The Unbeaten Heart

Thump. Thump. Thump. My heart beats quickly in my ears like the throbbing of a smashed finger. Baboom. Baboom. All of the blood from my heart rushes to my ears. My chest tightens with each beat. Words assault me through the phone. Words that have never sounded clearer. Words that do not make sense. I cannot breathe. My breath will not come. Helicopter.

The phone I held in my hand but a moment ago has fallen to the ground. Thump. My heart is busy. Attacked in mid-sentence, in mid-beat. My hands feel numb; empty as my heart reels, fighting to regain control of its beat. Searching for homeostasis. Its rhythm has been interrupted. It feels uncertain. Just for a moment or two. A millisecond. The time it takes to realize you are falling. It is just enough time to weaken the hand, to buckle the knees. An ocean beats in my ears. I tumble in its waves. Accident.

Thump. Thump. Thump. A world away his heart also beats quickly in time with mine. Baboom. Baboom. Pain rips through his body with no time for reprieve. His heart struggles to survive. It is the very heart that fought with all of its might as he fell from the sky. An emptied lung struggles beside it. Breath does not come easily. They struggle together.

Summer Days

Days flow by without significance. Ordinary days and unremembered moments in which our hearts beat in their practiced rhythm. Time blurs. We grow comfortable. Dreams seem possible. Hearts soar. Then, out of the clear blue-sky, catastrophe strikes, ending our complacency. Our innocence destroyed, leaving us to pick up the pieces of our broken hearts.

July. It once passed by without thought, without meaning. That changed when a set of helicopter blades contacted metal, eighty feet up in the air. My husband sat inside that helicopter, his hand clutching the collective, as it began to buck violently, then spun around and hit again. A wounded bird too injured to fly.

What seconds to live. His stomach must have dropped as he fell. His heart believing it was beating its last beats, speeding up to fit in more life. Only the presence of a miracle allowed his heart to continue as he hung upside down still strapped in his seat.

 Impact

 Not long after the fall a Qigong master granted me some of her wisdom. She told me about the body. She spoke of trauma. We spoke of the heart.

Your heart feels it first. Trauma. Like a kick from a horse. A slap in the face. A sucker punch. The heart absorbs the hit. Full force. No protection. Thump!

I remember the moment the energy hit me. Slamming me in the chest, almost knocking me to the ground. He does not remember when it hit him. The force would have been enough to break a heart, to burst it wide open. Maybe it did, and that is why he now lives with an open heart.

Falling

The monitor counts each beat. His heart rate rises and falls. I read along as it narrates his story. My eyes watch the screen. Like a car accident I cannot look away from. I hear the alarms each time his heart rate rises dangerously, experiencing the rise and drop again and again. It beats too quickly. It feels too much pain; too much sorrow. A simple high-pitched beep. It goes off almost continuously. A wail in the night.

What is his heart saying? Speaking in a rush of emotions. Is it speaking of loss? He lost so much. Does it want to tell me how it happened? How it felt when the blades hit? The feeling of adrenalin being dumped into the bloodstream. Up in the air, with only the ground below. Nothing to catch the fall but a farmer’s field. There was no chance of flight. The only choice was fight. Perhaps his heart wants to tell me how beautiful the view was, as he spun in circles like a top in mid-air, trying to control an uncontrollable moment in time. Perhaps it speaks of the impact, and of the energy entering his body, breaking bones as it flowed through, and then released.

 Survivor

Trauma is not sexy. It brings out the fighter in us, but it also beckons fear. Fear, the insidious destroyer of the heart. It whispers into the broken pieces, reminding the heart that though courageous, it can be destroyed.

To heal the heart after such a shock, we must allow it to move through its newfound fear of death. Understanding when it falters. We must listen as it sings its mournful song, and praise it as it slowly learns to dance again.

If we do not anxiety will seep in unheeded, attaching to the inner walls, clogging the arteries. It will be unable to feel joy or passion, becoming blocked, uncertain, frightened. It will flounder, over time becoming diseased. Emotional stress from trauma is as hard on the heart as physical stress.

