In a previous blog, The Last 5 Minutes: 8 Concepts and Contemplations in Healing, nurse practitioner Mindy Daigle discussed eight ideas that can help a person heal. In the following post, she zeroes in on one of them, Keyhole Sunsets.

By Mindy Daigle, NP

Maybe you find yourself restricted to most of your time in your home, in bed or moving periodically from bed to couch and back again. Your world may become smaller over time. This can lead to your feeling that the world has contracted and that its beauty is gone.

In these times, look for the beauty around you, wherever and whatever that is. It could be minuscule or grand. Look for the sunsets, look for the rainbows, listen to laughter, look for beauty everywhere, even if only through a keyhole.

In the last five minutes of appointments with my patients, we talk about healing and matters of the heart. We discuss what they are already doing and what additionally may help them. Sometimes I share my own experiences and other times they teach me what it means to really heal. The following are three examples- my own, and two composite patients from my own practice.

For myself, I found this through a concept I call Keyhole Sunset. As I was ill for many years with multiple chronic illnesses, wherever I was, in whatever condition I was in, I would look for even the smallest bit of beauty.

I first named this experience as a Keyhole Sunset moment as I lay recovering from surgery at a hotel in the Texas Med Center in 2016. On the opposite wall, I could see the tiniest bit of a reflection in the glass pane of a painting.

Beauty is still there

The setting Texas sun, peeking through just a crack in the curtains, glowing for a few minutes in all its golden, robin’s-egg-blue and magenta hues, showed me on my toughest days that there was life left to be had.

Other times at home, I would walk to the front of my home to look across the green space to see the sunset reflected in the windows of a neighbor’s house. For 10 minutes it would glow, giving me visual proof that life continues, and the world is still a beautiful place.

These were my literal Keyhole Sunsets, but they can come in many forms and are not restricted to a physical place.  It happens wherever you are.

A patient whose faith is important to him uses his own versions of prayer and worship as his Keyhole Sunsets. Being mostly confined to a wheelchair for over a decade, small moments throughout his day bring him closer to his source of love and peace on earth and beyond.

He approaches prayer as a way to connect to a place within himself that is at once both fully aware of his earthly limitations and at peace. He speaks about prayer as not so much a supplication to have his needs met, but a connection, a conversation.

Singing also brings him into that place within himself and feeds his musical side. He says to me, “Mindy, in those moments, I know that I am healed. I am not sure if my condition will ever improve but I am healed, and I haven’t always felt that way.”

When your view is restricted

A brilliant computer scientist, world traveler, and visual artist is restricted mostly to her bed, her mind still as sharp as ever it seems. Although her condition is not worsening, despite everyone’s best efforts, neither is it improving. Her once broad vantage on life and the world has become restricted.

For the past five years, she has been confined mostly to her home and her bed. Arduous visits to appointments are achieved with the assistance of a caregiver. Many days, she cannot turn over in bed without help. Her energy is spent on maintaining her body’s basic functioning and keeping meticulous and thoughtful records of her medical care.

But how does a brilliant mind that loves science, art, music and all things wonderful in life not experience those things as richly as they once did? How does someone so drawn to life and beauty exist in this contracted space with seemingly little joy? It seems impossible, but she does.

Finding beauty

She finds her keyhole sunsets in the way her tiny puppy gets the zoomies at night, the way her one fern has flourished whereas every other plant withered away, in the pleasant cacophony of children on the school playground behind her home, in the certain way her husband’s key turns in the lock at the end of the day, starting their evening time together.

She then creates sketches and notations of these and other small moments of beauty and peace, mailing some to friends and family. She holds these moments as proof that better days are ahead. We work together as patient and practitioner, focused on matters of body, mind, and spirit. As we move towards cure and remission of symptoms, these moments can keep us going, giving hope for greater vistas ahead.

As you continue to navigate your life with chronic illness, look for your own Keyhole Sunsets. I am sure you have some already, you just might not have called it that. Let me know about yours or how this applies in your life at mindydaigleNP@gmail.com.

Mindy Tobin Daigle is a Nurse Practitioner at Green Oaks Medical Center, in Palo Alto, California. She collaborates with Dr. Christine Green, a Lyme and tick-borne disease specialist.