Hear You Me

You have to know me pretty well to know that this is a hard part of September for me. Eight years ago I lost an extremely dear friend very suddenly and tragically. While I no longer think of her daily, or even weekly, I think about her a lot in early autumn. Most of the pain has dulled over the years, but it still stings if I think about it for more than a few minutes, which I tend to do in mid-September. She was an incredibly beautiful person, full of life and sass and potential, and losing her the way we did was just too sad. I have learned to be thankful for the far-too-brief time that I knew her and the lessons she taught me. Life spins on, but she will always be a part of who I am.

End of the sadness and melancholia. I have fallen down on my posts for two consecutive days! Partially it's due to lack of sleep (when I get home I have pretty much been collapsing into bed), getting over bronchitis, and because I had a midterm the other day and was cramming for that. But now I'm getting back on the horse ...

Challenge Day 11. If you don't already know about this challenge, I'd recommend going  here to read about it as the next bit will make more sense if you do.

Video of the day - Amy Purdy: Living beyond limits [Go here to watch the video on ted.com]

Thumbnail quote -None provided, so I picked out my own. "If your life were a book, and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?" (Amy Purdy)

Why I chose this video - In the spirit of remembering a phenomenal somebody whose life was cut short, I wanted to watch a video that was about something courageous and/or inspiring. The title of this talk seemed to fit the bill. [I love that TED categorizes their videos so you can choose what topic or theme you're interested in that day ...]

Summary - Amy Purdy was only 19 years old when she developed vaccine-preventable bacterial meningitis and spent two and a half months in the Intensive Care Unit. She lost her hearing in one ear, her spleen, her kidney function, and, most painfully, both legs below the knee. Understandably, she spent several months after she got home from the hospital depressed and practically comatose. She hated her new legs.
But one day, she had a realization that needing prosthetics meant she didn't have to be 5'5" any longer; she could be as tall, or as short, as she wanted to be. She spent time asking herself how she wanted her own story to go and dreaming about her future. An avid snowboarder, she wanted to get back on the hill. It took a lot of work, many tries, and some creative innovation to develop prosthetic legs and feet that would allow her to return to the sport, but she did it. She started snowboarding again, returned to work, returned to school, and then won two back-to-back world cup gold medals in snowboarding, making her the highest ranked adaptive snowboarder in the world.
 Amy states: "Our borders and our obstacles can only do two things: 1) stop us in our tracks, or 2) force us to get creative." I guess she would know.

My Take-Away - The fortitude, tenacity, and resilience of some people amazes me. I honestly can't say what I would do if I lost both, or even just one, of my legs. I don't know that I would ever be able to get out of bed. It takes incredible courage and strength to learn to accept enormous changes, and choose to re-define your own perceptions of yourself. Accepting oneself is hard enough, let alone doing so while dealing with dramatic emotional and physical changes. I suppose I can look back eight years and see the huge changes I had to make to cope with that loss - the things I had to let go of and learn to live with - but I'm not sure it's comparable.
I feel like the talks I have been watching (which have mostly been randomly selected) are coming up with some themes: Accepting yourself, dreaming big dreams, learning to adapt, developing and demonstrating resilience. That's a tall order and some tough life-lessons. A challenge that I may never complete; but I can try.
Amy discusses borders, or the things that hold us back or seem to be our limits, throughout her talk. And she states this: "I believe that our imaginations can be used as tools for breaking through borders. Because in our minds we can do anything, and we can be anything. It's believing in those dreams and facing our fears head-on that allows us to live our lives beyond limits."