Category Archives: healing

Attitude of Gratitude

As part of healing from a traumatic post-surgical experience in 2010, I decided to consciously focus on what I was grateful for. Try it. Start a list and keep going until you are all out of ideas. Shifts the energy big time. Let me know how it goes.

Here is the poem from Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing.

2/24/10

Beginning a Very Long List

I am grateful for fading of images
burned on the pliant leather of my mind.

I am grateful for forgetfulness and forgiveness—
for me included.

Some things I don’t want to remember
and write about, teach and ponder.
I am the ever-changing center of it all.

I am grateful for the people who came to help me heal:
those in my circle, those who did one small essential thing.

I am grateful for insides that stay in
and strong muscles, intact skin.

I am grateful to be pain-free, to wear regular clothes,
to eat and digest food, to laugh and blow bubbles.

I am grateful for sleep, for reading, to be able to write.
For clear mind, to climb stairs,

to be able to get out of bed by myself.
I am grateful to drive, to go off alone…and safe.

I am grateful for massage and colored light,
acupuncture, guided imagery, talking, and healing energy.

I am grateful for breaths that soak deep into my body,
for heart pumping in steady rhythm, blood flowing freely in vessels.

I am grateful for clean clothes and fresh sheets,
a cozy comfortable nest of a bed,

warm showers and coconut bubbles sluicing over clean skin.
I am grateful for generous husband, kind children, concerned family.

I am grateful for a future stretching out with possibility.
I am grateful for taste and smell, hearing, touch and sight.

I am grateful for returning clarity and balance, peace and harmony.
I am grateful for timely Olympics, Elizabeth Peters, and Enya.

I am grateful for my fun little blue Mini Cooper in need of cleaning.
For snowy days soon ending in spring, for passing seasons,

crisp air, watercolor clouds, intermittent sun.
I am grateful for warmth and water, softness and firmness,

promise of returning strength, for blue nails like an ocean in the desert,
for girls’ day out, replenishing, restoring.

I am grateful for what is coming, for juicy, rich days ahead
and for what is past, healed and done.

No, I do not need to remember all the dark abyss details
to be grateful I made it again to light.

Did I forget the Loving Others, those guiding ever-present spirits?
I didn’t mean to.

The list is long and continuing: a comfort bear brought to the hospital,
a timely shoulder rub and discussion of the history of Jell-O,

story-telling, a sweet kiss, encouraging words,
so much gratitude every cell is filled with it.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2010

Release of “Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine”

I just early-released my new book, Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope and Healing. I realized that many people – with a Kindle or the free Kindle app, for example – would not be able to access it at all until November. So at midnight, I let my heartfelt book fly out into the wide world! Thank you to those who did pre-order. I am most grateful! You should get access to the book sooner.

May these poems be a lifeboat, offering comfort, healing, inspiration, and hope. Although telling a personal story, aspects might express something you want to say or help someone you care about. I should tell you it has a happy ending as I came through what seemed like a long black tunnel, “the only way out, is through….”

Includes 11 interior color photos plus the cover.

Another poem from the book:

6/12/10

Shadow Healing
James Keelaghan at Folkstage

What part of me
is overflowing

What part is a
river dammed up

What part of me
longs for release

What part is tears
flowing unbidden

What part is unkind
or uncertain

I’m only saying
trying to decode a language
spoken in symptoms

trying to heal what
has arisen.

What part of me
is unbending

What part needs
immediate release

What is becalmed
stilled, expressionless

What is inflamed or angry
deserving to be heard

What is in shadow
unforgiven, denied

What part is unloved
buried deep, pushed aside

What is impatient, impotent
small, voiceless

worthy of healing
worthy of being part

of the perfect again-
welcome whole.

What part of me is
weakness unacknowledged

What part is unwilling to rest
and restlessness

What part of me is
tears un-shed and
fears hidden and
words bitten back

What have I walled off
what am I pregnant with

What desperate pleas
have gone unanswered

What part of me is
warring against another

What is revealed
comes up for air

what comes up
light shines upon it

what has light
has hope and promise

anything is possible
anything is possible to heal.

Don’t give up
anything is possible.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2010

Portrait of Michael Smith

On a humid, 86 degree day like today in Chicago, it may be hard to remember what a long and cold and snowy winter it was. After having major surgery in December, my first big outing was to a concert by Michael Smith with my husband, Stephen, and friends, Randy and Wendie. It was a big deal even cautiously walking on the icy asphalt of the parking lot.

Our seats were in the second row. I felt like I could see Michael Smith very clearly, inside and out. The show was both deeply moving and hilarious. Because I did not get to talk with him after the show, an insistent poem percolated all the way driving home. I did not write this as a “fan” poem, but rather what I saw as true. Parts of myself perhaps, reflected back from him.

I read this to a few people and they urged me to send it to him. In tracking down an email address, I learned more about his life and accomplishments. I felt a bit intimidated, but sent it anyway. He graciously responded right away: “Thank you, Margaret. I love the poem.” What a gift! Lit me up for days….

