Seeing Through Rose-Colored Glasses

It’s been almost a month since my medical crisis began with an intense cluster of ocular migraines, auras, photophobia and an over-stimulated nervous system.

In my last blog, When the Light Is Too Bright, I wrote about this unexpected side quest I’ve been taking on the Road of Trials, a stretch of the Hero’s Journey where we encounter obstacles, uncertainty, fear & loss, and find that our familiar ways of navigating life no longer seem to work.

However, the Road of Trials isn’t simply about suffering. This stretch of the road is an initiatory landscape that takes us through an emulsification process of a past identity, belief or way of being. And in that dissolution, a transformation occurs that allows the Hero to find an elixir, a treasure, a new illumination of soul to guide them forward into their next evolution of self. 

Eventually, the Hero carries their treasure back home, into their community and into the ordinary rhythms of thier life. The treasure isn’t meant to remain hidden. It's something the Hero embodies and shares with others through their presence and new way of being.

Writing is one of the ways I harvest medicine from my experiences. It helps me take something frightening, confusing, painful, and/or beautiful and find meaning and inspiration from it to water the garden of the life I'm continually cultivating through my living.

I don’t have all the answers yet. I’m still very much inside this particular Road of Trials, however I'm beginning to gather medicine, tools and wisdoms along the way. In this blog, I’m sharing some of what I’ve gathered, along with several collages I've created over the years that seem to be speaking to me in entirely new ways these days.

Healing While I Wait

When I left the hospital a month ago, I was told to follow up with Neurology. Unfortunately, all of metro Denver is booked until early November! That's an awfully long time to wait for medical care, especially when your brain & vision has suddenly rearranged your daily life.

So while I wait for traditional neurological care, I’ve been assembling a constellation of resources to help myself heal. Cultivating resources is an essential aspect of the Hero’s Journey. In my last blog I shared how I was utilizing resources already in my life. However, sometimes we get on the Road of Trials and realize there are some tools missing from our travel pack and we need to secure additional supplies for the journey ahead. 

Some of what I’ve been gathering are conventional medical interventions & some are complementary healing modalities. Some involve changing my environment, while others involve changing daily practices to better support my well being. Together, they are becoming the medicine bundle I'm carrying through this particular Road of Trials and I am so very grateful for this support that is coming into my life at this time.

My Eyes

My first visit after I left the hospital was to an ophthalmologist, who reassured me that the structure of my eyes look good and that what I was experiencing appeared to be either neurological or hormonal.

She introduced me to something that has become one of my most useful tools in this process: FL-41 tinted glasses. They are rose-colored glasses that filter out certain wave lengths of light to assist with the extreme photophobia I've been experiencing. Isn’t it funny that part of my healing journey is quite literally to look at the world through rose-colored glasses!

She said I also had dry eye, a condition that can add another layer of discomfort to eyes that are already struggling. So now, several times a day, I use artificial tears to keep my eyes well moistened, which is especially helpful in the dry, high desert eco-system of Denver, CO. 

These eyes have witnessed more than five decades of life. They have watched sunsets and storms, gazed into the faces of people I love, navigated thousands of miles of roads and trails, read countless words, made art, witnessed beauty, shed tears, and helped me find my way through the world. Now they need my tenderness and I am grateful to be able to give them that.

Refining my Vision

I also went to an optometrist who suggested that the over-the-counter reading glasses I’ve been using are creating additional strain on my eyes.  So, for the first time in my life, I ordered prescription reading & computer glasses, and I ordered them with the rose-colored tinting to them as well.  

They haven’t arrived yet, so currently I have to wear two pairs of glasses at once, both my rose glasses with either my reading glasses or sunglasses over them. It’s a bit of a nuisance, but it’s helping so I’m praying into the challenge. Healing isn’t always elegant.

Yang & Yin of Wholeness

I’ve also been exploring complementary modalities, including Quantum Neurology with Dr. Jen Hartley in Denver, CO. During one session, she used muscle testing while I wore different colored glasses and my nervous system weakened when I looked through both the blue and yellow tinted glasses.

