We had some guys over yesterday, and they were installing solar panels on our roof.
Originally, I thought I would be needed to help, but 
Now I had used this tool many, many, many times, so I was aware of what it could do, how to use it, and its limitations. I decided to go after a branch that was a bit too big for this tool, and in trying to force the tool to cut the branch, I was using the tool in a way that was not very safe in order to achieve the outcome.
What happened is that the tool ended up falling down onto my arm and hurting it quite badly. This story is about what I did following that and how I navigated how that felt physically and emotionally.
The first thing I did after noticing that the tools and the branches were all on the ground (and therefore that things were physically safe) was I made a point of paying attention to how my arm was feeling.
Initially, I was pretty embarrassed, so I had a look around to make sure that none of the guys on the roof could see me. When I felt emotionally safe to process this, I let myself really feel the sensations in my arm. At some point in that process, I looked at my arm, where it really hurt, and it made sense that it hurt so much because it was red and very swollen, with a giant lump where this tool had crashed down onto my lower right arm just above my wrist.
I really let myself feel the sensations of it.
One of my mentors says that pain is just trapped sensation.
Pain is trapped sensation.
When we don't feel the pain of something, it gets stuck in our body. So, I have got into the habit of feeling the sting, the sharpness, the physical discomfort or pain immediately whenever it's safe and possible to do so, even if I cut myself with a knife while I'm chopping vegetables or something.
It means that a lot of that intensity can be discharged straight away, which means that we don't have something that we then carry on for a long period of time.
I did that, and then I realised that it would be sensible to finish the job and chop up the things that were on the ground. I picked up the secateurs from the ground and chopped the branch up smaller with my left hand, my non-injured hand, but to do that, I sort of needed my right hand to steady it a little bit. Every time I did that, it hurt, so I thought this was not worth doing anymore.
I carefully picked the tools up and walked back up to the house. As soon as I started walking, I realised how I was feeling emotionally, and that I was feeling very angry at myself.
I was hearing myself say very unkind things. That is, a voice in my head was saying very unkind things, and that was a surprise because I am usually quite kind to myself at that point in my journey with all the healing that I've done. But what I was hearing was that I was so stupid.
I did some tapping. Some of you might be familiar with EFT or Emotional Freedom Techniques. I did some internal tapping. You can do the actual tapping with your fingers, but because I've done so much of this processing now, I can actually do the whole process internally and move through that emotional experience.
Pretty quickly, I realised I wouldn't talk to my own friends like this. I wouldn't tell them they were stupid. I would just recognise that they made a mistake and they had misjudged the consequences of trying to cut a branch that big.
And what was great is that by working through how I was feeling emotionally, I then felt so much calmer and far less reactive. It meant that I had space to think more clearly about what I would do next.
Because I don't love going to doctors because I've had lots of medical trauma in the past, what I did was I thought of a friend of mine who's had lots of accidents. I wanted to try to self-assess whether or not it was a soft tissue injury or whether or not I had broken my arm because the lump on my arm was pretty big, and the pain in my arm was very significant. It was in the exact same spot where I broke my wrist when I was 15.
I started calling a couple of people who I thought might be able to help. In between, I talked to Brad, who came into the house, took one look at my arm and handed me an ice pack (and told me that in future I should yell out for help!)
I ended up calling the Health Line we have in Australia so I could talk to a registered nurse and get her opinion on what to do. This time it was a woman. She suggested that I go to a doctor and get it checked out.
I was able to quickly move through the options and, on a Saturday morning, snag one of the only doctor's appointments that were available anywhere around here. I got a referral for an X-ray just in case. But what was great about the doctor was that she just lightly pressed on the bones on either side of my lower arm. Even though it hurt at the site of the impact, it didn't hurt at all when she pressed on those bones. That was all really helpful.
So, there were a bunch of great actions that I was able to take because I had felt the pain, and I had accepted how I was feeling.
I had moved through how I was feeling emotionally, and it created space for me to be able to think more clearly and take really sensible actions. Even while I was waiting at the doctor's, I was alternating between having the ice pack on and using a tuning fork as a way to put coherent sound into my body to help heal it at the level of sound waves!
Overall, I'm very impressed. What's great is that it's now a day and a half later, and I'm able to use the fingers of my right hand more, and use my right hand in ways today that I couldn't do yesterday!
I can do a whole bunch of things, little things, pain-free today that yesterday when I tried to do them created sharp pain. I'm sure that my arm's ability to heal more quickly than I expected is partly due to the fact that I was really feeling what was coming up, but also that I could think clearly enough to really proactively take great care of myself.
[ All photos taken by