Grace, Grit and Gratitude for a Life - Grace Gawler
Posted on September 12, 2008
Filed Under In8Potential, Media
My Memoirs, Grace,Grit and Gratitude; 8 years in the writing are completed. There have been many reasons for writing this book. In the beginning it was a therapeutic tool, in fact it was so essential for my recovery that without the process - I doubt I would have survived with sanity. As well, writing a memoir was important as a record of events for my children and grandchildren, a way of making sense of how past events, create a path to our present and our future. However, when the threads of the story-line were pulled together, I had another valuable realisation - that my own journey paralleled the stories of my clients, the ‘threads’ were universal themes and their weaving had created the tapestry that was my life.
An uninvited life-changing experience in December 1997, proved to be an initiation into another world. I stepped upon the medical treadmill- a nine year dark night of the soul. I had known this path well enough from my work with cancer patients and from my time with Ian Gawler in the seventies, when he was diagnosed with bone cancer and given only weeks to live. We married then, and together we embarked on an amazing journey to recovery; eventually teaching others and sharing our experience, we co-created the Gawler Foundation. The accurate and personal story of this time in my life needed to be written for the public record as well as to inspire patients and particularly carers, whose stories and voices are often silent, but whose lives and emotions are severely challenged by the act of caring and being a carer. Love and compassion given freely and unconditionally can bring out our finest human traits - being a carer is character building, challenging, and perhaps the best spiritual practise we can ever experience. However, carers must proactively care for themselves in the process.
It was not a disease that was my undoing - but my emotions. I became severely debilitated as a result of a condition that appeared following routine surgery for a prolapsed uterus. The metaphor stands true - the bottom had literally dropped out of my life! The power of emotion! This occurred not long after my husband had moved on from our almost 21-year marriage. A classic shock and post trauma experience. I became seriously ill, my condition becoming more complicated as months and then years passed without proper diagnosis or access to treatment - I had 3 teenage children at home, was financially compromised, and my health was slipping away before my eyes. The symptoms eventually became life-threatening, causing me to totally retire from work. I was deemed to be permanently disabled following an ileostomy and removal of a large portion of colon then some of my small bowel in October 2000. All of my life I had been healthy; a vegetarian since 5 years of age, a meditator, consumer and grower of organic foods, supporter of thousands of cancer patients, a high energy person - I was health personified. A huge life lesson here-perhaps my excellent physical health was a plus, a deposit in my survival ‘bank account’.
The upside however, was that during those years I had developed resilience, determination and possibility thinking - as well, my life and work with cancer patients had provided me with a ‘healing and recovery tool-kit’ at the ready. Humour helped me to survive, and I often joked that I was ‘gut-less’ when people acknowledged the courage it must have taken to go on. 16 surgical procedures performed between 1997 to 2005. It took a long time to recover physically and emotionally from the ileostomy and although it saved my life, it presented another load of issues to solve. Life really opened the floodgates as during this period, I became involved in supporting my sister, moving location to support her during her last 6 months of life. During that time I became proactive, every night scouring the internet for options and solutions for my condition and for my sister. She too had been undiagnosed then misdiagnosed for many years - she grew tired and her heart was giving up. Her experience spurred me on to find a solution for my situation - before it was too late. I never gave up the possibility of finding a solution, and eventually I found a surgeon in Rotterdam who was willing to try an experiment - a procedure that had never been applied to treating a paralysed lower colon. Fortunately for me, the former surgeon had left a small amount - enough to recreate some function. I became a bionic woman. (see pics on Memoir page of this website)
I hope my story serves a purpose as a teaching story - that it stimulates thoughts about choices, boundaries, life and death, possibilities and the enduring nature of the human spirit. The book reflects in detail - times spent in the Philippines with healers, Indian holy men, other healers and mystics, as well as time spent at the Findhorn Community in Scotland. It has a happy ending - finding the love with another that I had always believed - was possible.
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