I’ve been bit by a tick.
And not just once,
Not just twice.
But this past Sunday, I pulled the THIRD tick of this summer off of me.
Yup, I have had three tick bites in a row over the last three months. Living in the state of NJ mean living in an abundance of these blood thirsty insects during the summer months, especially since we have tons of deer in our neighborhood.
What do they say about the number 3? That it’s a magic number?
Or what about the teaching that three is the number of sacred union?
How could something so icky be sacred?
Let that sit for a minute, and I’m going to get back to it.
Ticks have been off my radar for most of my life. Between growing up in Europe and living most of my adult years in NYC, I just didn’t deal with them.
And even when I moved down to NJ in 2018, they continued to be something I “heard about” but didn’t experience past seeing them on me or pulling one off and then having no reaction at the bite site.
Until this summer.
After a fun day of bird watching at a local park we love, my husband and I cuddled up for a great night of sleep. But when I woke up in the morning, my hand automatically went towards my left ankle, and there was a small mass. I scratched it and found it was actually a tick! I grabbed a bag to put it in and then looked at the bite, and decided to just monitor it. I actually didn’t feel concerned.
But the next day, I looked at the bite site and was starting to see a red circle forming around the bite. Knowing this could be the beginning of a bull’s eye, I told my practitioners. The healer I’ve been working with since February that I shared about two weeks ago, actually went through a really rough Lyme journey so she hopped on a call with me right away to give me a protocol.
As I’ve been on this intense healing journey for the last three years around mold and hypersensitivities, I am no stranger to protocols, but was really hoping those days were behind me.
I dived into the protocol over the next month, and never developed any new symptoms. The protocol worked! And then just as I was winding down, I got another bite, this time in my right pinky toe. I had a similar experience of waking up and automatically checking my toes. There was a “knowing” something was on me.
And I was frustrated. I thought I was DONE with this!
And my practitioner asked me to look at the spiritual meaning of ticks.
While I found quite a lot on this subject, the one meaning that really stood out to me was around the ability to remain neutral.
And I read Louise Hay’s Heal Your Body which pointed to bug bites as “being irritated by small things”.
So, I took it all in, and went back on the protocol AGAIN. Except this time I noticed that my body intuitively didn’t need as much of the medicine I was taking. And when I went to see my healer in person, she took me through a test to measure my heart variability for the potential of how healthy I CAN be. The highest is 100, which is basically monk status.
I scored a 92.
She said to me, “if you had any disease or microbes in your body, you would never score this high.” And I thought, “oh YAY! The second tick bite didn’t give me anything either!”
And then, two weeks later, to the day, I woke up in the middle of the night, and actually pulled a bug off of me. It woke me up with a start. My body began to get hot, and I wondered if it was a tick. We had spent the day before in another park that had tick warning signs everywhere, and I hadn’t done a check of my body before going to bed.
Why? Because I thought I was done with that.
I laid there and convinced myself not to go to the bathroom to check, as I knew it would only wake me up more and I’d have a hard time going back to sleep. Except, I had a hard time going back to sleep anyway. I kept imaging the “bug” crawling back under the covers and just snuggling in somewhere new on my skin.
When I did wake up in the morning, I did a thorough check and found a spot on my lower right back. I picked at it, but it seemed to be a mole…so I left it alone. But when my husband came home from his run, I asked him to look at it, and sure enough, it was a tick.
I started to spiral. I felt SO angry and frustrated. How could this be happening AGAIN?
I put a castor oil pack on it and realized I was shaking. I grabbed my phone and again looked at the spiritual meaning of ticks, and stood in front of my husband and said, “I don’t want to be like this! I don’t want to spiral anymore. The truth is, my body KNEW. I just tried to silence it, and not heed the warning. I don’t want to do that anymore. My body KNOWS. I’ve been through so much these last three years, and I can trust when I feel something is off, that it IS.”
I cried. I released all that was pent up in me.
And then I sat in meditation for a long time. And when I got up off the cushion, I felt at peace, and had a very productive and joyful Sunday.
In therapy the next day, I said, “the truth is, I have all that I need for any tick bite moving forward. I know this protocol works, and I can trust if my body wakes me up, that it’s for a reason.”
My healer said to me, “you will know you have healed a pattern when you react to the same situation in a completely different way.”
And I felt some peace, because on that third tick bite, I actually caught myself in the spiral. I stopped the flood of anxiety and the belief that I will “never get better”.
The word union means: the growing together of severed parts.
Indeed, in this deeply challenging health journey, I have felt a split within me. Parts of me would dominate when I wasn’t feeling well and I would feel so discouraged. But, the reason I am feeling the best I have in three years NOW is because I have committed myself to bringing all these parts back home again.
Meaning, coming into union.
And it seems the ticks around me had the same plan. What if they were in on it?
Knowing that a tick bite could be such a trigger, having to face myself and my reaction to them put those severed parts front and center.
And actually allowed me to learn I have everything I need within me. I can trust my body.
Now that is SACRED.
We can spend our lives being “bugged” and “irritated” and allow that to build into a crescendo of anxiety. I share this from personal experience. But there is another way, which is to actually LISTEN and TUNE in. When you feel “bugged” or feel something is off, take a pause.
Take a breath.
Remove yourself from the situation, and ask with deep compassion,
What is this?
And if you are finding yourself in a pattern of the same thing happening again and again, with deep love and self acceptance, ask yourself,
What am I really angry about?
What have I made this mean about me?
What is this pattern teaching me about myself that I’m not seeing?
The good news is that whatever parts get severed from a pattern CAN regrow.
Your being is full of magic and energy that WANTS to be whole.
Your being wants to be whole. Your spirit, mind, and body want to come into union.
And it may “bug” you until you take this sacred truth into your heart and trust it.
That’s the magic.