Surviving to Living
On June 16th, I will have reached the ten year anniversary of the day I almost died. I had a stroke with the only remaining side effects, today, being when I get really tired or stressed a little bit of a crooked lip and an eye twitch and the occasional difficulty verbalizing the words I want to say. I usually say it feels like my words get stuck somewhere between my brain and my mouth. That day marked the first point of having my world turned upside down. I didn’t know surviving and rehabbing through that was the easy part or what was still to come in the next few years. I was determined to get well and survive. And I did. I have spent the past ten years surviving, having my world turned upside down repeatedly, losing almost everything, grieving, regrouping, moving forward and repeat. But what I haven’t been doing consistently until very recently is living. Sometimes surviving feels powerful, but a lot ...