Life
Usually when I write a blog I have an arc of thought I want to express. I am not sure what todays arc will be, or if I will end on an optimistic note as I usually try to do. Life is messy, hard, and wonderfully beautiful. When 2024 began I did not expect it would have challenges on the same level that the rear end caused.
Turns out I was wrong. My father has an aggressive form of cancer and it is likely I will not be able to ring in 2025 with him. When I heard the news of months not years earlier today I could feel my heart break. Tears have been welling up since and I have told my normal stoic response to not shut them off and be strong. I am accepting them for what they are, sadness that change is coming whether I like it or not.
When I got sober in 2016 I remember watching Silver Linings Playbook every night for quite a while. My TBI made me aware of the positives that can arise out of a horrible injury. The movie reminded me that no matter how broken I felt there are friends and family who love me and meet me where I am. I haven’t watched the movie in years now and have learned to love myself again, accepting myself and my experiences as things that have made me become the strong, loving, resilient woman I am.
This current news makes me reflect on last year and the horror I felt having my life turned upside down due to the car accident. In many ways it took my autonomy away. I still can’t lift heavy things and have daily pain in my right wrist. What seemed the absolute worst was the need to move out of the DC area and back home to my parents house to recover and rebound.
I have the best parents I could have. They have loved me, sat with me, argued with me through and with the challenges my TBI, career choice of artist, alcoholism, and now wrist injury brought. What happened last year with me living with them, 6 years of sobriety under my belt and the patterns for a healthy work pace that can allow for long term TBI care is that we grew closer. With my parents seeing the classes I was taking, challenges I was have doing ceramic work, working so hard to adapt to my new reality really began to really understand me, my business, and how necessary it is to pause consistently throughout the day. It’s amazing actually, when I moved back to DC January of this year it wasn’t because we couldn’t live together, but because I had healed to the point that it made sense for me to be in DC, where my life was.
A part of me wants to just move back and be here to support my parents and get as much of my dad as I possibly can. But they remind me that my life is in DC and they want me to live it. Come when I can, but that I have a life and business to run. Me uprooting myself would in no way make things better.
The past 4 days my brother and his family have been visiting. We have had the best family time. It really couldn’t have been better. We got lots of photos, videos, and frankly had so much fun talking, doing puzzles, creative projects, reading and just being together. We are hoping that a June vacation will be possible and we can create more memories, but we had this magical time. Sitting in the kitchen with my mom after lunch, when it was reinforced to not uproot myself, my mom said to me: “Christina, you were here all of last year and have spent so much time with your father. What a blessing your injury turned out to be.”
And she is right. Fate, the laws of nature, whatever dieties are worshiped all seem to agree on this point. What seemed like the hardest year of my adult life, may well turn into one of the richest.
