Isolation station

The only way is through

It’s funny, because I am an introvert, so I’m ok with a degree of self-isolation, but I also know that being around real people is so much more nourishing than mere ideas of them. Jonathan Haidt, who is on here, and writes prolifically on the link between declining mental health and smartphones, talks about the difference between synchronous connection; when two people communicate in person in an embodied way, and asynchronous connection; when a ‘conversation’ happens via comments under a social media post, for example.

At present, my little family is in an acute sphere, within a much larger arc of isolation. This current isolation is a must; in less than two weeks, both my daughter and I are scheduled for ‘living donor’ transplant surgery, and the slightest cold could see this long-awaited, crucial intervention cancelled. I’m absolutely terrified of that happening, and consequently finding myself acting somewhat unhinged in ways reminiscent of the final weeks of pregnancy; the bloated dog days when everyone is telling you to get an induction or else. I just want to be in control. I can’t believe the illusion of control is still alive and well in mind/ego after all this time and all these lessons.

Right now it’s mini-covid: masks worn by all, and I’ve taken it on myself to be our family’s track-and-trace officer; monitoring everyone’s movements outside of hospital and deciding what events and gatherings meet the risks of being super-spreaders, then deciding who can come and who can’t. In the end it all got a bit dictatorial, so I placed a ‘no-visitor’ rule. It’s lonely but necessary.

The larger arc of isolation is one I’ve been under this whole time. In some ways, because I’ve kept up aspects of my ‘normal’ life, I feel all the more isolated. It’s weird teaching yoga, working out with your friends, going out for the odd meal or theatre trip, going to kids birthday parties, seeing your friends’ kids enjoy many ‘firsts’ like its no big deal, and all the while be aware that, by contrast to all this lovely, normal stuff, you actually live in a hospital.

I’m not complaining, not really. For a start, I am fortunate to have the support in place that I am able to keep up these fun activities.

It’s weird being on the receiving end of mundane, every day complaints. It’s not that I don’t empathise. I still have these complaints myself. Life doesn’t stop giving you those when the big stuff sails in, but how you view them changes. I don’t find it isolating when friends share their small stuff with me; I actually like it, it makes me feel included, but it also makes me feel isolated that I think their mundane, but still significant-to-them issue, feels almost frivolous to me. I don’t want to think like that. I miss sweating the small stuff sometimes.

So how to navigate this?

This more intensely concentrated period of isolation does have an end point. Once the transplant is complete, there will be at least a few more weeks of it as both my daughter and I heal from surgery, and whilst her body assimilates a new organ and her immunosuppression is crystallised. The long game of living a life-less-ordinary within an ordinary world is another matter; it takes practice.

Before I was a medical mum and advocate, I taught and practised yoga. I still teach and practise yoga; it looks different now, but it is no less meaningful.

In fact, it means a whole lot more.

My yoga these days can’t often take place in a shiny studios, bookended by saunas and fancy matchas. This morning it took place in 15 minutes in my daughter’s hospital room, and boy, did I need it.

It also isn’t something that can be confined to time, because my yoga is now a constant practice, and one that has saved me from myself during many moments when life and its litany of recent challenges have tried their hardest to take me down in one way or another.

Yoga is vast, impossible to condense into one substack post, but as a long time practitioner and teacher, I can share the particular teachings that have saved me lately: