This is a Metaphor

Musings: “All Clear”

• Mo Houston

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 23:35

Mo shares how a week long fever made her burn through identity, ego, and preferences. She shares how a brutal flu made her renegotiate food, comfort, and control: jello for texture, watermelon for water, spaghetti for sanity, and the realization that “good” choices look different when the only goal is to feel better.

This week she digs into the spirituality behind sickness. When your fever peaks at 105 degrees, you start having a different kind of conversation. She spent the week clearing and recalibrating. The takeaway isn’t “suffer more to grow.” It’s this: when life strips away your usual story, the body’s wisdom gets louder, and the smallest wins—breathing easier, tasting something gentle, sitting in the light—can reassemble who you are with more care than any resume or ritual. Listen, share with a friend who needs a reset, and if this moved you, follow the show, rate it, and leave a review with your own mantra for noisy nights.

Do you want to be on This is a Metaphor? Send Us a Text!

Instagram: @tiam.podcast & @joyscout.mo


For Guest Inquiries, collaborations, and questions:

Email Mo: mo@joyscoutstudio.com


“Don’t get Deterred, get Inspired”

SPEAKER_00:

I feel like maybe I've had my mustache quota. And I like mustaches. Like I am a big fan of mustaches. I want to like your mustache, but I just think that when the mustache starts having an agenda, that it's always lost. You know, like I've just seen some weird combinations lately where it's no longer fun and pure. And I've seen it on all different types of people. And I just think maybe we've met the end. It's not what it was. And it's time to set the mustache free. The second thing is that I saw a woman with slides, and I loved the slides. They were super cute slides. I was looking at the slides, and I was looking at the fact that she just had her nails done and they were bright orange, and then I was distracted by the fact that her toes were going over the edge of the slide. Like they were like they were over, they were in front of the slide. It was too much ahead. And I that this is not this is not how you do slides. This is not how you do slides. Like the slides are there for your ease and comfort to slide on and to slide off. They're not for your toes to be like, you know, your feet fingers and to grasp on to their winning prize as you drag them across the room, you know, like it was not. I was angry. I was angry that she was making something so easy, so hard. And then the third thing that was really annoying to me was myself. Because I have had I had the flu all last week, and you can hear that I'm still a bit congested. And I was disgusted at the sound of my own coughing. You know, I was like, you should not be here. I did you should not be here. You were disturbing yourself with this. Like, put this cough away. And you know, everything just sounds wet. And you need to go, you need to leave. We gotta let's go. Let's go right now. But I stayed longer because that is what that's what one does. And then you try to just take the quake of your coughing, you know, and try to cover it up. You're like, I'm fine, everything is fine. It's fine. It's fine. Totally okay. Oh okay, it's okay, I'm just gonna get water. And I did that. I did that not too bad. There was a threads that I saw uh a couple weeks ago, long before one was as sick as I have been. And I remember this girl had asked, like, what is something that you have done? She said she asked this to the threads community. She asked, you know, what have you done that has given you a spiritual experience that might not be like traditionally how one seeks out a spiritual experience? Like, you didn't do a cacao ceremony on ayahuasca, or you didn't trip balls at the music festival. And I really enjoyed the comments because most of them were just uh pointing out the fact that you could have a spiritual experience doing anything, anything, just you know, your walk to the coffee shop. But might I suggest that you go out and you get yourself this killer flu of 2026 because it will help you transcend. You will be born a new person, you will you will have a fever so high that you will be born new again through the Phoenix just burning inside of you. You know the scene, a very well-known part of the Twilight series where Bella becomes a vampire, and she they want her to be able to do this passage smoothly and pain-free, and so they shoot her a pool of drugs to lessen the pain and then sedate her, and instead basically cause this temporary paralysis in which she is feeling the wrath of like the flames that are just licking her from the inside during this transition, whilst on the outside she looks peacefully asleep, and and this is over the course of how many days? I don't know. And I kept thinking, and I I just kept thinking, I'm like, I am I am Bella Swan in this moment because this fever was ferocious, like it was just a ferocious experience. And if I hadn't had the absolute love of my mom, I just don't even know. You know, I would just would have been who knows if I'd be here right now because I I couldn't it was just incapacitated and a fever at that range just for so many days will just humble you and and show you all the simple things that are left to you that are that you know the untouchable things like like you know, you're left with your thoughts for one. You're left with your thoughts