In the chakra system, blue is associated with the Throat chakra and yellow with the Solar chakra, two energy centers where I tend to carry a tremendous amount of Yang energy.

The Throat chakra brings what lives inside us outward into the world through our words, storytelling, and creative expression. The Solar chakra gives us the fire to act, choose, accomplish, and move things forward in life. These are energies I know intimately and have relied upon throughout much of my life.

And yet, what is being called for my healing right now is rose colored glasses. Rose is associated with the Heart chakra, and my eyes, which were the portal into this experience, are associated with the Brow chakra. Both the Heart & Brow chakras have powerful yin energetics, which calls for slower, more receptive energy, a frequency I am less skilled at. 

For someone accustomed to living through tremendous amounts of Yang energy, this past month has called for me to dive deep into the yin energy of stillness, darkness, and rest. It has been challenging, however, I really had no choice but to surrender.

Technology Triggers

With the awareness of how my nervous system was responding to blue light, I knew it was time to address my relationship with technology. Screens expose our eyes not only to rich blue light, but also brightness, contrast, movement, prolonged near-focus, and an enormous amount of rapidly changing visual information.

Most of my ocular migraines with auras were triggered by looking at my phone or monitors. This correlation shined light (quite literally) onto a relationship I knew I needed to address. 

This experience reminded me that my word for the year was HEALTH, and one of my intentions for the year was to heal my addictions. Apparently, Spirit noticed I had been dragging my feet in this particular area and stepped in with a hyper-speed focus on the matter.

Before this medical crisis happened, I could easily spend 15+ hours a day interacting with screens. And while I work on my computer for both my jobs, there are a lot of extra things I do on my phone that are quite mindless & unhealthy,

Over the years, my phone has become my entertainment, distraction, stimulation, and default companion during the empty spaces in my day. Two of my biggest energy drains, and, if I'm being honest, addictions, were playing games on my phone and scrolling TikTok.

Changing My Relationship with Screens

Some of the changes I made to my work computer were to put it in dark mode and have the brightness turned almost all the way down. I also moved my desk so the window lighting is coming in from the side and shining on my screen, rather then me facing the window, which I loved so I could look out the window while I was working. That was just too much lighting flooding my system.

However, my relationship with the phone is where more of my habits and interactions needed to change. Now, I have my phone on dark mode and on extreme low brightness. I also changed the tinting on the screen to limit blue light transmission. 

Right now, looking at my iPhone feels visually repulsive to me. This makes me sad since that is where I text and video message my friends and where I take almost all my photos these days. My intention isn't to make technology the enemy or eliminate it from my life. I'm hoping that as my system heals, I can return to the parts of my phone that genuinely nourish connection & my creativity, while leaving behind some of the habits that simply consume my attention and assault my nervous system.

Healing my Addition to My Phone

I used to lay down and scroll on my phone. That has changed. Now, if I am going to use my phone, I need to sit up and be intentional with its specific usage. Once I am done with the task, then I need to put the phone down. This is a hard habit for me, however, I think this helps hold me accountable for limiting the time I'm using my phone and being more focused on why I am using it.

I deleted the two games I had on my phone. Now if I want to engage in things like that I will need to find a way to play that does not involve technology. But the real culprit for me was TikTok. That is where the real addiction and technology poison was present in my life.

My usage of TicTok started innocently enough. Cooking videos. Art videos. Creativity. Inspiration. Little windows into other people’s lives and ideas. But TikTok doesn’t ask permission before changing the channel on what you are seeing.

Visdeos play one after the other on your feed, and you can not control what comes next. One moment I would be watching someone make a beautiful meal or painting a canvas, and the next I would be confronted with violence, cruelty, political outrage, human suffering, or something disturbing and degrading. Before I could even consciously decide whether I wanted to take it in, the image was already inside me, assaulting my mind, body & spirit. 

