I never know what I’m going to write until the moment that I sit down and start writing. Sure, I have about a 472 notes with topics and false starts saved to my iPhone, but the annoyingly real thing about me (ok, to be certain there are MUCH more annoying things than just this) is that I somehow feel inauthentic if I’m not sharing straight from my heart as it beats in the current moment. (Maybe I should bring this point to my therapist… 🤷🏼♀️) It is what it is.
It’s Tuesday, April 22, 2025. This past weekend was overflowing with activity. It felt kind of amazing to feel ALIVE again. I don’t really know how to describe what it’s like to be living in a liminal space where nothing makes sense and everything is hard, but you don’t exactly understand why everything is suddenly so unbearably painful and you’re drowning and need a life vest— but you are also ashamed that you need any sort of rescuing because you don’t remember jumping off the boat and you certainly didn’t fall over the side unawares. I mean…what in the actual heck?!
Except, wait for it… THIS is surely the life experience for an untold number of humans. Brain injury- yep. No support system- yep. Bowled over by the economy- yep. My intrinsic response: Shame. Retreat. Survive. And this is WITH untold miracles keeping me afloat. I had the luxury of languishing. THAT is humbling.
Here’s what made all of the difference for G and I both: Surrender.
Not to the fight. Not to a diagnosis. Not to inadequacy. But to showing up and revealing ourselves in all the complicated & often sticky, smudgy beauty of being human. He certainly didn’t ask for his skull to be shattered by a truck as he was crossing the street when he was 5. I certainly didn’t have any clue why my expectations weren't matching reality after we married. NEVER would I have connected those dots naturally.
He had created safe pathways to thrive alone and even though he absolutely invited me to share life with him, neither of us had an inkling of what that actually meant in an “unconventional” scenario. And honestly, it was desperately painful for us both.
Fast forward to last fall when it finally reached a point when nothing made sense at all and there was nothing left to do except to claw our way to answers— a diagnosis, if you will. And what the MRI gave us was freedom to stop casting blame. To stop throwing stones. To stop believing that we weren’t enough just as we were.
We still don’t know everything. Maybe anything. But we can finally exhale and say…wait— a— flippin—hot— minute— What if all we were ever supposed to do was to simply be ourselves? Surrender.
Huh? Too easy. Too complicated. Too much. Reminds me of one of my very favorite books at Papa Harry and Grandma Becky’s house when I was little— the Two Too Twins. Maybe our extra is completely safe. Maybe that’s what makes magic. Maybe allowing our friends, family— strangers (EEK) to see our reality is exactly what we can do to somehow make it all make sense.
I’m finding joy again in places where I felt like I couldn’t measure up (travel planning & life coaching— and ugh, I am not at all comfortable with the term “life coaching” yet— please give me a better title. Bueller? Bueller?!). G is finding purpose and fun in the things that people told him weren’t enough (comic & collectible dealing & music) and it is LIFE-GIVING. IT IS ALL ENOUGH. IT IS GOOD.
The moral of this story is that there is good waiting for you on the other side of simply existing just as you are. Masks off. Love on. It’s ok to not be ok.