My world is spinning, my body standing still as the room moves around me. Bracing the walls, holding back nausea, I pray for mercy. Feeling physically well escapes me, the earth spinning without my ability to climb aboard. I ask the hard questions that correlate with my impending doom. Have I lived a complete life? Has my life purpose left its mark on the world? Can I elongate my stay, enhance my health, and serve people surrounding me? With a vertigo diagnosis, I remain horizontal letting silence and stillness illuminate hard truths left dangling without direction, a voice, or a space to make a difference.

My reality seems dismal. Yet my unrelenting spirit wants to alter my actions to wellness and prioritize life’s bigger picture into focus. Intend my next move, settle the earth from turning too fast, and live my life with purpose. When I was young, with every gift my grandparents uttered in some variation, “Wear it in good health, use it in good health, enjoy it in good health.” Since then, I feel compelled to live in good health. With a sudden shift of imbalanced bearings, I need a hand, faithfully supporting me. Healing requires belief, actions that support my health, and gratitude for the experience cast upon me.

Fascinating is that my vertigo originated within the inner ear where the body’s balance is maintained, called the labyrinth system. Within this maze, three semicircular canals contain fluid and act like a gyroscope, communicating where the body is in relation to gravity. Tiny crystals called cupuloliths dislodge from their place on top of the nerves, causing irritation to the fluid within the canals, causing vertigo. Researchers also believe particles free-floating within the labyrinth apply force causing vertigo symptoms as well. Imagining my gems free-floating, needing to rest in their origin and find their way home upon my nerves, is an interesting metaphor. Perhaps fear resides where my gifts to the world live. Symbolically my writing needs to exist where my courage lives. Disconnected currently, my gems (crystals) require a return to their rightful home, situated upon my nerves. Without this, I find myself disoriented.

Although connecting these dots an implausible truth, the timing of completing the second draft of my book, further than I have reached toward publishing thus far, is serendipitous. The completion feels dizzying, a disorientation of what comes next leaves an imbalance and uncertainty of my next action step. Yet guidance and intuition can cause this labyrinth to jar the gem within me back into its place of origin upon my nerves. Courage lives within me and fosters this journey to publishing my first book. Perhaps the world will stop spinning, vertigo depleted from its awakening purpose, and my book will find its way to the publisher and your bookshelf.