2019 has not been what I expected.
It has not been what anyone expected.
There are days I want to punch in the face. Thankfully, those days are slowly becoming less and less.
I had huge plans for 2019 and was really excited to chase some major dreams this year - both in my medical career & in entering the realm of entrepreneurship. We announced Paragonfire was going to start offering branding services. We were ready.
Then, life happened, as it so often does. Dreams drifted away, like a kite with a broken string.
In the middle of January, my misbehaving knee took its final turn down the wrong road. My year since has been as follows:
January - I celebrated my birthday post-op from a diagnostic arthroscopy to determine how bad my knee injury really was. It was worse than we hoped.
April - I spent my husband’s birthday in the operating room again, for what essentially is a partial reconstruction of my knee. One surgeon told me the first month post-op would be the worst month of my life. He was right.
June - Our anniversary was filled with more appointments, CT scans and concern for an unexpected oral surgery that may still be coming soon. If walking through hard, trying times together isn’t a testament to our 15th anniversary, quite frankly, I don’t know what is.
Over those months, the only month I was not on crutches at all was March. April and May were filled with the hazy blur of medications, pierced with the inability to care for myself, or my family, for the first month. I still cannot do half of the things I want, or feel I need, to do. I cannot do my part. This only amplifies the pain.
Since the end of May, I have been slowly learning to walk again, one painful, shaky step at a time.
That is exactly what resilience & rising back strong from the first half of this year feels like. One shaky, painful step at a time.
I know things can always be worse. I know others have walked much harder roads. But, this road, this year, has worn me down in ways I never have been before. And I know some of you are walking down a similar road with me.
Here is what I want you to know:
Sometimes we feel like we will be crushed. Drowned in the mud and the muck of life. Perhaps, for a moment, we will be. What defines us, however, is never how far we sink. What defines us is how we rise. Like the lotus flower, we can rise unsullied from the mire; strong, beautiful and full of life.
When life gets hard, and your steps are shaky, slow and painful as you trudge forward through the mud of life, remember - a lotus cannot rise without the mud.
Walk on my friends. I will be back in full force soon.
