By Theresa Anthony, author of In Search of Gopher Hollow
It’s a brand spanking New Year, a time when fresh clean slates clear the way for new goals and resolutions. Each year when the calendar turns to January, I usually find myself filled to the brim with excitement in anticipation of all the possibilities that lie ahead.
This New Year, however, that enthusiasm was nowhere to be found. In fact, the entire holiday season could be summed up in two words: Bah Humbug. Yep, since the day before Thanksgiving, I have been stuck at home recovering from a serious injury.
Here’s what happened.
While on a walk that beautiful morning of November 27th, I managed to trip on a crack in the asphalt and, in a nanosecond, crashed to the street in a humiliating heap. In a split second, I went from thinking about baking pumpkin pies for the Thanksgiving dinner to being splayed out like fresh roadkill.
Thanks to the kindness of several passersby and neighbors, I was soon loaded into an ambulance and headed off to the local E.R. After x-rays confirmed a fractured patella (kneecap) and ruptured tendon, emergency surgery ensued. The next three days, including Thanksgiving, were spent in a hospital bed and revolved around the next eagerly-awaited dose of pain meds. Thankfully, my sweet daughter and grandson brought me a delicious Thanksgiving feast to help ease the pain a bit.
I have now been home for six miserable weeks, my left leg locked into peg-leg position with a thick, black brace spanning thigh to ankle, and tethered to a walker. Which brings me to the point of this blog post…
Readers of my blogs and books are familiar with the heavy challenges I have faced in my life. The fact that I have survived these sorrowful events is something that I can only attribute to my strong faith and a boatload of resilience. But where those trials featured emotional and psychological suffering, this new trial is purely physical in nature. For some reason, all that resilience I’ve relied on to get me through life’s setbacks appears to have gone missing.
I’ve discovered that I suck at enduring physical suffering. I whine and moan and cry and complain. I throw daily pity parties for myself on the regular. I pine for all the things I had to cross off my calendar, and cry when I allow myself to look ahead and realize how this injury has impacted my quality of life. I feel crippled, exhausted, hobbled, lonely, lame, isolated, and incapacitated… and I hate that.
On my rare good days, I realize how inappropriate my bellyaching really is, as it ignores the cadre of caring and thoughtful people who have come to my rescue all these weeks. This wonderful support team regularly handles a slew of mundane tasks, runs errands, brings meals, and tends to my dog for me. With this outpouring of love and support, how dare I sit here and feel sorry for myself!
So, what gives? Did my usually reliable resilience reserves take a leave of absence, leaving me here to wallow in self-pity?
As an example, just yesterday, I cried like a baby when I started thinking about how this injury has changed my life. My beloved Zumba classes? probably a thing of the past now, and, dang it, I wasn’t ready to stop dancing.
Even more distressing was the realization that my vigorous twice daily dog walks with Morgan must come to an abrupt halt. When I can walk him again (in several months), I’ll be training my hound to heel rather than letting him enjoy his 17’ leash that gave him the freedom to explore and sniff to his heart’s content. I also realize how afraid of falling I will be once I can take him for walks again, and that makes me very sad.
So, that was yesterday’s tear-fest, and then just like that…
I woke up today feeling like I had suddenly turned a corner! My whole demeanor brightened as I noticed that my leg felt stronger and didn’t hurt as much. How silly it was to think that my usual resilient self was MIA indefinitely, it was simply on a hiatus. After all, resilience levels do ebb and flow depending on the time it takes to process the latest trial. And let's not forget that God has His own timeline for bringing relief, and maybe I just needed to lean on Him a bit longer.
As the day progressed, I found myself in my workshop, singing and making new jewelry items for my Etsy shop. I wrote a blog for a client. I had a productive physical therapy session. I prayed my rosary. Each of these actions are the welcome little signs that I have not given up on life and that I am rebounding, albeit slowly.
The fact is that I have never been, nor will ever be, a quitter. I should have known that my resilience reserves just needed some recharging. As always, that winning combination of a strong faith in God plus some hearty resilience genes will indeed prevail and get me to the other side of this latest challenge. Still, you can believe I will be very careful on those future dog walks.
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Read all about a life of much needed resilience in my latest memoir: click here
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