Gratitude, kindness, and health

Dear friends,

Thank you all for your kind notes and support following my surgery last Thursday. (If you missed last week's newsletter, click here for the lowdown.) I feel great and honestly have been since I left the recovery room! There's no pain at the incision site and I'm getting around well on my crutches, even if I'm counting the days (7!) until my sutures come out and I can walk again! 

Leading up to the surgery, I was strongly considering suspending my newsletter for two weeks as I recovered. I figured I wouldn't have much to write about and that it would be good for me to unplug in the evening after finishing up my day job. I ultimately decided to keep on schedule because I figured at the least, I could provide an update rather than leaving you hanging.

But the update was brief and honestly, I should have realized I'd have something else to say about the last week, so here goes. I have three things rotating through my mind at any given moment:

First, an attitude of gratitude. My gratitude extends to my family, friends, everyone who has visited or reached out, my incredible surgeon, the surgical team, and the nurses. To my husband, who is doing literally everything at home and for me - and will be mad I even called him out for it - I am eternally grateful. I could write 17 newsletters about gratitude alone, but in this one, I'll say that gratitude is healing. My overwhelming gratitude makes me feel light and focus on "the good" instead of the "not so great" about recovering for two weeks. More on that in a second.

Second, kindness counts. I had an unexpected teary moment after the anesthesiologist explained what he'd be doing to keep me under for four hours. I got embarrassed and said: "I know it's dumb and I trust you to do your job, but I just want to wake up. I'm a mom." He took a beat, smiled, was unoffended, and shared that he went under anesthesia for the first time last year and as a father, he understood, and then he made me laugh. It might have been a small thing to him, but it was a big thing to me.

Third, health is wealth. If you've been with me for awhile, it's not the first time I've shared this, but it's the first time I've done so from this perspective of immobility. (Put a girl on crutches for two weeks and she'll shout it from the rooftops!) The inability to walk or just plain move my body is both humbling and haunting. Being robbed of free movement makes life so much harder and slower -- and has caused me to miss activities with my son. This is just a blip in time in my life, but it's other people's permanent reality for much more serious reasons.

So that's it from me now, and as always, thank you for your support!

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