In my sixth year of living with epilepsy, I experienced a satori, the moment in the Buddhist tradition when one’s intuitive wisdom reveals a new way of seeing.  It’s also called “riding the wind.”

At age 34, epilepsy had suddenly taken over my body and my life. Its challenges were many. Life with unpredictable seizures was weird at best and dangerous at worst. Unexpectedly, one of the biggest challenges I faced was confronting the cruelties of the medical system. Its corruptions were so deep that I gave it a nickname: “The Goliath.” By 40, I had been in many “fights” with this giant. It had called me into the ring many times to battle over its unfair and immoral behaviors. Its weighty and effective weapon? Bureaucratic tyranny. 

As corporate giants do, it adapted itself to my situation. It had no moral reservations about taking advantage of my misfortunes. It hit me with massive bills for services I didn’t need: ambulance rides after seizures, consultations with repeated diagnoses of epilepsy, prescriptions for the recommended drugs. There were many times when I sat through a doctor’s 10-minute declaration of war on epilepsy, their only metaphor for dealing with disease.

After each of these encounters, I would fight back at the unwanted, unneeded services and the outrageous bills. With perseverance and integrity, I always came out swinging. Sometimes I’d win; sometimes I’d lose. Over time I got very worn out.  Eventually, a letter arrived with another invitation to do battle. When I told my husband about it in a tired voice, his suggestion surprised me, “Maybe you should stop fighting so much.” The absurdity of this suggestion made me slam the door and go for a walk.

In a nearby park, I asked myself, “How can I stop fighting?! I have to fight epilepsy! I have to because it is a part of me! I must fight it until the end, until the end of us!” That pulled me up short. The wind was speaking to me: “Listen to yourself, Holly.  Listen to your own words. What you’re saying is not right. You’ll fight epilepsy all your life because it is you?” Riding the wind, I sat on a park bench, asking. “But what will I do, if I don’t fight epilepsy? How will I relate to it?” I couldn’t hear an answer right away. “Okay,” I thought. “I don’t know what to do. I’ll walk and reflect on it.” Standing up, I reached out my hand behind me, as I would toward a friend. “Come on epilepsy, let’s walk together.”  

There was my satori. Smiling, enjoying the wind’s ride, I repeated my offer, "Come walk with me, epilepsy." This shift in the dynamic was immediately palpable. Within a few weeks I was having fewer seizures. “Walking with” has become the metaphor for my relationship to illness. The wind has shown me how to solve problems peacefully and has revealed to me the weakness of the Goliaths of culture.

Holly Eckert is the author of SEIZED - Searching for Health in the United States

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