Cliché

The heart. Just the word is cliché. Heart. I heart you. It brings to mind thoughts of love, thoughts of forever, thoughts of days like Valentine’s and surprise birthday parties. Poetry and broken romances.

Oh, to bring back the days when the heart symbolized something simple. When the cliché was welcome. Familiar. Today, the heart reminds me of trauma. Survival.

The heart is the centre of the body. Where the soul is cradled. It symbolizes our will to live even in the darkest of nights and the coldest of days. It is our core. The place that contains the flame. At times it burns as bright as a bonfire. At others it is as dim as the flicker of a dying candle. It is always there. Though it may shatter into a million pieces, it still tries to find a way to pull itself back together. Learning to beat around the scars that will always remain.

Thump. Thump. Baboom. Baboom.

“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” — Euripides

Sometimes we create walls around us. Walls that we cannot see over. Walls with out doors or windows. Brick walls so high we can barely see the sky. Walls we believe will keep us safe. Walls in our minds. Trying to keep out danger and uncertainty. Walls that after a time become our prisons. Boxes that not only keep others out, but keep us in. Trapped within the power of our fears. Making choices based on insecurity rather than courage. Numbing ourselves so we do not have to feel the scary side of being human. Controlling our surroundings so no ghosts or goblins darken our doors.

I understand this need. I did it myself. When the world became a scary place for me, I worked hard to control every part of my life. Putting up walls to keep us safe. Creating a vertical prison. A box. The funny thing is. The more I controlled, the more unsafe I felt. The more bricks I placed, the more fear filled my body. Instead of dispelling it. It grew. I started to see shadows in the sunlight. Even sunny days seemed ominous.

I know this is not a healthy way to exist. I have learned the more I live with unclenched fists, the safer I feel. The less I control, the less I need to control. In my most difficult days, when my walls were so high they almost blotted out the sun, the dark terrified me. Ironic. I could not sit in the dark. I could not sit on my peaceful patio at night and take in the beauty of the stars above. I feared the nonexistent “monsters” that lurked in the bushes around me. I would try and force myself to sit in the feeling. My fear was too strong though. My heart would beat too quickly. I would have to go inside. My mind convinced me my fears were real. They were not. There was nothing there. Just monsters created in my head. A reason to keep building the wall. Until I found myself really sitting in the darkness I had feared so much.

Do not get me wrong. I still struggle with this. I know we live in a world that is not always safe. Sometimes things do lurk in the shadows. We all die. We will all suffer tragedies. We will all break at some point in our lives. We will all struggle. Sometimes life feels too hard. Too uncertain. Too uncontrollable. So, we tighten. We build. We do the exact opposite of what will help us. We focus on the darkness instead of allowing ourselves to live in the light.

But truly, what is life if we live hidden in the shadow of a wall? Refusing to enjoy the gift we have been given. A place on this planet. An opportunity to love. An opportunity to shine. An opportunity to succeed. An opportunity to fail. An opportunity  to be. An opportunity to stand in our courage in this crazy thing we call life. An opportunity to live.

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In the first days, weeks and months following the accident, Chris and I lived our lives open. We led with our hearts. The world we saw before us was beautiful. Shiny. There was no dullness. We saw our surroundings with new eyes. We were truly grateful for what we had. I have never felt so free. My feelings and emotions were not jumbled. Not tainted by fears and anxiety. No Judgment. They were not filtered. They were pure. Decisions were not hard to make. I just knew what needed to be done.

I did not realize I needed to protect it. This new way of seeing the world. We had been given a gift of true sight. We saw the world for what it was. We saw our lives for what they were. Gifts. Precious moments. Each heart beat something to be thankful for.

Though we had felt death’s breath upon our cheeks, we did not fear it. Instead, we felt invigorated by it. We felt alive in a way we had not felt before. I smiled with my eyes and my heart. I felt with every cell of my body. We both did. I loved in a way I had not known. I cannot describe it. It is not really describable. It has to be lived. But maybe I can liken it. To a roller coaster. After you have survived the drop. The exhilaration one feels after their feet have touched upon the ground after jumping out of a plane. It lasted longer though. It lasted for months.