and you're left with your love of organization when stuff gets crazy. Like I is I'm on this bed and I'm not going much of anywhere, but I know that I'm going to I have a place for the thermometer, which I'm kind of taking my my Oh my god, what is the my temperature? Remember thinking that this experience it that it just teaches you all of the things that you really have learned to love about yourself and all of the things that are just there right now. There's nothing that you can you don't have energy to do much of anything other than to just try and survive the day. And and I remember the luxury of kind of going through my brain on days where I was like, oh, I should probably eat something because I need to eat something. And like you're so sick that everything has a visceral response inside of your system, and you're like, wow, I'm so lucky that I can even choose what it is that I'm gonna eat. And you know, just going through the absurdity of the things that did sound like they would be uh consumable, and I remember jello was jello and watermelon were some of the beginners. Like at first it was like oranges, and then quickly my body was like, no more vitamin C, or we're gonna have a conniption fit. And then I was eating watermelon, which was great, and I really wanted jello, and I don't know why, but it was like the feel like I needed the texture, and I was reaching so much for the texture of things, and I started eating rice cakes, and you know, rice cake is a great snack, but like when you're eating it because you're sick, it's because you just need something in your stomach, you know, and they were kind of like not stale, but a little bit almost stale. They were almost stale, and normally I would be like, I can't eat this, this is ridiculous, but in these conditions, a little bit of staleness was such a treat for the total lack of variety that my body could handle, you know. I was like, ooh, what's this chewiness? And then that would sustain me for about you know half an hour as I'm trying to take more medication and not be violently ill. And I didn't even have a stuff, I didn't have a stomach virus, but when you're so sick and you're coughing so hard that you get nauseous, that's a whole different type of experience. Oh my gosh, I remember at one point I was craving like Caesar salad. And I don't, you know, I don't eat too much dairy because it doesn't like me the way that I like it. And at the same time, I was I was like, fuck that, I don't care, whatever it takes, you know. And I remember there was one evening where I was gonna go ahead and just eat gluten because it was, it was already, it was made in the fridge and it was a big thing of spaghetti. And I was like, I need sustenance and I'm already sick, so we might as well just it's okay. Like I'm gonna take the trade. Like under normal circumstances, I wouldn't eat a bowl, even a small bowl of spaghetti, because you know, I would feel it in my face and in my skin and my calves within hours. And yet I was like, I'm already incapacitated, so this is the trade. Like it you're just listening to the craving that you have. And it was like what the experience really was for me, just with these micro choices, was like listening to my body. And like you think it's this sickness, and it is, it is a sickness, but like this first lesson is a reminder that like my body knows. And I didn't have the normal reaction, suspicious that I usually have. And I don't know why that is. Maybe because I flushed my system out, maybe because you know, there were I was just lacking so much, maybe because I was just my fever was so high that my metabolism was just like consuming. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what made it different, but I would say that it was spiritual because I'm having a conversation with something other than my I'm having a greater conversation and things that I know to be true are being tested. And I'm having a patience and a practice and and testing those things because of like what's at stake, which is that I'm gonna feel worse if I don't. And above all else, the thing that I want to feel is better. Above all else, all that I want every single moment of the last like seven days is to just feel better, is to just be able to sleep, is to just be able to get up, is to just be able to, you know, drink this drink to the end before it becomes dead to me. And also being able to let go of the things that my body is suddenly like, no, that does, that's that's that is dead to me. We're not gonna finish that. And you know, and I say that it's a spiritual sickness because you become reminded of the things that really make you so happy to be alive, like the very basic of your human experience, which is that I mean, at one point when I had had a break between like my 105 fever and I dropped back down to 102, I remember thinking, like, oh man, I can just sit here and not want to crawl out of my skin. And I was just staring out the window, and it was so green, like it everything seemed greener, and there's a tree right outside the window, and the sun was going through in little bursts, and it was absolutely serene, and I didn't have any noise in my head, and in fact, because of the fever that I had, like I didn't have noise distracting me in general. Like sound for me is a very visual thing. Like, I I see sound quite a bit when I people when there's fast or loud or abrupt movement, it's like a white light, and I it's not it doesn't feel good. It's