Brave Enough To Be Bliss

Chapter 6 — Believing in My Leadership

“ The next time you walk past the mirror, stop for a moment and look at the woman standing there before you and smile. Tell her she is Beautiful…Tell her you love her…Tell her you are proud of her and how far she has come. Say to her, “It doesn’t matter how much they doubt, I will always believe in you.” She needs to hear it from you before it can mean anything coming from anyone else.” Mr. Amari Soul At physical therapy one day, I was able to take a few steps on my own for the first time and it was surreal. When I returned home, sat down, and looked around that one small room, the fact I was still in good shape mentally and pretty decent shape physically seemed even more surreal. I suppose I would have survived if it had happened at some point before Ginger, but I have absolutely no doubt at the end of it, I wouldn’t have been as healthy mentally or physically. It would have been too much, especially all at one time. The injury, the lack of movement, the one room, the need for help, the feeling helpless, the silence, and the stillness would have definitely had me depressed. And I have no doubt, Uber Eats and DoorDash would have been frequently used apps for binging purposes and with no way to burn it off, the weight gain would have been hard to manage. Overall, it was just very scary to think about what would have happened because I know how my brain worked back then, and those voices would have been on the loose and running wild. A few months earlier Ginger had mentioned she wanted to add a few coaches to her team because she had so many people on a waiting list and was booked out for months already, so we had talked about the possibility of me taking on some Friday or Saturday clients. I told her I was interested, but knowing I was going to be having surgery, I told her we should revisit after that. I was feeling strong and excited about the future after taking those steps, so I decided I was ready to move forward with coaching. Knowing I needed to do work on my nervous system, I decided I would forge ahead with Andrea Arlotti, M.A.,CCC-SLP of Infinite Possibilities Integration® who Ginger had talked about. If I would be working as a coach for Ginger, I assumed she wouldn’t also be able to continue coaching me personally, and I wouldn’t be able to afford seeing both of them at the same time, so I decided to graduate myself so we could have an opportunity to celebrate the progress and I could thank her — even though I could never thank her enough for all she has done for me. I also wasn’t sure how to bring the coaching possibility back up again since it had been so long, and I wasn’t sure if she would still be interested in having me there. Remember I said I was in good shape mentally, not great shape. There may have been a few voices sneaking out as I thought about the months and months of physical therapy that still remained and just how long it would be before I could really exercise again. And I had been wearing the same shorts and shirts for those nine weeks and they just didn’t fit like they did at the beginning , and I had made the mistake of looking in the mirror at physical therapy that morning. Mirrors. I really didn’t like mirrors. I never had. I tried to avoid them. Like scales. The only time I would ever step on one was w hen I went for my annual physical and then I just hoped they wouldn’t say the number out loud because I sure as hell wasn’t going to look. What I didn’t have to see or know wouldn’t hurt me, but when I did have to see or know, sometimes the voices quickly escaped, and they hurt me. A lot. Even after all the work, that’s why it’s just best not to look and know about those things. Although off the subject a bit, that made think of something else I had noticed while I was in that one room passing the sleepless nights. Looking back at photos in my phone through the years, there were times I saw one but noticed I didn’t look anything like what I saw in the mirror before I left home. I can remember how I appeared when I was forced to look in the mirror while trying to decide between shoes or when I had to see which outfit looked least bad . It wasn’t just how I felt about how I looked, the person I saw in the mirror before those events didn’t look like the person I now saw in the photos. I remember being very surprised about that. It’s like logically I knew I had to have looked like what I saw in the photo when I saw myself in the mirror, but that’s not at all how the person staring back at me in the mirror looked. Not at all. I would have thought it was just a rare decent photo or a good angle or good lighting, but when I noticed it, I looked for other times I knew I looked awful and again, the photos were not the same as I saw myself in the mirror.

So, with those thoughts, I sent this text message to Ginger.

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