Prologue to my memoir

An invitation to Accidental Alchemy

Hello and welcome!

I’m so glad you found your way here. I’m Sumaya Abuhaidar and this is the prologue to my multimedia, serial memoir Accidental Alchemy.

It’s my story—told in prose, poetry and art—of the darkness I walked through after a concussion and Covid sent my nervous system into severe dysfunction, and of the gifts, both emotional and spiritual, of slowly finding my way out and unexpectedly unfurling into a more expansive version of myself.

I invite you, with open arms and an open heart, to join me on this wild, all-too-human ride. I hope you find moments of connection and expansion along the way.

I recommend starting with this prologue, then reading the chapters in order for the full experience. For the best reading experience, consider reading in a browser and on a larger screen to fully enjoy the art pieces and to more easily navigate from one chapter to the next (the navigation buttons are at the bottom of the page). You can access the whole archive/memoir HERE.

It’s early morning sometime in April 2022. I crack my eyes open, wondering if it was all just a nightmare. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up to a world where I’m still the strong, capable woman I used to be. Maybe I’ll jump out of bed and get on with the life I loved.

But no. I look around me and the pain and knowing floods me like it does every morning now. The nightmare is real. This debilitated thing lying in this bed is really me. This body in constant pain, barely able to move, barely able to get out of bed, this is my body. And this dull, listless brain, once so sharp, is my brain.

This is me and there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I’m facing yet another interminable day of immobility, pain and crushing loneliness.

I have no idea where to look for hope.

And I have no idea how any of this makes sense. How does a healthy, fit 48 year old woman get reduced to this debilitated state without sufficient explanation? How did I become this feeble, diminished person who can barely talk for more than a few minutes, who can’t walk more than 50 feet, can’t lift a laundry basket or a pot of water to put on the stove, can’t even handle the noise of her husband and teenage boys chatting and laughing at the dinner table?

How do I go on when I can’t manage the most basic things that might bring me some measure of peace or joy? When I can’t even listen to music, read a book, or talk with a friend?

Nothing makes sense. And yet I’m living it. This is my life.

The realization sticks in my throat, choking me. I want out with a clawing desperation that’s eating at me like a cruel, living thing.

On January 2, 2020, I suffered a concussion. It wasn’t a severe concussion. It should have been no big deal. But it was my seventh in a lifetime of aggressive sports and I lived at 9000 feet high up in the Rockies. So it became the biggest of deals. I struggled to recover and my symptoms worsened with time rather than improving.

Then in early March of that fateful year, I got Covid. The concussion symptoms that were already a big deal devolved into a true darkness. My health collapsed and within months, I shrank and shriveled into someone I no longer recognized. And my life shrank and shriveled into a life I no longer recognized. I could barely do anything at all except the essentials, and even those were hard.

Just as the world pulled closed its shutters and descended into a hush, so did my body and mind. I stayed in that shrunken life, and in that shrunken self, for many years.

I was never in any danger of dying. But I was in the gravest danger of living without living, dying without dying. And despite seeing some of the best physicians in the country, and going to numerous alternative practitioners, I couldn’t find a way out. I had no idea where to look for hope.

But hope came for me anyway.

It caught me when I hit rock bottom and it guided me painstakingly towards the knowledge I needed to find my way back to health. It set me on a path that not only helped me reclaim my physical health, but surprised me by inviting me to slowly unfurl into a freer, more expansive version of myself.

That hope came in many forms. It came in the form of neuroscience and mind-body healing. It came in the form of self-discovery work and somatic trauma healing. And it came in the form of a spiritual expansion that is still unfolding and infusing my life with wonder.

What started as a nightmare eventually became a grand adventure. Like all adventures, it included exhausting and hopeless times. But also like all adventures, it unfolded into unexpected joy and triumph.

This memoir is my story of that grand adventure. It’s a multi-media work told in essays, art and poetry. Because as I bumped and thumped my way through my grand adventure, writing and painting became an integral part of my healing. And somehow, in the beautiful miraculous way of things, my writing and art shaped themselves into my story, into this memoir.

I’m excited to finally be emerging from my years of isolation and sharing it with you. I’m also terrified because it holds the tenderest parts of me and the tenderest parts of my story. But I know I need to be brave. Because sharing our stories is healing. Essential even.

There are so many angels who were brave enough to put themselves and their stories out into the world, whose words penetrated my darkest times and gave me hope. They held my hand across time and space and walked beside me through the darkness. They made me feel less alone.

Now It’s my turn to muster up the courage to share my own story, and to share the rawness of the darkest and lightest places, as they did. I hope it might reach out from my heart to yours, my world to yours, and hold you if you’re in need of holding. Help you feel less alone.

And I hope that together we can hold hands across this mysterious, non-local universe, at this particularly hard time, and help each other remember.

Remember how to hope.

Remember how to have faith.

Remember that the brightest light comes from walking through the darkest darkness.

And remember how to hold ourselves lovingly when we forget.

We’re in a moment in our shared history when many of us are in dire need of that tender holding and that shared remembering. The pandemic sent so many of us to our knees. We all have unique stories and unique ways that it happened for us. For some of us it was the unthinkable loss of loved ones, or the loss of vocation or community. For many of us it was the loss of our sense of groundedness and safety and we long for solid ground under our feet. For too many of us, myself included, what happened was not just emotional but physical. We found ourselves with debilitating unexplained symptoms and a shrunken, scary life. And little hope of recovery.

In this landscape of shared struggle, I hope my words and my art find their way into the hearts that need them most. Maybe even into your heart, dear one (may I call you dear one?). Because maybe, just maybe, you have experienced, or are still in the midst of, a devastating health collapse. If you are, I wrote this memoir with you in mind. And with you in heart. Because if you’re experiencing anything like the debilitation that I did, I know that you might not be able to read for very long, or maybe even read at all. I know that you might be sound sensitive and it might be hard to listen to an audiobook or podcast. And I know that you might be exhausted beyond measure and it’s hard to find the energy to do anything at all besides survive the day.

If that’s you, dear one, I hope you’ll find your way to a short essay, a piece of art, a poem, or a quotation on just the right day and at just the right time. And maybe some unexpected tidbit might speak to you of strength, resilience, and hope exactly when you need it most.

It’s my greatest wish in writing this memoir that that’s exactly what happens for you. Because I understand what you’re experiencing. And I’m with you.

---

Why do we insist on thinking
we can control 
our world

when in fact the unseen forces
will keep spinning us 
around and around

and the mysterious 
twirling and reaching
has had a plan for us all along?

Why not buckle our seat belts
and surrender with wild abandon?
Let ourselves be turned upside down

so we can finally see
exactly what 
and where 

we are.

All art and poetry included in this memoir is my own unless I specifically credit another author or artist.

If you liked this chapter, please…