it feels very bad. It doesn't feel good to me. It's it's shocking and a little disturbing, and it, you know, it'll affect my nervous system, and and yet you listen to beautiful music and you'll see vibrant, wonderful colors, and so you know, the synthesis part of it is wonderful, but but also like all the sounds around me I feel in my body. And when I was younger, like like a kid, I had chronic ear infections, and and I think sound has always been a little tweaked since that experience. Because if you've ever had an ear infection in general, horrible experience. Your ear canals go to the center of your head, and so like you know, I mean they're going in this way, and like that is that is the center of your conscious experience, and it's it's a lot, and when it's in chronic pain, and there's like a quake going through you. And with this virus, like it felt like I had a constant ear infection, and it was just every sound was so muffled, and besides the pain, I felt this great relief at not being distracted by any of the sounds because I couldn't hear so much, you know? Like I just hear my ragged breathing, but I couldn't like all the other sounds didn't have a texture to them, they were just little noises, you know, as if they were just visual things and I could no longer feel them, and I didn't want to I didn't want to feel sound. It was like such a great relief not to be able to. And that was an experience in itself too, because it reminded me that there's so much noise inside of my my head that it was really contributed to by the outside world, and that I wear, you know, I wear earplugs for a good reason. And another thing that I really learned on this beautiful experience of mine is how there might be so much happening on the body level, but there really is just so much in the body that's that's stored over over time, and I've you know, I've just been working on my belief system so hard. And when we talk about neuropathways and the ways that your your mind and your muscles and your fibers and your just your system of inner workings is all communicating with with itself. It's like I just think about the system being fried and just cleaned out, you know. The word clearing came up a lot in the last week, like clear or clearing. And and every time my fever would go back up again, I would be like, I guess there's just, you know, just hold on. Like there's more there's stuff to clear out. Like you you're resetting, you're you're you're restarting, and you need a new calibration. And some of these old things have served their their purpose, but right now you just gotta flush the system out. And I'm looking at the table in front of me that has an ID that doesn't belong to me on it. And this belongs to the woman that hit my hit the car that I was driving last week. And it was just one of those moments where she's trying to turn left, she's going in a straight lane, and you cannot turn left there in the middle of the intersection. We're on a one, like a three-laned one-way, one direction. And I'm in the the far left lane next to her, and she turns into me, and like, if anyone's gonna turn, it could be me to the left because there's nobody there, and that's a new direction, but like no one else can turn left. And and I remember slamming on the horn and then like slamming on my brakes, and there was no slowing. And then when we got out of the car, she was so mad at me because she was saying that it was my fault. Like, why couldn't you just let me over? You couldn't let me over. What's wrong with you? And and I was like, No, I I there you turned into my car, there was no letting you over. Like, there's not what I don't know what it is. You can't turn there anyways, like it's okay. And she, you know, she didn't speak English and either she didn't want to speak it to me, or she didn't speak it comfortably, or she was just uh, you know, in her feels and and wanted to, and she's only speaking in Spanish, and then she brought up a translator, and it just was there was no connection to be had. It was it was unfortunate. And so I had to like back off of trying to communicate. And then when the police officer got there, you know, we both told our story, but no one was sighted. Like no one was given um a ticket for the accident because Florida's a no-fault state, and that is hopefully non-problematic, but I'm getting to the point where this is relevant. Because when I got my ID back, I was, you know, it's just like 11 o'clock at night. Um, and I'm looking at the the paperwork for the information, trying to see who is, you know, if she got cited. And so I don't look at the ID, I just assume that the ID that he's given back is mine, you know. I remember like glancing at it and being like, there's a picture here. But it turns out a couple days later that, you know, the police officer gives me a call and says, Hey, I accidentally gave you the wrong ID. You have hers and she has yours, so you have to mail it back to her, which is totally something one would do, except that she is now telling insurance that I hit her. And because we both have the same insurance company, the insurance company is pretty quick to just be like, well, you're both at fault, so we don't have any responsibility here. And and that was just like so frustrating. But the really frustrating thing is that when I had to go to urgent care, when my fever was super high and I was like, I don't think I'm gonna, like, I think I need to go see a doctor. I went to the