The Mindful Migraine

As someone who has had a lot of migraines, I can tell you that there is a sliding scale of functionality that is attached to a life lived with pain. On some days, the pain is manageable or nearly missing, so you can do most things, even perform something as risky as driving a car… just not too far, or too fast. On the bad days, however, sitting up to eat is an enormous effort, and so is taking a shower… in the other room… all the way over there… it… is… ugh… not going to happen…

When I look back on those really bad days (and there were many over the last three years) I am sad to remember that I missed my daughter’s graduation photos and both daughters playing in their soccer grand final matches… the bright sun was my undoing. But, as well as feeling sorry for the BIG events missed, there was something else, much ‘smaller’ and more regular that I also lost along the way: READING for leisure.

Since I was very young, books have been my happy place. Myths and legends were a favorite. Fairytales too – even the grimmest of Grimm Brother’s Tales. Like so many before me, I fell in love with Mr Darcy ages before I studied him in school and graded essays reduced him from ephemeral daydream to blood, sweat and tears. So many people, places and plots, stored like binders on my brain-shelf, ready to tumble onto my mind-floor whenever I’m thinking about anything, acting as invisible cross-references to the matter at hand.

But then I started studying for a PhD… and I got sick with chronic migraine.

I have been studying for a PhD in architecture for 5 years now (I’m essentially finished, I just have to wait for paperwork to confirm I have passed and can graduate (and send out a celebratory blogpost)). As such, I had no option other than to prop myself up and read, read, read… about philosophy, architectural criticism, study techniques…

When my 20 hours a week of PhD’ing was over, reading a novel for fun was not an option. My eyes were too sore. My brain felt too foggy. My head felt heavy on my neck and ready for a pillow. Sometimes even my arms had lost the strength to hold a book up (it sounds ridiculous as I write it – but it is 100% hand-on-heart the truth).

Because of this difficulty, the best I could do for leisure-time-reading was flip through magazines I borrowed from the library (have you seen the cost of magazines these days?!?) My fatigued-pain-brain-self was content to look at the glorious houses and gardens of other people, without having to read who the lucky resident was or which celebrity decorator had plumped their cushions.

It was a compromise – and it worked – but it wasn’t the same.

I missed novels.

I missed a good story I could sink my teeth into.

I missed plots that kept me guessing and characters who I would love to invite to dinner or swap birch-branch toothbrushes with.

[That’s a vague reference to the mini-series “Lost in Austen” (2008) which I recently binge watched with great glee.]

The point is – magazines and tele-series are great… but novels were my greatest love, and until recently, they brought great joy to me, in terms of the Three E’s: escapism, entertainment and education.

Which is why I was thrilled to come across the term “bibliotherapy” in a post by fellow blogger Rebecca’s Reading Room: The Serendipitous Benefits of Reading for Healing

“…bibliotherapy taps into the profound truth that stories can heal. They can name what we feel but cannot express, hold our questions when answers seem distant, and offer a mirror when we feel unseen.”

Without doubt, I have felt that flutter of recognition when reading something that felt as if it were written just for me.

Me being me, I couldn’t leave it there… it was time to research… and one of the first sites I came across was: Welcome to Bibliotherapy Australia

As they write, “The word ‘bibliotherapy’ originates from the Greek words for book, ‘biblion’, and healing, ‘therapeia.’ An American, Samuel Crothers, combined the Greek words in 1916 to describe bibliotherapy as a process in which literature was prescribed as medicine for a variety of ailments.”

The site then offers several pages of book lists that might assist your healing, including a page of books “to bring comfort or a way to dwell more deeply” (here). I have only read a couple on the list (Geraldine Brooks’ “Year of Wonders” was a great favorite), but some of the titles sounded intriguing:

• A book of luminous things, poetry collected by Czeslaw Milosz
• Dibs in search of self by Virginia Axline which offers a true account of play-therapy sessions with a young boy
• In tune with the infinite by Ralph Waldo Trine, which apparently advises that “there is a universal thread that runs through every seer, every sage, is every prophet’s teaching, which says ‘What one has done, all may do’.”

The idea of sitting with a book in my lap is still a little bit overwhelming after 5 years of study, and 3 years of pain, but in a recent idea-pivot, I was chatting with my blog-friend Monica over on Spark of Inspiration and she reminded me of talking-books… I know… everyone knows about them… I just somehow forgot that the printed word (which I live with and love) is not the ONLY way to get a story out there (and yes, I notice the irony, given I write online!)

I’ve spoken before (in a post titled “When I was tied to the mast“) about my mechanic’s bemusement that I listen to CDs in the car when everyone else has gone Bluetooth. Well, I also used to listen to talking books on CDs years ago when I was in the car for hours a day for my job. Now of course, the books have gone digital too…

So, enough lamenting what it feels like I have lost, it’s time to get motivated and head off to find some digital books I can listen to instead of (or as well as) all those migraine podcasts I have lined up at Spotify (here).

If you have any book recommendations that might assist readers on where to start with their own bibliotherapy – please drop a note in the comments section below.

[And if you’re commenting on other people’s suggestions, remember that reading is highly personal; one person’s treasure is occasionally another person’s trash (“The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” comes to mind) – please be super respectful in your replies to their recommendations.]

Take care taking care, Linda x

PS – there are several book reviews on my blog that I have posted – I was apparently doing bibliotherapy all along without even realizing it! You can find them here: BookReview – The Mindful Migraine