I have survived the worst of broken hearts. I have lived through horrific pain and death. I have healed when everyone told me I would never be the same again: they were right, I am not the same. I am stronger, I am more compassionate, I have more purpose and presence and love. My body is not broken, although it's still far from whole. I see now how my broken heart blocked my path to healing even more than my broken back, my prosthetic hip, my broken arms...these things all healed; not the same, some will always cause me pain. But what nearly killed me, what nearly took me from my children, it wasn't the morning of my car crash when I lay, bleeding out in a busted up van in a ditch. It wasn't in the months that stretched into the five years after my accident. It was my broken heart. I didn't know who I was or what my purpose was if I couldn't be a nurse. It was a dream I had chased for so many years, an identity I had fit snugly around me like my favorite sweater, protecting me from the cold...and I was so exposed, so raw to the elements and naked without it. I tried to keep up the facade of cheerfulness, of hope and joy, when inside, I felt so empty and lost. This depression was so complicated, it touched every single facet of my life, tinged it with worthlessness and seeped the color out of my days, coloring them black like the nights that went on forever. I fought to ignore the voice in my head that told me I wasn't worth loving, that my children were better off without me, that I was never going to live a day without pain.
I sat in a courtroom one day where I told the social security judge why the doctors and I had decided I couldn't work anymore. I sobbed to the point I could barely speak. It literally destroyed me to admit publicly that I had given up on my dream. I had never failed so miserably at anything in my life, unless you count my two marriages, but I had help destroying those. I had never failed at anything I had tried so hard to achieve, and I didn't know what to do with that type of pain.
I had to face the anger I felt for the drunk driver who hit me. I had been so afraid of how huge and powerful that anger was, I tried to completely deny that there was any anger at all for him. I felt it was wrong of me to harbor anger for someone who had not set out to hurt me, but that anger was churning somewhere deep inside where I had locked the door and never wanted to go back. But the truth was, until I was ready to face that anger, until I was ready to really sit with it and rage with it, howl like a damned banshee and cry the ugliest, most gut-wrenching sobs I've ever heard emanate from a human being, I knew I would not heal. So I began to pray for him, to feel compassion for him, to understand that I was the lucky one, because I lived in an ever-widening circle of love and support, and I embraced that. He could not. Not through the haze of addiction. I hope he heals. We all deserve love.
It took me over seven years to work through that anger. I still have my days when I have to cry, and I let the tears come because I know they cleanse the hurts. I don't hide from the daily pain with medications, I don't self-medicate with alcohol or drugs of any kind; I medicate with love. I fill the spaces where pain lives, fill them up with love and I listen to my body when it whispers, "Love, you need to rest. Put down the laundry, you've done enough today." "Love, our bones feel 100 years old today. Be kind to us." Some days it's a whisper, some days it screams in my face "DON'T DO THAT, OWWWW!!!" But I always listen now. I'm done fighting against what I can't change; that robs me of my peace. I'm done listening to the cruel voice in my head that doubts, undermines my joy. I'm putting down the sword, and picking up my spade. My life began a miracle, and it will end a miracle. I will grow my garden, I will feed my family, I will heal with my herbs and nutrition, and I will live a full life. I will not feel cheated. I will not feel unloved. Love begins with me, and I choose to live in love each day.
