When You’re Forced to Slow Down

2
heal
Sit around and do nothing, fracture

“So when can I start walking again?” I excitedly asked my surgeon.

Without missing a beat, she answered, “three months.”

My heart dropped. “I’m sorry,” I said with a laugh, “I thought you said three months. That can’t be correct.”

“No, that is what I said,” she replied seriously.

I was speechless. This can’t be right. It’s just a fracture in my tibia. It can’t be that bad. 

“Courtney, you just had a major surgery,” she explained. “These things take time to heal.”

Well clearly she’s missing something, I thought to myself. Because I do not have three months to just sit around and do nothing. Doesn’t she know I have things to do? People to see? Kids to shuttle? A business and home to run?

“Do you want to talk about what she said?” my husband asked me as we drove home from the hospital.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I told him. “I’ll find a way to recover faster.”

“Why?” he asked me.

My husband is a very smart person but this felt like THE dumbest question he could have asked me. I looked at him with my face furled, “What do you mean why?” Clearly, he was also missing something. 

“Why do you need to heal faster? What’s wrong with just letting your body heal when it’s supposed to and embracing your current situation? Why are you fighting it?” he asked me.

Because I’m a privileged American and that’s what we do-we fight things. Did he miss that in civics class in high school? We don’t let anything keep us down. We find the loopholes. We circumvent roadblocks. We ask questions until we get the answers we want. We pick up and press on. 

But there was something about his last question that stopped me from saying all that. Instead, I repeated those words to myself, “Why am I fighting it?” And within seconds, I started to cry. When I paused to consider that question, I didn’t like the answers that surfaced.

“If I don’t fight it, then I’ll have to accept it,” I told him with tears streaming down my face.

“And what’s wrong with accepting that you have a broken leg and need to heal?” he asked me.

“Accepting that I have a broken leg isn’t the hard part,” I began. “Well, maybe it is. I don’t know. I don’t want to accept that I can’t walk our son to the bus now or play on my soccer team or that I have to ask others to help with the laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, cooking, you name it. I hate asking for help.”

“Well, maybe that’s something you’re supposed to work on then,” he said oh-so-wisely. 

I gave him a side eye. That is the last thing I want to work on, I thought. But I knew that my inability to ask for help went deeper than that. It wasn’t that I had a hard time accepting a meal or a ride from a friend. It was that I feared what they would think of me because of needing that meal or that ride. 

“I’m afraid people are going to think I’m lazy,” I told him. “That I’m just slacking off or something. People expect me to be productive. They expect me to show up when no one else does. To accomplish things few people can.”

“Is that what other people actually think or what you think of yourself?” he asked me.

Why must he be right? “Fine. I don’t know what other people actually think, but I just kind of assume they do,” I said. 

“Who cares if other people think you’re lazy?” he started. “I mean, I don’t know a single person who would ever use that word to describe you, but let’s say they did. So what?”

Immediately I answered, “Then I’m not as valuable.” My stomach dropped as I heard the words come out of my mouth. Wow. I mean, wow. Is that really how I see myself? Is that how I want my kids to see themselves? That they’re only as valuable as they are productive? And when their productivity falls, so does their worth?

“I can’t convince you that your value has nothing to do with how productive you are, Courtney,” my husband said to me. 

“You can’t,” I told him. “I have to decide that. I have to decide that I’m enough because of who I am, not because of what I can do.” 

In a society that always has its measuring stick out, it’s hard to make that switch. When magazine covers are filled with beautiful moms who “bounced back after just six weeks of having a baby,” we know that those stories sell for a reason. And for most of my life, that was the standard I was holding myself to-unrealistic, harmful expectations of what my body could do. What I believed she should do.

So, I decided, during that car ride, that I would choose differently this time. Because I’ve done it the other way more times than I can count and it just isn’t working for me anymore. I decided that instead of fighting, I would flourish. That instead of scheming, I would settle into this new reality of a slower pace (think snail pace). That I would show up every day grateful for my health. Grateful for the injury. Grateful for this journey. I would choose acceptance instead of resistance. I would choose love over fear.

I’m sure I’ll still have my moments of despair and disappointment. I can’t promise I won’t feel discouraged. But each time I will come back to knowing that I am worthy because of who I am and not because of what I can do.

2 COMMENTS

  1. So good. Thanks for writing it. I’ve been dealing with a health situation and it took me way too long to accept it for the same reasons. Cheers to good health for you and me!

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