The Body Won’t Stop Keeping the Score

Our bodies lilt and fray with the greens and mango smoothies we pour into them, and with the froth of story we tell ourselves.

Early memory: A dark corner of a room. Curled with a migraine. I am four. Earlier that day, I had been beaten, and my body’s reaction was a migraine.

The migraines continued throughout my childhood at the cult. A blinding flash. Unable to see or process anything. They would send me to a dark room. I would hover in pain for hours, drifting in and out of consciousness. There was no pain medicine.

When I left, I discovered Excedrin. Then aspirin. I took bottles of it. More is not better. Aspirin eventually causes ulcers, which I got to.

Later on, I found out that my father experienced migraines, too. I met him briefly in my twenties. He had a small fridge in his office at the University of Pennsylvania, where I ambushed him.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“A plane, a train, and a car,” I said.

But then, I was in the neighborhood. We had lunch. I downed a bottle of aspirin.

“Eventually, you’ll need this,” he said.

He opened the door of the fridge. I took out a pen and paper.

I wrote down: Percocet, Demerol. Dilaudid.

“Dilaudid is the best,” he said. “It’s my go-to.”

“Duly noted,” I said.

He met me once more, when my kids were the same age my sister and I had been when he left us. Before deciding to never to see his first set of grandchildren again, I received two pieces of advice from him:

One: Get a PhD.

Two: Take Dilaudid for your headaches. Or Percocet, or Demerol.

About a decade after that meeting, in 1996, the Oxy epidemic began.

Of the five of my six siblings who are blood-related, three of us have migraines, and all of us, along with my father, suffered from childhood trauma.

My oldest sister gets enough sleep, drinks a lot of water. Lives a quiet life.

My youngest sister finds help in cannabis products.

I live a roar of a life, flying redeyes several times a year. Until June, I was still working three jobs.

I have a list of things I do ideally: Drink 60 oz of water, sleep at least 6 hours, exercise at least one hour per day, Pilates, swim, acupuncture, chiro.

Every six weeks, I get occipital nerve block shots or Botox in the back of my head. Nerve block shots have been around since the '70s; I am confused as to why that option was not offered to my father.

What wasn’t available until the ‘90s is the Holy Grail of the migraine world, the triptan family. They aren’t pain relievers. Rather, they adjust your blood flow and cause migraines to stop. They are the best abortive on the market for most neurologists. The problem is that once you hit 65, they don’t want you to take them, because messing with your blood flow makes you a stroke risk.

The new medications are the “Gepant” class drugs. At about $7 per dose, they are expensive. I am sure they are effective for someone, but for me, they do nothing.

I don’t use terms like “my migraines.” They are separate from me. I am a person who sometimes lives with migraines, but sometimes does not. The less stress in my life, the fewer migraines. The thing about chronic pain is that it’s usually intermittent pain.

As a person who will work until 75, I may need something else.

My older sister gets up in the morning and drinks her green juice. She’s on a farm in northern Canada, where the air is good. In the evening, she makes a family meal of meatloaf or chicken and vegetables. Her last child was born in her mid-forties, so she still has kids to raise. But her life still sounds peaceful. She doesn’t get migraines often.

When I saw my father’s fridge of meds, I knew I didn’t want that as my future.

I went to my Kaiser doctor, who told me to get a chiropractor and an acupuncturist and a therapist. When I saw a therapist, she said the most important thing is how much you sleep, how much water you drink.

I said, “I can talk to myself.”

She said, “How’s that going for you?”

I said, “Is this really your business?”

She said, “Yeah, it is.”

I had waited for forty years to start therapy. Like a walk in the desert.

Therapy helped, reinforcing how closely our bodies are connected to our minds. Our bodies often respond to what we tell ourselves about them. My mother was told she needed chemo. She prayed to get better. God’s answer was no. My mother was dead within a year of diagnosis.

When my aunt got the same cancer, she did not pray. She drank wine and walked the dogs. Her cancer went into remission. Last night, my aunt told me that she moved out of her nursing home, got an apartment, and is off to the dog shows.

At the end of his life, my father needed antibiotics and possible surgery. He walked into the hospital with his DNR. He was in a lot of pain and had been for years. He was dead in a couple of days. He lay pale on the hospital sheets, Dilaudid dripping into him.

That’s not how I plan to go. I hope to live long, writing, walking my dogs, threading my life with my children and my eleven friends, remembering that I came out of the fire to find stories, and I don’t have to live in pain. I can breathe.

Everything in America tells us, “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

Breathe, I tell myself. You got out. You’re going to be okay. Keep on writing and swimming. Your kids turned out alright. America may seem like an emergency, but keep breathing.

America is so much more dangerous and beautiful than I imagined it would be when I first walked out of the cult with my dog. But I am so much more powerful than I was as that child, with only a sleeping bag, dog, and harmonica.

Our bodies lilt and fray with the greens and mango smoothies we pour into them, and with the froth of story we tell ourselves. I try to be gentle with myself. Kate, I say, you got this. Stretch your neck like a giraffe. See those leaves? They aren’t out of reach. Stretch a little higher. Be your best self.

And when I can tell I’m being a little punk? I say,

Do better, Kate Gale. This is your crazy little fighter punk self. This is you, fighting like everyone in the world is out to get you. Stop it. Is this your best? Come on, do better. Breathe a minute. You got this.

Dr. Kate Gale is Publisher, Co-Founder, and Managing Editor of Red Hen Press and the Editor of the Los Angeles Review. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including THE LONLIEST GIRL, THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE, and ECHO LIGHT. Her debut novel, UNDER A NEON SUN, debuted in April 2024. Her memoir, SWIMMING THE MILKY WAY, is forthcoming with Zando.