Because I can….

Simple reflections from an epic journey of stroke, loss and recovery

With all that is happening in the world right now, at least as it’s portrayed in main stream and social media – one might be tempted to think that hope and healing are concepts that are anecdotal at best and distant, absent at worst. Swirling tumult and uncertainty seem to be incessant and unavoidable.

From where I sit though, I have been blessed with a differet perspective. I am nearly eleven months into a journey of stroke recovery – something that surely wasn’t on my 2024 vision board, but something I am now very thankful for as an experience and as a teacher of deeper wisdom and perspective.

In the early morning hours on April Fools Day, fresh off of a weekend with my family for Easter Services and headed to Georgia for a wedding of a dear friend – the unthinkable happened. I fell to the floor coming back to bed, suffering a stroke that ended up impacting the ability of my motor neurons in my lower left leg. At the height of the stroke episode, my blood pressure reached levels that were more in line with a weighted scale – causing the ER doctors to have shock and concern in their eyes. In a moments notice I went from thinking nothing was wrong with me, to being within view of death’s door.

With gratitude to:

· my yoga and meditation practice;

· my knowledge of family history;

· enough body awareness to know I was having a stroke;

· my dear one who helped me get out of the hotel and drove me to the emergency room;

· the impeccable caring team of nurses, physicians and other staff at the Lexington Medical Center in Columbia, SC;

· the Affordable Care Act;

· the support of a global community; and,

· the grace of the ancestors

I not only survived this episode, but have been on a recovery journey that has shown me the miracle of health we often ignore and the hope that exists when we focus on what we can control.

In the early stages of recovery there was so much to process: multiple diagnoses (diabetes, hypertension), complete loss of motor function in my foot, severely impaired use of my left leg, having a stroke nearly 500 miles away from home and wondering how we would make it back…. It could have been very easy to slip into the despair of these concussive shocks of life, death and health.

But the one thing I knew to the core of my being, is to focus on what I could control and always hold soft space for this hard news to land. From the moment my neurologist confirmed that I indeed had a stroke, I kept playing my sound bowls and entering stages of deep meditation – knowing that sound had the dual impact of calming my nerves and creating conditions for them to heal and reconnect. I reached out to a dear teacher friend of mine for advice, and he told me that in addition to chanting perhaps the most important thing I could do to heal is to love my injury and begin to see it as my new teacher.

So I immediately adopted this frame. From the critical care ward through discharge to in-patient rehab, from discharge of in-patient rehab to home care, acupuncture and physical therapy – what was the stroke teaching me and how might I honor the wisdom of this new teacher.

This frame allowed me to see the entirety of this enormous experience through the lens of how is this happening for me, as opposed to why is this happening to me. While in critical care and in-patient rehab, I played my sound bowls for my nurses and doctors in gratitude for what they were doing for me, as well as to calm my nerves and offer prayers for my wellbeing. I took a vow to be a blessing to all who were blessing me with their kindness and expertise. I remember joking with an Uber driver who asked me why I had a cane, saying, “Well, I must have done something wrong because the sages, saints, ancestors and the universe have seen fit for me to learn how to walk again. So at least I get this new chance to do it better this time.”

I recently stood in a sharing circle and began my remarks by saying, “I am standing in this circle, because I can.” In that moment, I remembered all of the small steps, literally and metaphorically that led up to this moment of triumph and testimony. Each step building upon the other, forming the foundation to hold space for the next thing. When I couldn’t move my foot or my leg, I would play music and meditate about walking again. When one day my left big toe made the slightest of movements, I couldn’t wait to share this information with my PT so she could radically change her plan for me – given this small spark of hope. She always told me, “If there is movement, there can be improvement.” That wisdom has stuck with me.

So let this be a missive of hope in a time of tumult, for as I now know very well – you can hope for the best even when surrounded by the worst. And it is not naïve nor foolish to do so. Because in the end, the ability to put one foot in front of the other is not a cliché. It is deep wisdom that teaches us to take the steps we can on faith that we will continue to make progress toward whatever goal we have ahead of us.