The Building Blocks of Resiliency: Reaching Out
Suddenly, my husband said, “I don’t feel well” and fainted in my arms, while driving down the highway at 65 miles per hour. For the next terrifying seconds, the car swerved down the highway, making S marks. turned completely over, landed on its wheels up right, stopping just before hitting a cement highway bridge. It is a miracle that we survived, my husband with a broken neck and for me the trauma would prove to be the biggest injury.
This was the beginning of a journey that would last long after the ambulance left, the road to recovery. My husband with his broken neck in a brace, excruciating pain, unable to drive and a long list of medical appointments, was the immediate concern. My days were filled with caring for him, running the household, taking care of the accident bureaucracy{ form after form and then more forms}, the accident trauma left me terrified of driving { at first I could go only 20 miles per hour} and my husband could not and was not permitted to drive for six months and we were out in the country far from from all the appointments, very far in fact at 20 miles per hour!
As the weeks passed by, a darkness settled on me. I was confused. I felt and still do, enormously grateful for surviving the accident, when Doctors looked at my husband’s neck, broken at the vertebrae C2, they shook their heads in disbelief that he was alive and able to walk, by all counts a miracle occurred. The truth is, I was traumatized, I was carrying an enormous load and something needed to change and quickly.
And quite literally, just like the proverbial light bulb, I knew what I had to do. I needed to reach out. Suddenly, the meaning of being strong changed for me, it went from thinking and believing I had to carry it all, to knowing I needed help carrying the load. So I picked up the phone to my coach. ” Coach, ” I said tearfully, I need help”. When I look back, it was at that moment, that I knew I would be OK, I knew I would find a path out of the overwhelm, and I did.
Coach Terri and I made a plan, one of the biggest parts of the plan was me learning. how, where, when and to whom I could reach out. Emotionally, I was a bit of a wreck, { no pun intended}, my husband, usually my rock, was consumed with his own pain, in fact it would take many months before he could listen to my account of the accident without running out of the room in panic. So I needed to find emotional support elsewhere! My mother, sisters, daughters, BFF, and coach stepped up to listen and soothe. My time, was consumed by the accident, appointments, phone calls, as well as caring for my husband and taking on what he could not do. So I did not get any relief from the strain. My plan involved setting aside time for myself each day to Take Care of Myself and Taking Joy Breaks. My health was starting to suffer and my sleep, so I needed a plan to get some exercise and eat properly and to receive care for my injury, the trauma. The accident involved lots of out of pocket expenses and so our financial life was taking a hit as well.
Reaching out was the best thing I could have done. It gave me a plan to find a path through the recovery. It gave me the tools to follow the path. I can not say the path was easy. I can not say that the journey will ever be over. But what I can say with 100 % truth, is that my life is richer and full of more joy, love and gratitude than it was before that fateful day in October, 2016 and each day I wake up with a childlike wonder to the new day.