What has someone done for you that warmed your heart unexpectedly?

1/19/14

Portrait of Michael Smith
Concert at Lake County Folk Club

He was not old
but old enough
to be comfortable
exposing bits of his humanness,
to be felt and heard and seen
without disguise sometimes, to be
clever and mischievous, gracious and generous.

To be naked enough
to make us cry or laugh,
you have to put in the years,
put in your time as apprentice,
to gather the stories, weave or live them,
to know what is what,
to see the risks and still be willing

enough so some pieces fit,
and brave enough or fearless
to go out and let out some
of the accumulated multitudes of children,
all the practice paying off, the determination
to deliver the songs yet again.
Amen.

From Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing, coming in summer 2014. Check FullBlooming.com for more details.

Here is my reading, in my fourth video.

I Know That (song version)

May is my month, with my birthday, Mother’s Day and my wedding anniversary. As a 62nd birthday challenge I wanted to get something unstuck: post my first video on YouTube. I’ve had a channel since 2011 and I would almost do it, but pull back. Always some snag. How to do the recording on iMovie? How to load the video? It felt too personal or too exposed, or laryngitis, or not enough time, or the need to wear makeup, or whatever…. Over the last few years, partly through Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, I became more confident of my ability to do tech stuff. I got a Blue Yeti microphone –which is the coolest– to record VC 3 and VC 4.

My office recording set up

I made the light that Jack Rowland recommended last year. I learned enough of iMovie to submit my video for the last Virtual Choir. Thank you also to Gene Waddle and Elisabeth Smith and “the team” for your encouragement and to the worldwide family that is Virtual Choir.

Thank you to Tom Prasada-Rao and Cary Cooper for their bravery in posting very personal and moving songs. And to Charlotte McDaniel who keeps on learning and posting her lovely video creations. You all inspired me to make the leap.

I’ve had some recent clarity about my job: to deliver the poems that come to me. At first it meant reading in person and in print, then on a CD, and now on video, where the words can reach someone and help to heal, inspire, comfort, give voice to an experience, encourage, support, connect with.

I am very excited to tell you: here is my first video, I Know That (song version). Originally published in my book, As Easy as Breathing, I wrote the poem in the middle of chemotherapy, when losing my hair was imminent, a very big deal. (I also sang this on my CD, Full Blooming.)

I did lose my hair, but not my eyebrows. And I was grateful for that. My aunt (in the song) had just died of breast cancer and my dear Grandma had also just passed away. I had recovered from surgery, then began chemo, with radiation to come, as was the standard of care then. I was trying to not get pulled down by the losses and to stay focused on healing.

So here goes: A New Beginning.

Thanks for being there! What creation have you been putting off? Go to it!

Poem in Preparation for Surgery

10/24/07

Instructions to the Body
Prior to Surgery

Yield to the scalpel whether laser or blade,
limit leaks of precious fluids,
let nerves that are cut be soothed,
relax into the induced-sleep state of healing.

Heart beats strong in a steady rhythm,
blood pressure calm,
breath relaxed and easy,
all organ systems functioning smoothly.

From the giant pharmacy of drugs
for which you have instructions,
make all those that in your wisdom
are needed to optimally heal.

Release what is to be taken
for the highest good.
Protect what is to remain
for future days stretching out long before me.

Allow melding with mind, emotion and spirit
in service of healing.

Be hopeful, be kind to all concerned.
Know I trust.
Know I love you.
Know I am most grateful.

And to the cells that are leaving,
a blessing for long service,
both individually and together
speak well for me.

Be hopeful, be kind to all concerned.
Know I trust.
Know I love you.
Know I am most grateful.

From my short collection, New Year’s Eve Surgery, which I gave to my medical team before a bilateral mastectomy and removal of my ovaries in 2007. It turned out that I carry a BRCA 2 mutation and I’d had three breast cancer tumors by that point. I spent time in research and reflection before making such a deeply personal decision. I wanted my team to know something about me before embarking on this very personal and human experience. I wanted the conversation to be more healing and less clinical. And so I chose some poems and a few winter photos to speak for me. I decorated the chapbook covers with glitter streamer and star stickers. My sister, Marie, had the brilliant idea for them to sign my copy of the chapbook, which made it very interactive. Later, I got to read all their support for me. Amazing!

Three weeks ago I was facing another major surgery, hysterectomy, and thought of this poem. I recited it aloud to myself for several days before: the mind giving the body specific instructions to do well. These were my own affirmations, a very practical piece. I printed a copy of the poem and took it with me, intending to read it again at the hospital. Instead, when the anesthesiologist came to talk with me, she asked an unexpected question: “Was there anything I wanted to have her read to me before surgery? While awake or asleep?” I gave her this poem and she read it to me immediately prior to the surgery, while I was sleeping. Awesome! Very calming of my anxiety. I did not have to arrange anything. I felt in good hands all around and I have healed well.

(New Year’s Eve Surgery is available in the Store as a FREE pdf for a bit longer.)

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