason is; as well as being socially awkward, I am also a person who suffers from migraines. Silent solitude has always been especially precious to my health and wellbeing.
The neighbor was a friend, however, and friends help friends, so I replied, “of course.” Her daughter raced inside to find my girls, and I felt the need to add nuance to my consent; “just so that you know, I won’t be able to take the kids to the beach – my right eyebrow is aching and that usually means a migraine is coming. I’ll just leave them here with games and the TV if that’s OK.” My friendly neighbor agreed and off she went.
After she had gone, I realized that I had told her a little white lie. It WAS true that a sore right eyebrow was my clue that a migraine attack was on the way. However, it suddenly occurred to me, in that precise moment, that my right eyebrow had been aching on and off for a couple of days now… and a migraine had NOT arrived. The fact was so startling, so strange after a lifetime lived with a familiar 40-year-old migraine-warning-habit, that the white lie moment became anchored in my memory.
As I stood on my doorstep, rubbing my eyebrow and considering the difference between truth and falsehood, I realised something seriously concerning; my migraines had changed.
I didn’t know it then, but this would be the first day of 1,000[+] days of constant pain.
For the next few days, I became obsessively focused on the pain in my eyebrow, and noticed that the pain sometimes spread down to my eye. It felt as if someone had their thumb pressed against my eyeball, hard enough that the sensation was somewhere between ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘painful’. I also became hyper-vigilant about my traditional migraine-triggers, and the pain signals my body seemed to be sending and receiving in response.
I thought back over the years. Whilst I had my first migraine aged 11, I had very few through my teens and 20s. Those that I did have, however, were big, bold, dramatic things, with lots of vomiting and the need to sleep for three days straight in total darkness and silence. During my 30s, I had attacks more often, many of which included hemiplegia – a paralysis down one side of my body that made it difficult to move my arms and legs and mouth. It was as if I had suffered a stroke. By my 40s the migraines began to arrive monthly. These periodic migraines were never fun, but they were relatively predictable, and therefore more manageable. I could plan around them, and adjust my program to suit. Moreover, although the attack-time still represented up to 3 days in 30, the other 90% of the month was completely pain-free. It felt bearable.
Almost always, I was prewarned of the attacks by some combination of a sore eyebrow, a tingling in my cheeks, or the feeling that my blood pressure was plummeting and the world around me was getting fainter and blurry.
But what did it mean to receive a warning signal without a full-blown migraine attack?
As it turned out, a couple of days later the pain arrived in the form a ‘normal’ (for me) migraine attack which lasted the ‘typical’ 72 hours. The attack included all my ‘usual’ symptoms; sensitivity to light and noise and smells, as well as the need for complete stillness to avoid what I referred to as ‘motion sickness.’ When the attack passed, the majority of symptoms disappeared as per normal – except – the pain in my right eye.
That dull ache of a thumb-press remained, 24 hours a day, every day of the week, week after week, [year after year].
That wasn’t all though. In only a few days after the last migraine attack, I had another, and then another. Now, instead of monthly migraines, they were slipping towards fortnightly, soon weekly. Worse, the attacks were no longer tethered to predictable times, and with the forewarning signal being permanently switched on, they would often arrive unexpectedly when I was at work, in a supermarket, or at a school meeting.
Over the following months I began a slow slide into chronic migraine with a pain in my right eye that resided there 24/7.
It was on that public holiday weekend, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the year 2022, that I stepped over a threshold, from living a relatively pain-less life to one of relentless pain.
*
Not that long ago, I wrote of stepping over a threshold. The truth is; I stepped into an abyss – I was just SO sick for so long.
Thankfully, things are nowhere near as dark as they were in late 2022 or throughout 2023.
I still have days when my migraine-eye is in pain, however, I am now getting much fewer migraine attacks thanks to mindfulness and all the changes that I have been slowly introducing into my life; physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, creatively, hormonally…
I’m now much closer to the light and the life I had back in 2022… and yet… I am no longer the same person. Moreover, I don’t mourn the loss of that old Linda as much as I used to. I am a new version of me, a post-abyss-Linda, that is still struggling with regular pain, but a new version of me that I have so much more respect for. I am stronger than I could have ever imagined – I fell over the threshold, into the abyss… and then I climbed back out towards a much lighter way of being.
If there is a moral to my story, it is an old and familiar one, but oh so important:
If I can heal – so can YOU.
Take care taking care,
Linda xox
PS – send me an email on the CONTACT page if you’re struggling – I don’t want you to ever feel too alone.
The Mindful Migraine 
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