Dancing with the limp.

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

Between hearing that tonight as I was treated to hearing Anne Lamott speak (a photo of the two of us would be posted here, if my phone wasn't busy recharging downstairs, and me busy laying in bed recharging upstairs)

and this video (which I shared on facebook today), I'm feeling a lot of gratitude tonight. 

It's been just over six months since I first injured my hip. Almost exactly 6 months since I was put on crutches, and on December 11th, it will be 6 months since my terrible break and surgery. But whose counting, right? In the Lamott quote, I know that she is speaking about the loss of her best friend. The breaking of my hip IN NO WAY compares to that loss, and for me to try to draw a comparison is to trivialize her loss, which I don't mean to do. Its actually why I bolded the part I did. The part about dancing with the limp made me cry, because, damn it, that is exactly what I have been doing for the past month or so, and its healing me. Its healing me in some silly, not take myself so seriously way. And it is in no way as cool or as spectacular as literally having my Olympic caliber body rent in half and then learning to actually fly.....but for a little girl in West Chester busy mothering three small kids pretty much solo at the moment ~ well, it made me realize that I'm doing okay. I'm doing what people who are survivors do. I'm doing the right things, even if it did take me a bit of moping and self pity to get on track. I'm accepting. I'm adapting. 

I still struggle with the notion that my body won't ever be the same. I don't 100% accept that diagnosis, I guess. But I'm willing to believe that even if it isn't, it can be okay. It can be better, in different ways. That there can be beauty in acceptance, and that the fork in the road can take me somewhere better than the narrow vision of my life I had carved out for myself in my single minded obsession. Funny thing, tonight Anne even quoted Rumi, and the light seeping in through the cracks (the wound), and I just got tears in my eyes. So amazing how loose threads can pull together. Lamott. Rumi. My friends. Some of the most random straws that I have been grasping at in pain and desperation seem to have come full circle tonight, just like the image of the patients on the spinal unit breathing as one, staring up at the ceiling, forging relationships while unable to even see one another's faces. 

I haven't had much inclination to write this week, but I've had wonderful workouts. A serene yoga practice on Monday. A great stair workout and dance party on Tuesday. Stairs and abs today. Tomorrow more dance party. Know what crazy thing we are doing next week? A flash dance party mob thing at the Malvern Old Fashioned Christmas. We've been practicing the song (some jazzy jingle bells version, its awesome) at the end of every class. I have been a little bit mourning as the kids have been asking me about some of the races I ran this time last year ~ Brians run, a Turkey Trot, etc. There is a Jingle Elf run this friday that I wanted to run in, but can't. But you know what? My kids are going to see their TOTALLY shitty dancing Mom participate in a flash dance party dance thingy. And if THAT isn't something to show them that when circumstances change, you put on your party face and you change right along with them, I don't know what is. Because a year ago if you would have  have asked me if I would have participated in such a thing I would have assumed you were wildly drunk. But you know what? Life is short. So I'm going to dance, and not care what I look like, and have fun with my Mom and sister and a hundred other fun loving silly women and just dance. And my kids are going to love it.