Stubbed Toe May Be Broken…So What!

On a toe that may have a bone fracture, I’m using helichrysum and myrrh essential oils. I’ve also used splints, ice, and wintergreen essential oil, in addition to putting my feet up above my heart as much as possible.

I had starting inverting myself into an L-shape during Covid lockdown and not a moment too soon. When I stubbed my toe moving around in the dark, just after dawn, the pain was horrific. I thought it would go away and it did not. Google said any toe pain that lasts more than a few hours is likely broken, usually meaning fractured.

I also increased my supplements of MSM and other joint pain helpers (scroll below). Of course, I did Reiki – must say I found it a challenge to focus only on the toe. The Phoenix Foot Bath also seemed to help. All well and good- the toe began to heal. I could walk more easily with just twinges of the pain-that-was.

THEN lo-and-behold, I stubbed it again, moving too fast around the house. The obvious message is rest, Niamo. Why is rest harder for me than others is another post. Suffice it to say, I now HAD TO REST because nothing is more important than my health. And how can I help anyone with their holistic health if mine is compromised?

Well, that perfection energy notwithstanding (but useful for indicating where I have a holding pattern), I decided to google “meaning of my stubbed toe that may be broken.”

Of course, what you look for you find. The article below is from HuffPost and is over ten years old, yet the authors experience fits about 90% of what I’m going through. I don’t sit at a tight desk and haven’t emigrated from New Jersey. But I will give this thing one more week to heal naturally, inshaAllah God-willing, before making that appointment I need to make.

My Broken Toe: Unfortunate Injury Or Spiritual Message? (HuffPost)

In my new Rocky Mountain hometown, the Stone Age meets the New Age. Friends here believe that physical injuries carry spiritual messages.

As a former New Yorker, I have my doubts. I believe emotional ills can manifest physically, of course. And I’m fascinated by the holistic idea of a body-mind that blurs the line between form and Essence, kicking Cartesian dualism in both ass-cheeks.

But when a bottle of Petit Syrah fell off the top of the fridge on my birthday, I didn’t see the Big Life Message. The only sign I saw was #&@&^!!#&@*!!&&!@!! as the bottle ricocheted off my skull and smashed my big toe, creating a short sharp pain above and a dull, growing ache below.

It was a case of bad luck, I thought when I could think again -a simple case of gravity compounding a fracture at 32 feet per second.

My new friend, C., an astrologer, disagreed. There was a message in my injury, she said. All we had to do was find it.

A few hours after the fall, C. drove me to the holistic pharmacy in search of ingestible Arnica en route to my birthday dinner. She had checked Louise Hay’s book How to Heal Your Body C. said, as we drove. According to Louise Hay, toe injuries were physical manifestations of a needless emotional worry about future details. My squished toe was Nature (or Louise Hay’s) way of asking me to “step off” the idea of fine-tuning my future.

I’d paged through “Heal Your Body” and I liked it – a lot. Illnesses are listed alphabetically, which goes a long way toward dimming their fear-factor. Nausea being diagnosed as embodied fear calms my stomach and empowers my mind. A few months ago, I heard Dr. Christiane Northrop confess how a fight with a friend got her urinary tract “pissed off.” Even the avatars need a physical Message to tune into themselves every now and then.

There was just one problem with C.’s theory about the message in my toe. Obsessing about future details didn’t ring true to me. As a writer, I love to obsess over details past (For example, I can tell you that I carried a half-eaten bag of 365 Brand organic frozen peas to my birthday dinner as a cold compress for my toe – I love the fact that those peas were organic!). But the details of things that haven’t happened don’t intrigue me.

“Obsessing about future details didn’t ring true to me.” This statement rings UNTRUE. Those who write seem obsessed with details that tell a future. BY DEFINITION, scribes and writers detail possibilities (ways of looking/seeking), including ones not yet visible (future).

The next morning, C. called and asked me to read the label on the bottle of wine that had beaned me. I hopped to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of wine from under the kitchen sink, where I’d put it in low-gravity purgatory.

Having been trained as a Comp Lit major in college, I was concerned that we might read too much into the words on the label. But in the end, there wasn’t much to find.

“The McManis Petit Syrah was bottled between California’s Stanislaus and San Joaquin rivers,” I read to C. over the phone.

“Oh well,” she said. The words were interesting to a sommelier, perhaps. But wisdom-proof to us.

Perhaps my injured toe was just a toe? Willing to entertain that possibility as well, C. sent me to her chiropractor. My toe was fractured, X-rays confirmed. But there was nothing my new doctor could do about that (toes hang out in groups, but they heal independently).

As long as I was there, he asked, was anything else bothering me?

Well, I said…I’d been writing this novel back in New York. My desk never really fit me (hell, the city never really fit me) and I’d developed this mildly — okay, majorly painful problem with my arm that had made it hard to do things like type – or walk the dog – or turn my head, or hold things. Physical therapy had only made things worse. The only thing worse than P/T were the “specialists.”

The chiropractor smiled, and got to work. As a result, I’m writing these words pain-free.

Was there a spiritual message in my injury or not?

C. believes the bottle of wine spun me toward the doctor who could fix my arm.

I don’t see the Message in the Bottle – yet. But if my arm hadn’t hurt, I might be living in York City.

Instead, I’m sitting at a desk that suits me, near mountains that move me, surrounded by open-minded, loving friends.

My toe is broken, my arm is healed and my heart is curious.

Here, in the Stone-Age-meets-New-Age West, it may be time to redefine my idea of what a Healing Message is.

–Sharon Glassman, Contributor, HuffPost blog