@upstatephil I appreciate your honesty. When you can no longer do something because you can’t move the same way, it’s a loss and you grieve that loss. I have felt that before too. Everything changed. That’s OK. Sometimes the loss can force you out of your comfort zone and you look for new ways to see something.

A long time ago, I decided to live my life not placing blame on others or circumstances that affected me. Instead, I would make my own choices and be responsible for my success or failures.

Sometimes circumstances are that you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and an injury happens that you didn’t see coming, and you couldn’t avoid it. It would be easy to blame the driver 5 cars behind me that caused the chain reaction collision that caused my whiplash and spine injury and stay angry. That is a choice that would cause a lot of stress for myself. Back then, I told myself I was going to be OK because I was too scared not to be OK. I was really afraid of what would happen if I had to have surgery and I had an HMO insurance policy at the time and my primary doctor never sent me to a specialist. I never considered that physical therapy may have helped and I was in new territory.

No one would choose to be a spine patient and go through some scary surgery and we do our best to heal our bodies with the choices we make. I prefer to always think of it that way. In this moment I can chose how I look at myself and the choices I make for my health care will also influence what my future choices will be. I didn’t ask to be a spine patient, but the lessons I have learned from it about facing fear are really valuable and I wish I could have known this when I was younger. Instead of running from a problem, I can now embrace it and deal with it so it doesn’t take over my life.

These days I have been painting a lot so I can enter art competitions, but also because it lets me focus on something positive rather than something I can’t change that is a personal loss for me. When I enter that “space” where creativity comes from, it is a sanctuary and I am immersed in creating and separated and distracted from what was bothering me. It’s my way of choosing what I want to think about and to be positive. It also gives me a great sense of accomplishment and yes, it is therapeutic and healing through art. It probably always has been my sanctuary instinctively and I can design my thinking any way that I want to respond to a difficult time. Sometimes that isn’t so easy, but each step can take me just a bit further until I can soar again over and above something that was dragging me down.

These very profound lessons in my life are also what brings me here to try to help others who are facing similar circumstances.

Jennifer