I believe we all have an innate ability to heal. We’ve just become out of touch with that ability because we rely too much on others to do our healing for us. Facing a grim prognosis, Elizabeth became empowered to heal instead of accepting a life of chronic pain. I love her story because it mirrors mine and inspires us to tap into our own abilities.
By: Elizabeth Kipp
I am a long-time seeker of truths with a foot each in the spiritual and scientific worlds. My life experiences and training enable me to bridge the gap between the two.
In the months following the birth of my son, my burgeoning professional career in the environmental assessment was cut short by the emergence of a structural weakness in my low spine. I spent the next 31 years in and out of hospitals in pursuit of a way to stabilize my spine and find freedom from the persistent pain resulting from an old injury.
My deep connection to the spiritual world supported me through multiple surgeries, decades of prescribed medications, and a long persistent search for modalities that would help me to heal. In 2015, I entered into Dr. Peter Przekop’s Pain Management Program where I was able to free myself of the chronic pain cycle and find a way to live a life free from suffering.
Now in recovery, I am a health facilitator specializing in stress and chronic pain management, an empowerment coach, EFT/ Tapping and Ancestral Clearing practitioner, and kundalini yoga teacher helping people to step into the power of their own healing. I have turned my attention as a patient advocate in service to the alarmingly high population of people who suffer from or are in recovery from chronic pain.
The Epiphany that Empowered Me To Heal
After moving my family to Canada, I was referred to a highly recommended and seasoned orthopedic doctor. After looking at my X-rays, records, and examining me, he told me something that shook my world like a super-volcano:
“You will be at Level 7 out of 10 pain for the rest of your life — 24/7 — and you will be in a wheelchair by the time you are 40 years old.”
I was shaken to my very core. I fell apart and burst into tears right there in this doctor’s office. The thoughts: “Is this really the life I am meant to live?” and “how will I ever handle living the rest of my life feeling all of this ache in my back?” These were quickly followed by: “How will I ever be the wife and mother I always dreamed of being if I have to deal with this, too?” and “what about the career I worked so hard to prepare for – what about that?” And then: “What kind of life is this to live?” Finally, “How will I ever survive this? Does my spirit have the strength to endure such a life? Is this all there is for me?”
At that time, I was believing that doctor and didn’t question it. After all, I had been raised to bow to the knowledge of that profession. They had been educated for many years in medical school and were privy to knowledge that was far from mine, right?
Once I began crying, I found that I could not stop. I am not one who cries easily, so the fact that I was crying so forcefully and freely was a shock to me all by itself. I left the doctor’s office, tears continuing to flow fiercely, and got in my car with my husband and son. I felt like a thick black blanket of despair closed over me, encompassing all of me. My whole body was shaking, and I felt utterly unable to control myself. I cried for two weeks straight – around the clock. I cried myself to sleep, fell asleep exhausted, and awoke only to start crying all over again – until the next time I fell asleep. This cycle repeated itself over and over.
I felt like I was closed tight inside of a small, very tall, but thin, dark closet. I could not find the door out of this closet.
“I kept casting my eye around in this darkness, searching for the Light. Something inside of me urged me to keep looking. Of course, it was either keep looking or give up altogether. Giving up has never been one of my strong suits.”
I went through four of the five stages of grief outlined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Even though I felt I held firmly and deeply within the arms of despair, I never fully accepted the prognosis or pronouncement that my doctor had given me. I fought against it with all of my strength, despite the tears and the despair. I dug so deeply inside of myself and peered into the blackness inside of this tiny, stuffy, dark closet in which I felt trapped. I went through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression (where I clearly lived for quite a while), but I never reached the fifth stage of acceptance.
Instead, I was graced with an epiphany that catapulted me right out of my depression: “That doctor is not a fortune-teller. He is operating within a scientific paradigm. And I know that scientific paradigms shift. We used to believe that the earth was flat…until we discovered that it was round.”
I finally found the Light I had been searching for in the form of this revelation. In science, there is never 100% certainty about anything. Science works only with probabilities and tries to predict the likelihood or probability that something will occur.
Here was this doctor, a learned man of science, telling me how things were going to be in my life. Instead of throwing me a life line and lifting me with the inspiration of possibility, he pronounced to me: “This is your future. Get used to it.”
I had to step out of my vulnerability as a patient desperately searching for answers and step back into my power as another learned person of science and call this doctor on the flaw in his position. Yes, perhaps he was speaking to probabilities and, as he saw things, the probabilities pointed to a rather slim likelihood of the kind of recovery for which I was hoping.
“But here’s the thing – where there is a chance, any chance at all, there is possibility and potential.”
And all kinds of strange and remarkable things can happen in this mathematically narrow window of possibility and probability. Whereas science operates within a strict framework, we can choose to exist in the entirety of the “All That Is,” where we have access to phenomenon’s unknown to and outside of the realm of science. This presents an opening of hope.
The realization that this doctor presented me with a flawed argument blew my mind. I said to my Higher Power, “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn enough science to see its limitations and to understand what those limitations mean.
How I Took Responsibility For My Own Healing
It was at this moment when I realized that my doctor’s viewpoint was limited by the model in which he operated, that I finally took responsibility for my healing into my own hands.
Never again would I allow a doctor to work above me. From that moment on, I entered my relationship with all health care workers, doctors or otherwise, on a collaborative level. If they wouldn’t adjust to working with me on the same level with them, then I moved on to another health care worker who would.”
My empowerment as a patient began in earnest at this moment. I finally stopped crying and felt empowered in a way that I had never before experienced. It had never occurred to me before this event that my connection to myself, which was the realization of my Higher Self, was such an integral part of my path to healing.
I literally felt a shift in my physical world. I suddenly felt grounded and much more certain of myself.
I still felt physical pain, but it did not hold the same heavy weight that it had before. I felt lighter with the promise of hope for healing in the future. I would stay in this empowered position throughout the rest of my journey to healing. I finally was getting connected to a part of me that I had sensed for years, but had never been able to find. And I continue to this day to feel such gratitude for this crisis in consciousness and the revelation I had around it, or because of it.
Elizabeth Kipp, Health Facilitator, Empowerment Coach, and Kundalini Yoga Teacher helps people unleash the power of their own healing. Founder of www.elizabeth-kipp.com, she offers her expertise in chronic pain and stress management, resolving conflict, and nonviolent communication.
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