Who are you under adversity?
Written by: Alana Long
Thursday, November 7th, 2023
More recently my family has gone through some moments that have tested our character, my character. My husband was in a dirt biking accident and spent four days in the hospital dealing with severe nerve and body pain. He damaged his brachial plexus, broke a rib, and cracked two cervical vertebrae. This is the first time in his life, luckily for him, that he has ever had to deal with a major injury and one that will take months if not a year to recover from. Yet again an eye opening and learning experience for me as I am on the other side of the trauma, fulfilling the care taker role, which I am now learning is very lonely.
Our family as a whole has been through a lot on both sides of our marriage. I am one of four children, and three of us have been too close on the death end of the life and death spectrum. My mother has been with us two, and more recently my father had a prostate cancer scare. My eldest brother coming up on ten years ago, had a Cavernoma in his brain while living in China, and while living across the world from his family had surgery on his brain to reduce the bleeding as well as to prevent further damage and seizures. My sister fought off breast cancer, while still parenting four young children under the age of 10. My mother, along side me in the car, shattered her hip and wrist and had to rebuild and replace bones in her body. My father, the last in this line and who had mild findings on his prostate did radiation for several weeks. With the variety of degrees of trauma and hardship each member of my family has in common; we still love life, are smiling, continue happiness, continue to show up for others, and are THANKFUL to be here to enjoy a new day with the ones we love.
Trauma is interesting if you sit down and think about the test that it gives to you. It is when you are at your worst in our cases both physically and mentally, and I find that the mental struggle is harder than the physical, regardless of how bad a person is injured. But here is the thing that I did well when I was injured and really what got me through so many of the emotional struggles I went through; I decided very early on that I was going to face my trauma, pain, and emotional battles immediately head on following my life changing event. I was not going to let trauma consume me, regardless of how dark of a day I was having or what was going on in my mind, I still had the following day ahead of me, with an appointment of therapy, physical or mental, that I needed to show up to for myself. It is not uncommon for me to overload my schedule but in this case it was beneficial to me. At night I would journal, crying tears that felt like they were coming from my heart and soul, and by day I talked about my pain, I moved through it both in mind and body, and I woke up day after day and did it again. And each day I did that, I subconsciously was growing what my friend Bruce Anderson likes to call my “mental tools”. I learned how to deal with the feelings I was having. I learned how to deal with adversity, I learned to learn, through every interaction or emotion I was having. Everything was an opportunity to sharpen my own personal skills and resilience to adversity, to learn how to problem solve under stress situations to provide positive outcomes for myself and those around me. I subconsciously chose to grow under adversity, to thrive actually, because this was the only way I would come out of it, something good had to come out of what happened to me, my son, and our family.
I am now learning about the opposite side of trauma, how difficult the ripple effect can be if a loved one has gone through something difficult. My experiences of my own injuries also has helped to deal with the caregiver role in a better way, as well as set me up to allow trust in the process of recovery and all things connected to the backlash of a life altering event. But being a caretaker to someone you love is lonely, you miss the person that is a major part of your life, but their feelings, physical and mental come first. Whatever I have had going on in this more recent experience has gone to the wayyyy back burner, and it is hard to keep everything emotionally together during the time when personal feelings don’t take the priority. I miss my husband, I miss making decisions with him, I miss being able to talk to him about any hardships that I normally would process with him. Not only is this a struggle but seeing your loved one hurt and mentally challenged has a whole different set of emotions attached to it, you wish you could understand their pain so that you could empathetically take care of them. Fortunately and unfortunately I do somewhat, but watching my husband take on challenges has been difficult for both of us.
It has been amazing to see him come back to himself, in small windows, and see parts of his personality come back through. For me, this is a learning lesson, a way that I have developed new skills that I previously did not have even just a month ago. Sometimes I wonder if I am lying to myself; I still feel that I am too positive and happy even when I am dealing with serious and heavy subjects. Is this a false sense of positivity that I have developed or have I truly learned that life is all about how you deal with adversity? Even though at times it feels false, I look at the systemic actions of how my family has dealt with the hardships over the years, we still come out smiling, and this reassures me that my outlook on life is true, I am just happy to be here, while being the best person I can be,
Much Love,’
Alana