Wow, it’s 2026. So much has happened in the past year that our heads would be spinning if we had to recount it all. I know mine would, and frankly, I am happy to leave 2025 behind. It felt like one continuous and monumental problem.
Like many of us, I have plans, goals, and wishes for 2026. But honestly, I’m anticipating problems that will make a step forward that could feel like three steps back. However, I know that problems are a natural part of plans.
I discovered this back when I decided that I wouldn’t let myself forget the impact of what a lightning fast introduction to disability feels like, and this is why; I believe if I let myself forget, I would lose my sense of knowing what true strength feels like. I wouldn’t remember what it really feels like to be faced with a battle I never thought I would win but actually thrive within it. I would never understand the meaning of resilience.
I would never have found the incredible belief I have in myself. I would have never come to understand that it’s okay to be angry, to be sad and to cry. That it’s okay to tell people how you feel, even when you know they’re not going to like it, but also how great it is when you see the look in people’s eyes when I tell them how much they mean to me.
I would have never learned that my ass can be dragged through the mud, come out caked in it but I can come out with a trophy in hand. I’ve been through pain that makes that sad face on the pain chart look ecstatic from years of physical change and limitations that puts sitting on a pile of sharp pointy rocks comfortable. My head has been cut open, from time to time my brain seizes up, but hey, I have that amazing trophy in hand. And it’s beautiful.
I allow myself to think about the day I fell to the floor where everything in my life changed, the day I was left with only the noise of disability. It’s the day that will always remind me that my goals will face some problems, my first fall to the floor was my very first introduction to learning goals are about how problems lead to potential and how potential leads to opportunity.
But boy, oh boy, let me tell you I certainly didn’t see any potential at the beginning of my massive problems. I mean, literally everything in my life changed. From sitting to standing, standing to walking, walking to falling, bumps, bruises, and everything in between. Quite some problems don’t you think?
My life had been reassigned to nothing but problems so how was I to see it held any potential? How could I look for opportunity when my bouncing and blurry vision blocked it from me? I became blind to opportunity because I only vividly wanted to be back to my life as it was.
I struggled through pain, depression, anger, career and financial loss, a destructive relationship, fear, you name it. But deep down inside me remained that place where I just couldn’t let it overtake me, I’m not that kind of person, never have been. I don’t like shadows in my light. It took time, but eventually a clearer view of a future began to appear; it arrived from my past, when I realized all that I was before I fell to the floor, was still with me. Every single part of it, good, bad, and even ugly. And all of it held the fuel to clear my vision to where I saw that it wasn’t that I can’t, it was that I would.
I thought back to times when I crashed into a tree sledding down a hill and survived. Spraining my ankles so many times it felt like crutches became extra appendages. The time I had my tonsils out and hemorrhaged so badly I needed a blood transfusion. Then there was the time when I was going rocket speed on my bicycle and the front tire fell off sending me flying onto the pavement then nearly getting run over by a car. And a game my younger brother and I played blindfolding each other then follow our directions walking around outside. Of course, once he gained my trust, he guided me to walking dead on into a tree, if only I could’ve given him the black eye and bloody nose. The things we used to do to each other!
It’s not just things like this that hurt and I survived, it’s also how I learned what it takes to survive. Each one taught me how to get through the other. They helped me from the moment I fell to the floor to my brain surgery to my seizures, and more – all wrapped up in one big present of lifelong companions. Each and every one of them, still with me. And, if at any time a new present were to come along, my existing present is here to help lead me to more potential, more opportunity.
Thankfully, potential isn’t about just crash and burn activities. Positive experiences are the fuel to potential and opportunity as well. Think back to all the accomplishments we’ve made, the exciting things we’ve done and what we do that make us thrive. Even though problems may have occurred, all along these things have actually been developing extra power to our immense potential and glorious opportunities.
My journey hasn’t been easy, I don’t think there’s a journey that is. It wasn’t until I discovered that my problems where actually a way for potential to reach out to me. From there it was up to me to accept that I had unlimited opportunities that I only needed to seek and recognize. I feel my problems reach out to where my heart needs to be, where I want to be, where I should be, and I can count on them to help me find my way.
I anticipate there will be problems that could derail a goal or plan of mine. It’s bound to happen; however, it just means that it will need to be re-evaluated. To pull over and feel the impact, no matter how long it takes.
Problems, potential, seeking the opportunity, back on the road.
Opportunity is believing in ourselves, opening ourselves up to the potential that could be just around the corner from a problem. Let’s take on 2026 with the power of potential and opportunity in our pockets. We got this.
Let your light shine my friends.
(Photo by Cheryl Schiltz 2025)
