Creating a Legacy in the Face of Death

What is it about death that makes it so hard to talk about? Is it the uncertainty of what comes after, or the perceived finality of it? Is it simply societal conditioning that has kept us away from it, building walls of fear like smoke and mirrors around the subject?

Death has been in my face everywhere I go for the past week. It’s shown up in conversations with friends, in peer discussions in the coaching and supervision community, and in my own memories surfacing of my episodes of depression and feeling suicidal. There’s been no escaping it.

In a way, it’s not surprising as we draw nearer to Samhain. The veil between worlds is thinning, cultures are about to start celebrating and honouring their dead. On a personal level, Samhain –Hallowe’en– is my birthday and in a symbolic way, another layer of death as I let go of the person I’ve been this year to make way for who I’m about to become.

This year has been challenging my sense of mortality in multiple ways. Just as I was about to take the next steps to publish my book and send it off to my editor, I had a miscarriage. The grief was all-consuming. But before I’d even had time to properly grieve and heal my body, I was thrown into another cataclysm as my body started screaming at me and I landed in A&E experiencing the worst pain of my life.

I genuinely thought I was going to die.

After numerous tests and scans that didn’t show much of anything, they settled on the idea of a ‘self-resolved’ ovarian torsion and sent me home to rest. It was my first time being an adult patient.

If you’d asked me a few months before, I would have said resting and being gentle with myself didn’t come easy to me and that I wouldn’t be an easy patient to deal with. However, out of sheer pain, exhaustion and my cocktail of painkillers, rest really was all I could do. Even following a TV show or reading a book took a level of concentration I couldn’t access.

Naturally, this brush with death and the intensity of fear and pain led to thoughts of my life and future. What was really important to me? If this was it, had I done everything I wanted to do? The answer that came to me many a time over the following couple of weeks was a resounding no, I was nowhere near close to achieving everything I wanted to achieve.

I knew my book would reach the world regardless of whether I was still in it. would see to that. But I hadn’t written the fictional tales my eight year old self had been dreaming about all these decades yet. I hadn’t brought enough awareness to the issues within the creative industry yet. I hadn’t helped enough people emotionally heal yet. I hadn’t helped enough creatives know their self-worth and create their best, most joyful works yet. I hadn’t seen the northern lights yet. I hadn’t gotten back to living by the sea yet. I hadn’t had children yet. I hadn’t overcome my emotional issues around painting and drawing yet.

I wasn’t living my best life yet.

When I landed in A&E a second time within a month, those thoughts of all the things I hadn’t done yet vanished. Instead, there was no future to think of – what was the point? My life had become an endless cycle of blood tests and urine samples, the scent of hospital disinfectant had taken root in my hair and clothes. I closed my eyes and all I saw was grey brick walls. I woke up at night thinking I’d heard machines beeping. Cars driving along the street reminded me of flickering fluorescent lights, filling me with dread and uncertainty.

It wasn’t death I was afraid of, if anything it would have been a relief from the constant fear, intense pain, poking and prodding.

What was truly terrifying was feeling out of control. Like my body was not my own. That my soul had jumped into a foreign object and none of me fitted together quite as it once did. Not knowing what was wrong with me was the scariest thing of all.

It was here that I chose what my story would be going forward: not of fear but of hope. As I wrote a year previously in my book Unravelling Inwards:

Hope is where healing begins… Hope is the moment you choose a different ending to your story… It is the moment when you catch a fleeting glimpse of the future and remember it exists. It is the moment when the spell is broken and you see that life goes on, the world still turns, with or without you in it.

… Hope is where the tide begins to turn for you. It is what spurs you on to live. To see a glimmer of hope is to witness the beginning of your resurrection and rebirth.

– Camilla Fellas Arnold, Unravelling Inwards: A Journey Of Embracing The Divine Feminine

At that moment I took back control of my life. Instead of panicking that a Google search had told me I was going to die, I dug in and learnt everything I could about what they thought may or may not be happening to me. I read other people’s experiences which helped me feel less alone.

Instead of nodding at doctors and taking their words at face value, only to go home later and panic because I wasn’t sure I’d fully understood, I asked question after question until I was satisfied I understood completely. I asked what they suspected. I asked for my treatment options. I sat with all the information, really considered what I wanted and then took action. It was all I could do to feel some semblance of control in such a scary situation.

By the time doctors told me they suspected endometriosis and wanted an urgent referral to gynaecology, I can’t say I was even vaguely surprised. It didn’t feel like a gut punch or death sentence, despite knowing it’s a lifelong and debilitating condition. It felt like a relief to finally know what path I was treading.

It was the release I needed to pull my socks up and look forward. Until I have a formal diagnosis, my treatment options from the NHS are limited so what could I do in the meantime to help myself? I began to look at alternative therapies and in the last month have found significant relief using a combination of homeopathy and Bowen Technique.

I’ve started to feel like I have my life back just as my book finally reaches the world.

During the summer, sitting in A&E in horrendous pain, publishing a book was the last thing on my mind. At one point I didn’t care if I lived or died as long as the pain that had me writhing on the floor would stop. And yet, without me really noticing, on the sideline the book kept trundling along the production process and we’ve met on the finish line nearly a year to the day that I finished writing that first draft.

And as I look out of my window at the blue sky and the trees swaying in the October sun, I feel peaceful for the first time in many months. This year challenged me and took me beyond the edges of all I knew. I looked death in the face time and again and I can honestly say, I don’t feel afraid of it.

But truthfully, it was never really about being afraid of dying.

I panicked when I felt I had lost control of my health, my body, my world. In having to place my life in the hands of medical professionals, there was a surrendering to the unknown that was the most terrifying part.

What I’ve found as I come to the end of my 33rd year is that I am both more and less sure now of the future than ever before.

More sure that I have clarity over what I want from life. I feel more confident in my ability to overcome life’s challenges, that my boat can be rocked but it won’t capsize. I know what is important to me and what isn’t, what brings me joy and what doesn’t. I know all the things I haven’t done yet and I’m working towards them.

And yet, how exactly I get there, I am less sure. I don’t know what the path will be like. Whether it will have twists and turns, will there be blue skies and meadows on either side or twisted branches and grey clouds? Will I breeze through it or will I be on hands and knees crawling?

None of those answers are the ones that truly matter. What actually matters is that I trust I’ll get there.

My fear of the unknown has slowly been dying this year and I’ve come to embrace it for the exhilarating ride it can be. Once again, I turn up at the desk to type, never quite knowing what I’ll write. I woke up this morning not knowing that by the afternoon I would have recorded a short interview to go on local radio. Tomorrow – who knows what might happen!

Anything is possible, isn’t that exciting?

For me, to face all that fear, uncertainty and pain and come out the other side with a new-found zest for life, is the greatest revelation, and legacy of all.

With love,

Camilla x

If this resonates with you and you feel called to share it with someone who needs to hear this, I would be very grateful.