Recovery is the second part of my story – take a moment to read the first part here.
The infallible truth of our destiny is something we do not confront often. Until of course the volatility of life is exposed to us and more so if that life is our own.
Recovering from surgery left me helpless in the one thing I find very hard to do: asking for help. Not the kind of help that says I’m running late can you get the kids from school. Or the kind of help that says you make much better cupcakes than I do. No, this is the kind of help that out loud admitted that I was weak, I was vulnerable and I was incapable of taking care of my family.
I don’t know why I found it so hard. Maybe it was because somewhere in my mind I associated this kind of help with failure, my failure. Ego aside, humility aside, home from surgery I accepted the help that was offered and had no choice but to rest in the silence of my recovery.
A few things started to rise to the surface as I lay there in bed staring out of my bedroom window on those long quiet days. I did not seek to fill my days with the activities I thought I would do once I was home. I did not flick through the mountain of magazines by my bedside table. I did not pick up any novels. I did not write words onto the notepad beside me. I barely made a connection online.
I embraced the quiet and used it as a chance to have a quiet mind. I let the tempo of my days slow right down. I listened to my children, really listened. I noticed their ways and behaviour around me. The worry and strain my two little boys showed surprised me. I beat myself up at my surprise. Of course they are worried about you! Why did you think they wouldn’t be! screamed the voices in my head. I let it flow through me. Deep breaths. Reconcile.
In my silent days I craved the conversation with hubby when he got home and the afternoon coffees with my sister. The text messages from concerned friends. For a long time it felt like I sat on the shore of my own ocean, waves of blue crashing over me. But there was no ocean, just me at home, on pause.
One day something noticeably changed. Almost as if the Universe had said now you are ready. Maybe it wasn’t the Universe at all. Maybe it was just me. Letting go and once again opening up my heart and mind to all possibility.
A silent inbox pinged with important emails bearing good news. Long drawn out plans started to quickly take shape. I wrote and wrote and wrote. People who I least expected reached out. I finally felt like I was waking up from the silence that had slowly taken over ever since the rupture in the early hours of a fateful morning. I began to feel better. Really better, in a way that I had not felt in a very long time. My body was healing. My mind was healing. The quiet days slowly became filled with life again.
The lessons life has waiting for us to learn are held in secret until we turn the page and live through the words etched on the new page. The lessons I have learnt over the past few months have changed me in ways I could not anticipate. Ways that have left me vulnerable and open. Ways that I would never change.
