Resurrecting My Spirit

Where does the spirit for life come from? 

I think it comes through creating, learning, and experiencing.  It’s within our family and friends.  It’s within our surroundings and our relationship with the world’s beauty.  It’s in our hearts the moment we arrive upon this earth.  Our spirit is in our will to succeed, to achieve, to move on, and to survive.

When I was introduced to disability, I felt my spirit slip away.  Even though I had built a mountain of it, it left me when I needed it most. 

At the beginning of my change, my spirit was empty.  Amongst the jumbled world I slipped into, I was desperate to find any kind of spirit.  But I thought, why should I.  Why would I want to when literally everything in my life changed.  It felt like too much work.

It wasn’t just my spirit; it was my will to live with my changes.  I stumbled through each day trying to find something that resembled a light.  But it was the tenacity and optimism taught to me by my mother, my role model, that pointed me to the task of resurrecting my spirit to turn on the light. 

Each time I overcame a fear, I found new spirit to blend into my new world.  My first steps without a cane, the first time I stood still with my eyes closed.  The first time I walked on grass without falling.  The day I graduated from the UW-Madison.  The first time I took control by walking out the door to a grand adventure.

You see, my spirit was still there, I just had to find where I put it and use what it taught me as I went through my sorrow.  It took time to recognize I still had it.  It took a time to learn I had to reorganize it to fit my new world.  With that came a new spirit, one that continues to grow to this very day.

I just have to remember; my spirit was in my heart the moment I arrived upon this earth.  My spirit is in my will to succeed, to achieve, to move on, and to survive.