Doomscrolling

TikTok reminds me of the sensory-overload interrogation technique used on prisoners, where their eyes are pinned open and they are exposed to relentless light, sound, imagery, and stimulation to overwhelm the person's capacity to process what is happening. 

Over this past month, I now see how assaultive TikTok was on my nervous system and the word doomscrolling now has an entirely new meaning for me. At a time when there is already so much conflict, division, suffering, manipulation, and noise competing for our attention, I see that I need to be more protective of what I allow into the sacred interior of my being.

I don't have control over everything happening in the world, but I do have some agency over what I repeatedly invite into my being. Part of my healing is better protecting the sacred space of my body, mind, and spirit. Going forward, as I use technology I want to more often ask the question: Is what I’m consuming nourishing my life, or merely consuming my attention?

Changing the Light Around Me

My house is changing, too. I live in Colorado, where winter evenings arrive early and darkness can settle in long before the day feels finished. Over the years, I've filled my home with bright 100 watt LED bulbs because I wanted brightness & illumination. However, now I’m discovering that more light doesn't necessarily mean better light. 

LED lighting varies in spectrum, color temperature, brightness, and flicker, and I had never paid much attention to any of it. Light was simply light. Now, as I replace many of the bulbs in my house with 40-watt soft light, I feel a remarkable settling in my nervous system.

Since many of us spend so much time indoors beneath artificial illumination, it becomes even more important to be mindful of the lighting we surround ourself with. Perhaps that was my Yang way of approaching light: Brighter! More! However, as I welcome more Yin energy into my life, I’m discovering that increased illumination doesn't always have to mean more intensity. 

Tending my Home Environment

Because I don't know what triggered this medical crisis, I’ve been looking more closely at the health of my home environment as well. As part this process, I had environmental testing done on my house to screen for mold and other bio-toxins.

That exploration led to a simple discovery. I have a shower in my basement I never use.  I learned that beneath the shower drain is something called a P-trap, which holds a small amount of water that creates a seal between the plumbing system and the air inside the home. Because I hadn't used the shower in years, that water seal had evaporated, potentially allowing sewer gases and odors into the house. Oh my!

I cleaned out the shower, ran the water to refill the P-trap, and now I know to periodically run water through drains that rarely get used to keep the P-traps in place. I don’t know if this contributed to any of my symptoms, but fixing this issue helps me create a cleaner ecosystem in my home.  

Managing my Supplements

Another thing I did when all this started was I stopped taking all my supplements. I had accumulated quite a collection of vitamins and supplements over the years, and because I had no idea what might be contributing to what I was experiencing, I stopped taking almost all of them. In the hospital I learned Vitamin A toxicity can cause migraines and that made me want to just stop everything and start from scratch.

In the hospital one of the docs showed me what she takes as a preventative aid to limit her migraine auras and that is all I have been taking since. As my system continues to settle, I plan to gradually reintroduce some of my previous supplements one at a time, giving my body space between each addition so I can pay attention to how I respond. I am discovering that when there are too many variables changing at once, it becomes almost impossible to know what is helping, what isn't, or what my body might simply not need anymore.

Several doctors and practitioners I've seen have suggested that hormonal changes may be part of this complicated puzzle as well, so I’ve adjusted my hormone levels too; another experiment in this bewildering landscape I find myself in.

The Medicine I'm Gathering

This isn't one of those stories where I tell you about the terrible thing that happened to me and then wrap up it up neatly in wisdom because now everything is better. I am still very much inside this experience. I'm still healing. Still experimenting. Still learning what helps and what doesn't. However, it's been almost two weeks since my last aura experience and my photophobia is softening tremendously.

I still have fear about when another episode may hit and how long the photophobia might linger afterward, however, now I have more tools available to help me deal with it if it does happen again (which I am really hoping it doesn't!).

