Truth be told, I had a harder time with Leah Lived Day this year than I have in the past.
I woke up to a bladder spasm. Basically my bladder was unhappy for some reason, so I peed the bed. Although bladder spasms are never fun, for some reason it felt like a particularly insulting way to start this particular day. It was a reminder that I was paralyzed and there is nothing I can do about it.
When bladder issues come up, I get anxious and depressed. They can sometimes signal deeper, more troublesome issues going on. It makes me wonder how many years I have left.
Before WWII, the average life expectancy past a spinal cord injury was only 3 years.
Thankfully, with antibiotics and better wheelchair cushioning, (depending on age) that number now stretches into 30+ years. In the past 6 years, I’ve had a few close calls – if it weren’t for antibiotics, I wouldn’t be typing this.
[A wonderful man I knew who was a quadriplegic died recently at the age of 83. Incredible and it gives me such hope! (If you want to read an aaaamazing obituary, here it is.)]
Back to my feelings about Leah Lived Day #6. It held more grief than I would have liked. I kept reminding myself that no feeling is wrong. I could be grateful, but I could also give room to the grief as well.
So often I go about my day in a way that is, although inconvenient, something I have gotten used to.
But my injury hit me differently this year on LLD. I went to bed sobbing. I wanted to be grateful and joyful, but there was a sadness too. I have lost a easy relationship with my body. Being in constant pain is taxing.
But I have no choice. The only choice I have is how I combat the pain.
We started Tiny and Snail a year before I became paralyzed. We had been building our liferaft and didn’t know it.
This business offers me a way to make sense of my suffering. It allows me to process the events and feelings as we do life, and use it as a way to help others.
And it’s connected us with AMAZING customers. 😍
In an effort to redirect my sobbing, I found a meditation on the Calm app. It was a meditation about acknowledging your grief, but then finding people to be grateful for.
My mind landed on our Tiny and Snail community, and that was the thing that allowed me to fall asleep.
I’m not telling you any of this for pity. I’m telling you because I think often my optimism rises to the top, and online things can appear rather rosey. It’s not all roses and rainbows though, and that makes our cards what they are: an ode to BOTH the highs and the lows of life. The human experience contains it all, and I just happen to have been given a front row seat to the extremes; this now tumbles into every piece of art I create.
August 30 happens to be Grief Awareness Day.
Grief is defined by the loss of something or someone.
Whether someone lost a pet, a child, partner or parent (recently or years ago), someone has lost their good health…the list of reasons we grieve are endless. (Here’s a good web page about grief from the Cleveland Clinic. Worth a read!)
I thought it would be interesting to share our grief in the blog comments. If you wish to remain anonymous, you can. I think sharing our grief and knowing other people grieve too can make us feel less alone.
I am also a big believer in taking a few minutes to acknowledge other people’s grief with a handwritten note. I hope you take a few minutes this week to write a note to someone you know is hurting. It’s one of the most important ways we can help make this life a little easier for each other.
If you are in the middle of grief, I hope you feel me squeezing your hand across the miles.
P.S. A couple of the cards from the recent Kindred Spirits Collection are especially helpful for acknowledging grief:
20 comments
Leah, thank you for the love that you send to us, on each and every day, no matter how hard. I hope you feel the waves of love that are being sent to you by the Tiny and Snail community.
You may be inspired by others, but to me you are the inspiration. Your humility, honesty and wisdom are things I admire you for greatly.
You have definitely created a worthwhile community at Tiny and Snail that transcends commerce, a space where you and your sister can share your art and optimism. Thank you for being there.
I’m sorry that this year’s LLD was a tough one. But maybe every day should be Leah Lived Day. I proclaim it so.
Tw: child loss
This current season has been relatively smooth, aside from parenting a 3-year old which is both delightful and trying, often at the same time. But prior to her birth, we struggled with infertility and had to do IVF, then our first baby died just before birth which was obviously devastating. That was quickly followed by me requiring brain surgery for a benign tumor, but that left me deaf in one ear which is a constant annoyance. We had to wait months before we could pursue another round of IVF, which felt like complete torture at the time because I just wanted to know we would get to parent a living child (and I’m sure I was deep in the throes of grief). Once we were able to move forward with IVF, the pandemic hit RIGHT after we found out it had been successful. Now, four years later, it feels like things are finding a new normal, but I think the collective grief and PTSD (to some extent) our entire country has from the traumas and losses that occurred during the pandemic is causing a lot of increased anxiety and depression in society. I’m a family NP so there’s a lot of processing that with patients – think 1-4 patients every day reporting mood issues. So long-winded story short, my big grief occurred in 2018 and we’ve been processing Oliver’s death ever since, but Gemma (the aforementioned 3-year old) was a huge healing force and I just feel grateful and happy most days.
This is beautiful. You are also an artist of words. Grief is so deeply personal. Sometimes I find you need to protect your grief because if others don’t understand or say the right thing it can feel so disrespectful. In my experience with facing a life changing diagnosis for my son, the hardest part was dealing with the loss of what I called, “my previous life” before the diagnosis. I always wanted to go back to that life -even for 5 minutes because I always felt like I didn’t appreciate it enough when I had it. Because then it felt like everything changed. I had so much grief for that loss. I found the more I took the time to sit in my grief and feel it to my core and mourn then I could pick myself up again and adapt and go on but it’s staggering to go through. Thanks for your post. Social media does make everything so rosy.
Thank you for that. Currently in a 2 year stretch of grief over a variety of challenges that have put me in caregiver mode for parents, in-laws, daughter and her medically complex, special needs, rare disease precious baby. Emergencies and things out of our control seem to have come one right after another in whiplash fashion. I don’t get to process one before the next thing happens and I need to jump into action and we have no relief in sight. And in this season I also lost my mom suddenly.
So this hit just right. Thank you. I’ve been the go to for optimism all my life and some days it takes everything to not cry through the day. Grief is exhausting. I know it won’t always feel like this but right now it does.
Knowing you’re not alone in these kinds of feels and fears is helpful. Thank you for your honesty.
I needed to read that on a sleepless night.