“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so we see ourselves as we really are.” — Arthur Golden

We have both been affected by the same accident and still, though we live in the same house, share the same marriage and raise the same two kids, our experiences are in many ways vastly different. He almost died. I almost lost him. He felt the pain. I watched, powerless to take it away. He found the strength to walk through that pain. I supported him. He healed. I helped him heal. He faced his mortality. I faced my mortality. His children almost lost their father. My children almost lost their father. He had the courage to fight his way back to flying. I had the courage to let him. I lose faith. He trusts. He loses faith. I trust. We walk together side by side, tested again and again. We come together and we fall apart. All the while, hoping to find the courage to trust, not only in the universe, but also in ourselves and each other.

Within the differences, we find much in common. We understand many of the other’s fears. We both worry about being able to provide the life we want for our children. We stress about whether we will be able to provide them with the basics today. We wonder how his back will be in the future. Yoga, physiotherapy and exercise will hopefully reverse some of the damage. Some of the pain. We did not realize the accident would affect our lives in such a fundamental way. We both assumed, rather naively I must say, that he would be back to flying in no time. We joked about it in the hospital. The time we aimed for was in the fall. Fall. His accident was in July. From the beginning, he wanted to get back to flying. I was okay with supporting him with it. We did not think the double vision would last for months. We did not factor in how long it takes a back and a body to heal after the amount of trauma he sustained. He is still healing. We both had faith we would be supported by our loved ones. We assumed the industry would welcome him back with open arms. We imagined an industry full of peers making sure one of their own was taken care of after such a devastating accident. We believed they would fight for him as hard as he fought for himself. Neither of us realized how much we would change through this process. Both of us are dealing with the aftermath, and the struggle to find our normal again. We are often confused as to what normal is any more. What we want our normal to be now. Neither of us saw ourselves here.

Thankfully, we also share this. We are both fighters, and we came out swinging. We were always going to bounce back. We were going to find the positive in the experience. We were going to find everything in life that is joyful. We still aspire to this. He knew he would get to where he is today. I knew this as well. I know we will get through the struggles we are dealing with today. This is part of the journey. There is shock. There is processing. Then there is healing.

We did not realize how difficult this would be on some days. We both have been hit hard in so many ways; physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially. Deep down though, we are both optimists. We still believe we will be better on the other side. One day we will look back on this and, I dunno, maybe smile. Maybe we will look back at this as the time we really got to know one another. When we really started to understand the importance of our little family. When we began to see the world as it really is for the first time in our lives. It is hard sometimes. We have good days and bad days, but it is beautiful. It really is a beautiful world.

Although it has been hard, we can both take a punch. We continue to get up over and over again. Though somedays all we can do is shrug our shoulders, and ask ourselves why. We both try to find the purpose in it all, and we try to find the answers that at this point we do not seem to know. The two of us understand that we are parents and that this is a very real and significant responsibility. We have tried the best we can to shelter our children from our struggles. We try to show them that pulling your shoulders back and walking on when every part of your body wants to give up is all that we can do sometimes. But most of all, we have tried to focus on the positive, to be thankful for what we have, and to somehow learn to take it all a little less seriously.