CVS like around the corner, because it was like five minutes away, and they wouldn't see me because I needed my ID. And I was like, I don't have my physical ID because I was in an accident a couple days ago. I don't have my car either. Like, do you want to talk about it? And and I'm standing there with like 104.5 degree fever, like absolutely about ready to fall over. I can barely breathe. And this doctor has no compassion, no, no anything, nothing. There's no like, there's no breaking the system of like I can't see you. If you don't have your ID, I cannot see you. You're gonna have to leave. Like, I can't, if I you don't have your ID, I cannot scan it. And I was like, I have a like I have photos of my ID, they're all right here. Like, this is me. I have my like social security card, and this should it should make me leave. And and I was like towards the end of the day, and I was so exhausted from this experience that I was like, okay. And so like we went back home, and you know, my mom is like carting me around lovingly, and I lay down again because I had like that was it for my energy. My energy was expended, and I fell back asleep, like fever peaked again, and then I was thinking, wow, what are the chances that I would have been in accident and someone would have my ID? Like, I haven't had time to get a new ID, not exactly the top of my priority, and I'm here, and you won't help me because I don't have this thing, and that it was so easy for me to just be like, why does the universe hate me? Why have you taken the vehicle and my ID and my health? And yet, what I felt was the clarity came later because you know, all that night, all I was focused on was just not being anywhere other than where I was, which is feeling better and and not doing anything, just laying down and you know, drinking water if I can drink water and staring at the ceiling and out the window, and just thinking about good thoughts, thinking about healing, thinking about all the things that are I still want to come in from this year that I'm excited about for this year, that things can be good and things things are allowed to be good, but I'm lucky. I am lucky, and this is just one of those experiences, and and I don't have to understand it anymore. And then the next day, when my fever spikes again, uh, straight off to the urgent care. And and you know, it was really high then, and finally I was getting like an inhaler prescription, and I got the Tama flu prescription and and a lot of things kind of fell into place then. But the idea, not having the ID, was a problem then too. And what I was thinking about then was the concept of identity. And it's that like this, this who am I in this in this moment? Like I'm getting an I identity switch up, like just switching it right up. Because a few weeks ago, and I might have said this on my last episode, my LinkedIn got hacked. And my LinkedIn, like during the the second stage round, the second round of interviews, my LinkedIn got hacked and my image is gone and her, she doesn't have a new image up. It's just like the empty, vacant lot of a of a photo, you know, where like, you know, ID needed. And all of the resume was changed, all the history, everything fucking fucking changed everything, and I had to update all of it. And I was like, what is it with the identity? And it is just this reminder that, you know, maybe this this next part, like, I'm not gonna fit into any preconception of who I thought that I was. Like when you're about to really step into the parts of you and the beliefs that you're trying deeply to embody, like you really gotta drop the body. And so, you know, burn it up, burn it up, sweat it out, and and be patient as the rest catches up. And I mean, if that's not a spiritual experience, I don't really know what is, but I I will say that getting sick will definitely leave you with just your thoughts. And I remember one of the first nights when you know sleeping was just harder, and it was freezing. You don't have like five layers of blankets, and you're still cold, and I had a heating blanket, and I was just like, What is this experience? What is it to be human? And there was this moment that I was coming, you know, in and out of sleep, and I was like, this dream version of myself was talking to myself. And as I was waking up, she was like, If it's loud in your head, you can't sleep in your bed. If it's loud in your head, you can't sleep in your bed. And I remember just being like, Yeah, that's no joke, because if there's so many stories of your of who you are, what you're not, or what's not working. For me, that has just been such a part of this year. And the nights where I'm not getting sleep is because I cannot turn off what I feel isn't working and and you know, how I need to fix this, how I need to get better at this, or or how I can expand better. And that expansion in itself is uncomfortable. And I think maybe I'll I'll close out on that thought because do I think that you should have to have a fever, a seven-day fever to to really listen to your body? Um, maybe not, but also it might be necessary sometimes, and it might be necessary to clear out stuff that you just can't even see, but that you've been spending months of your time just sort of digging through and getting getting to the surface so that you can just, you know, burn the debris, just so much debris, like just get it out of there. It's not gonna feel great, but you're gonna feel great at the end of it. I promise.