Paused Paws
My broken foot this summer has granted me the physical and emotional space and time to pause and reflect. At the start of 2023 I deliberately gave myself permission to collect and process my innermost emotional being. Though it has been painful at times, I am excited to feel tectonic movement within. I have visited darkened alleys of my heritage, my childhood, my young adulthood and of course, my life defining traumas related to my cancer, divorce, infertility and embryo custody experiences.
I have also come to appreciate an analogy between physical injury and emotional injuries. My foot forced complete disuse for the past few months, as I could absolutely not tolerate any weight bearing. Over the summer, by bones and muscles have deteriorated and atrophied, shockingly quickly. I am told by my doctor and physical therapist that it will take a year before I am back to my healthy, active, safe baseline. I like knowing that there is path and that I am not the first to traverse it. That feels manageable.
My emotional injuries are much more chronic and difficult to heal. They are invisible. Through my foot injury, I realized that the external world responds to physical cues. They need to see something before they behave accordingly. Despite having my foot in a stiff, chunky walker boot and riding around on a knee scooter, people still ran into me. Unstable, I was terrified of sustaining new injuries. To feel safer, I wrapped hot pink tape around the available real estate on my boot, scooter, crutches and cane. My partner put a rainbow colored bicycle bell on my scooter so that I could kindly ask people to make way for me, my broken foot and my mobility device.
Emotional injuries, especially chronic ones are mostly invisible. Curiosity and compassion for those around us is required, and that takes energy. Some injured people are easy to spot - they are struggling in their personal and professional lives, abusing substances and overworking at work or at home at the expense of own wellbeing. They are disconnected, alienated, fearful, anxious and depressed. Our current accepted behavior is to turn a blind eye, because our society doesn’t possess common skills to interact with, let alone help, others.
My emotional trauma traces back over generations, through cultures, my childhood and my adulthood. Combine that with my highly sensitive, melancholy constitution, and no wonder it has required work to continue finding moments of joy to propel this lifetime authentically.