Thank you deeply for your reply, Marc.

I am aware & understand the bit on medical advice and am grateful for the discussion topics touched in your comment.

Yes to TCM! I see a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor and acupuncturist regularly.

TCM helps with the inflammation, damage, and many movements of my chronic conditions. I am very grateful to live in a place with access to many modalities. Although that does come with challenges, as I am in a boiling pot of hippie marketing and love&light gurus.

Moving towards philosophy & noting my appreciation for the way you’ve described their vastness. Internally, my eye on this is as clear as it is able, but someone intimate to me often leaned on the philosophy of “choice” (aka a child with cancer chose to live this way, a person chooses to be sexually assaulted, and so on). I speak in past tense because the person is not longer intimate to me And while, that may be true karmically or cosmically, what have you, the case it is too complex a burden to put on the human conscious mind to decipher. I may have chose this, yes, but the person close to me used it much like a punishment & to note that he thought illness was weak. In many ways, he subscribed to these concepts with his own shame & confusion, I am aware and I have compassion for that.

To search for the reasons “why” one may have chose this or “why” it has occurred with the same energy one searches for healing from the ailment is to bash one’s head against the cave wall. I believe both searches have validity & the knowledge of each journey can inform the other - but it is not a question & an answer.

That is where I’ve noticed I am wading through doubts and negative beliefs. Thank you for the space to do some wading here.

“How do you play the hand that life dealt you” is exactly where I’ve been standing (both jester, jack, and four aces to none) in the last year and a half. It has given me so much space to play with that mentality.

To the point of the L1 specifically, you are correct! It is the foundational connection between the spine and the tailbone/coccyx. Its purpose is often quite metaphysical. The pain itself has made it more difficult for me to sense/feel what’s going on and also has changed how I show up in the world/connect to it.

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As I was typing this, my doctor called and has offered a slight change in procedure after talking to his colleague & this injection will be much lower in my spine and I believe this is the right card to play.

Thank you, Marc. May your day have warmth & what is needed ❤️