Evolution of Disability?

My dear friend, Cheryl Erickson-Mahaffay, wrote this message on my blog referencing her experience with disability. 

“I liked what you put on Facebook a few days ago, Cheryl, when you said that at any moment disability can strike us.  And that is what happened to me with my stroke in 2009.

The thing that amazes me is that I didn’t have pain until my post stroke pain struck me about 2 months after my stroke.  Now I am always in pain.  Stress is so hard on me, but joy comes too and is so helpful”.

I thought about Cheryl’s comment for some time and came to this.

“I think that after an introduction to disability the full impact isn’t realized until the body has taken it all in, it’s an evolution of sorts.”

I began thinking about how additional physical issues develop after the introduction to disability.  Cheryl’s stroke changed her life forever and she worked tirelessly to adjust to how it had affected her daily life.  That was, and still is, a difficult task in itself.  Two months later the pain appeared, bringing to question, why after two months from the onset did this begin?  Why the delay, she thought, wouldn’t this have been a part of her change when the stroke happened?  It’s a mystery to her.

I reminisced back to how my introduction to disability affected my life, all the physical and psychological impacts it had.  As I look back, I now see how my body needed time to process it, needed time to receive messages to what happened.  The experiences Cheryl and I have had has been a part of our evolution.  Everything changed in our bodies, and mind, and for me, I thought I was stuck in what happened, but I was wrong. 

I also worked tirelessly to adjust.  At first, I couldn’t imagine that was possible.  How could I when I couldn’t be me anymore?  All I was experiencing just pissed me off.  It’s hard to believe but, this was a part of my evolution.

At first my body didn’t know how to process my change.  It knew it was hurt but didn’t know what happened.  Its ability to process what it once could do suddenly stopped working and it couldn’t figure out what to do with that.  It was starring in a slow-motion movie and the film was damaged.

Let’s think of our bodies as a train platform to which they begin the process of evolving a connection to the change.  One to begin again, to learn how to share with our body that it can evolve with you and you with it.  It has to become a dual relationship to make a common bond and make a connection with each other. 

I shared in a previous blog, “Pay Attention”, how the little things of my progress were hidden from recognizing I was getting better. Once I paid attention, my body began to figure out how to process its change.  It also dawned on me that paying attention was a key factor to feeding my body with the adjustment it needed.  If I hadn’t recognized or embraced that the little things were big things to my recovery and to what I now recognize, the evolution of my body, I’d still be where I was when it happened.  By inviting awareness into my life, I invited an evolution of positive change into my body. 

Cheryl helped me look inside myself and recognize how my body has evolved with me as I began my recovery, I just didn’t think of it that way.  Parts of it just can’t evolve, but that’s okay, there are many other parts to be grateful for.   In fact, my changes have brought me great love, joy, happiness, and motivation to always rise above whatever happens to me. 

Evolution isn’t just physical, it’s in our psychological well-being.  During the beginning of my introduction, I was furious, scared, and my optimism jumped out the window.  I had suffered a profound loss, and it permeated every cell of my being.  Not only did my body have to evolve, so did my mind.  At the beginning everything was scrambled, not a thought went by without pain and fear, each igniting a huge confusion in my brain.   I kept saying “how, why, now what, just give up”.  Such as the body, the mind can, and does, evolve.  It’s easy to know how it happened, but why did it happen to me?  Remember, there’re are no answers to the why question so just put that fire out.  Now, what do I do with the changes?  I learned things about myself I had no idea I could do, and I was my teacher.  Giving up – no way.

A quote from an article by John Pavlovitz kind of sums this up:

“So yes, it might seem like I’m angry, but you’ll have to take my word for it I’m not. I’m just finally accepting the grief that comes when something you loved is gone and you wish that it wasn’t—and you need to figure out how to live differently.”

My road to recovery has been, and always will be, a continuous evolution to live differently and invite joy to be part of it. 

May your evolution bring you joy.

Be well my friends and let your light shine.