Life's a Balancing Act - 'You cannot celebrate life, without celebrating death.'

May 01, 2025

Life's a Balancing Act - 'You cannot celebrate life, without celebrating death.'

'to be set in stone

is to be hard as rock,

no light will shine through'

Life's a balancing act

Life's a Balancing Act is a Collection of drawings of various skulls nestled among nature, a reflection of the cycle of life and death. This collection was created through the concept that we should celebrate death and see it as an important and deeply spiritual experience we will all encounter.

Throughout this entire experience of FND and Dysautonomia the concept of death often entered my mind scapes within onset, during symptoms and exploring themes and concepts. Certain episodes and symptoms feel like the end; especially syncope. It caused me to feel anxious about death and therefore anxious to move because standing up these symptoms surface. At the start of onset it certainly felt as though I was dying; it was just really aggressive. But as I learnt about symptoms and as the years went on those feelings of 'this is the end' lessened and eased as i surrendered to the symptoms themselves. We always will try to fight it is a normal response, but I learnt that fighting isn't helpful for symptoms and to just let go. Letting go almost felt like greeting death in, in a very weird sense allowing whatever was going to happen was scary but also liberating.

Struggling to breathe, air hunger, immense chest pain, stroke-like symptoms and other various symptoms invoked that anxiety surrounding death.

Thoughts of am I not going to believed of my concerns due to the stigma of FND, will things throughout my life be blamed on FND and medical care not being done correctly due those judgements? Also, thoughts of I probably would ignore signs of an actual stroke when I have stroke like symptoms surface. How can I differentiate a real stroke vs. a hemiplegic migraine that presents as stroke-like symptoms? These thought streams were very strong within onset but eased, only to resurface with really big and out of the blue episodes.

At times during certain episodes there is this quick 'oh shit moment' and you know you can't do anything you are in fact going down. There is nothing you can possibly do within those moments besides experiencing it.

That's scary to sit with, this distrust of symptoms. If a normal person were to suddenly have these symptoms they would definitely go to hospital due to the sheer severity and brutal nature of certain symptoms. I have had to learn that these symptoms are normal and ok; even though they don't feel safe when they present.

I had to learn to accept symptoms, go lower and lean into them, allowing the moment and to die to them which I have touched on in another write up.

I have noticed that if I do shift in my perception of a hemiplegic I do tend to get more anxious therefore more inclined to seek medical care, but that creates more feelings of anxiety and I find hospitals to be not a great idea to go. I've figured it out now if I can't move my left side but I can still have a straight smile I'm good. It doesn't matter that I can't feel my left side nor move it, I can still smile therefore I'm ok.

I also don't want to take up a spot in emergency for someone who needs it, urgent care will always tell me to go to hospital due to my presentations however I know my body now to a degree.

I've come to terms with the potential fact that I may miss those important cues due to FND, and that's ok when time is up it's not like we can do anything besides trusting that paramedics may be able to bring you back. The old me would totally freak out with that mindset but I have learnt through this experience is we have an illusion of perceived control over our deaths; we do not.

We as a culture try to fight death people become obsessed with fighting the inevitable. Extreme diets and exercises it becomes ritualistic it creates no time for actual living or enjoyment. It’s quite odd to see death on media as a thing to conquer or control. We even try to prove life after death ‘what’s on the other side’ via science, people sharing their near-death experiences or hospice care workers share their stories of their perceptions of the afterlife from witnessing people in their last moments. We as humans want to know all; it's almost funny to think we have the ability to know what happens after death.

I wanted to express death through these drawings as a celebration, while it feels scary to think of our mortality it's one of the most natural experiences we will all go through and experience. And the process of the living with grief is because of love; to grieve is to love and that is beautiful.

This collection would be the last of the year 2023, my need to create and process was finished for a while. Picking up the pen I had no inner dialogue, no questions and nothing more to reflect on my self-work was done for now; pages left empty. I spent around a year just enjoying life's ups and downs until the next collection was born.

'Quiet shadow work

will show you the way;

sit in all its stench'