When all of this first happened, one of my friends said, "Wow, Spirit really pulled the emergency brake on your life. Your life just stopped." I understood what she meant, but something inside me immediately responded: Actually, this is my life., My life didn't stop. I'm still here. Still breathing. Still loving. Still learning. Still in the mysterious unfolding of my life. 

Yes, many of the ways I was accustomed to living came to an abrupt halt. I had to cancel adventures and workshops, I had to step away from screens and missed work for several weeks. I had to move slowly, ask for help, and surrender a tremendous amount of control. But this wasn't an an interruption of my life, this was part of my life. This experience has become a powerful learning pathway for me on my Hero's Journey and I'm gathering medicine and wisdom from it to help me move forward..wherever that may lead.

Sacred Stewardship of Self

For years, I’ve felt the tension between Yin & Yang. Yang energy comes naturally to me: doing, creating, producing, leading, moving, accomplishing. Yin has always been more difficult for me: resting, receiving, surrendering, slowing down, allowing. Yet as I age, life seems increasingly interested in teaching me the language of Yin. Walk slower. Hike shorter distances. Rest more. Do less. Receive help. Listen. Be. 

This experience is teaching me a great deal about stewardship and being more conscious of how I take care of myself; from the light I surround myself with, the food I eat, the environments I inhabit, the technology I consume, the information I allow into my awareness, the energy I expend, and listening to the signals my body sends me.

Perhaps self-care at this stage of my life isn't simply something I do when something goes wrong, but more a sacred responsibility I engage in on a regular basis as part of my daily prayer process to honor this gift of being in a body and being alive.

Living the Hero’s Journey

As I move through this experience, I recognize all five stages of the Hero’s Journey woven through it. The journey isn't unfolding in the tidy, linear sequence that a map might suggest. Instead, I am moving through all of these landscapes at once.

I am Claiming My YES by choosing to actively participate in my healing. I did not choose this medical crisis, and saying YES does not mean pretending I wanted it or that I am grateful for every difficult part of it. My YES is about how I choose to meet what has arrived, and to do so with my heart open and my soul engaged.

I am Cultivating Resources by gathering the people, practices, tools, knowledge, and support I need for this unfamiliar terrain. Some resources were already tucked inside my travel pack; others I had to gather along the way. I am grateful I have been able to amass so many wonderful healing tools.

I am walking the Road of Trials, and am being reminded that transformation rarely happens on terrain where everything is familiar and under our control. Sometimes we discover who we are becoming precisely because the old maps we have been living no longer work.

I am Integrating Wisdom by listening beneath the symptoms for the larger teachings emerging through this experience. I am learning about attention, aging, embodiment, rest, boundaries, discernment, receiving, and the sacred stewardship of my own energy.

I am Serving Through Presence by sharing my experience with you in a vulnerable and transparent way, I can share whatever medicine I've gathered so far...not as someone standing at the end of the road with all the answers, but as a fellow traveler holding up a lantern and saying, This is what I'm discovering. Perhaps something here will illuminate a piece of your path, too.

Seeing Through Rose-Colored Glasses

This experience is teaching me a different meaning of seeing through rose-colored glasses. What began as a tool to help my eyes tolerate light is becoming a much larger teaching about how I see, what I allow in, and where I choose to place my attention.

I know there is tremendous suffering in the world. I know there are things happening that deserve our attention, compassion, and action. But opening myself indiscriminately to an endless stream of violence, outrage, fear, tragedy, and division, especially through social media, does not necessarily make me more compassionate or more useful. Sometimes it simply leaves me depleted, overwhelmed, and less able to bring anything meaningful to the world around me.

Maybe these rose-colored glasses are helping me engage in a deeper level of discernment. I can acknowledge the darkness without continually flooding my nervous system with it. And I am reminded that darkness is not the only truth. Beauty is true, too. And I choose to keep looking for beauty, kindness, creativity, connection, humor, wonder, and love. Not because they are the only things happening in this world, but because they ARE happening too and life is too short to miss these magical aspects of it. 

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