But like I said above. It needed protecting. Perhaps living open is not our natural state. Most people do not. It can be too painful. Too raw. It makes us vulnerable. So, life seeps back in. We start to fear the fact we are different. That we do not really fit anymore. We know too much. People push back. Not everyone. But most.

So slowly. Without realizing it. We started to rebuild the wall the accident had torn down for us. A brick at a time. We let the shadows creep over us. We gave them more power than they had ever had. We made them real. The only thing. We know better now. We really do. We have seen the world outside of our boxes. We have lived life without a wall. And survived.

It is not easy. It takes true courage. The facing of our fears. The knowing we may die. We may break. But doing it anyways. Pushing against the panic that blinds us. Pushing against the phobias that lie to us. Looking terror in the face and holding. Saying I will stand in the sun instead of hiding in the shadows. Because letting fear run our lives is the true tragedy. It is being dead though our hearts still beat. I have been there. Some days I still am. Hiding in the corner. Hoping that the monsters I have created in my mind will not destroy me. Thinking only of myself and the terror I feel.

I do not always understand I am strong. That a wall is not needed to protect us. My box does not keep me safe within its prison like walls. Fear is not my ally. It is the illusion of safety. It took me awhile to realize that all I have to do is stand up and walk out of my prison. I have the key. Freedom is just on the other side of the wall.

 

“Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage, mean we face our fears. We are able to say, ‘I have fallen, but I will get up”

–Maya Angelou

It has been a long time since I have regularly written this blog. I needed a break from it. I needed to process the processing. I hope that makes sense. Let me explain. Processing a trauma is hard. At least it was for me. For us. It was not perfect. We learned a lot as we struggled to understand the world and ourselves in a new way. A way that was difficult to comprehend. While we processed, we discovered weaknesses and strengths. We touched bottom. Now we must look back and figure out what it all means. Get to know the people who have emerged on the other side.

In the first part of my blog I wrote about the hospital. About the call and what that call led to. My husband in a hospital room fighting for his life. Our children waiting with their Aunt and Grandma for us to come home. Me on a plane, then in the hospital sitting next to Chris day after day. Not leaving him until he was ready to come home. A family altered. Never to be completely the same.

Writing a blog has been a great outlet. It helped me work through the emotions and events of those first few days that followed the accident. Writing it down and sharing it released those scary moments. My body no longer had to hold them. Separated from those around me. Moving inside my head. Not knowing where to go. It helped Chris and I to grow closer. As we walked the path together, we often danced around the subject of pain. We tried to protect one another with our silence. We did not want to add to the weight the other carried. So we kept things to ourselves. The blog changed this. Chris could read how the hospital affected me. Putting the words to the page opened things up for us. It made us realize hiding things did not lighten the load. Instead it added to the weight.

In many ways we have processed the hospital. We can look back at it now. It is a part of our history. It is not the present anymore. While writing about it aided in the recovery, it was not easy. It brought things up. It reminded. I did not plan on stopping the blog after the hospital. It happened naturally. My fingers did not crave the keyboard. My mind still held the time following our return home in the present. Maybe the reason I can now write the next chapter is because it is finally starting to feel like the past.

The processing and the road that followed the hospital were not easy. We had so much to learn. We had wounds that needed to heal. We had a journey before us. We spent years on that road. Years. Not what I expected as we excitedly left the hospital. Walking beside one another. But, yes. Years. Days and months that passed by. In a fog. Trying to survive just one day. I guess that is where the saying, taking things day by day comes from. Sometimes that is the only choice we have. I used to think this made me weak. I no longer believe this. I now think it makes me human. I have learned so much. Chris and I both have. We are walking out of this storm changed. We are different people in so many fundamental ways. I hope we are better for it.

So, it is now time for me to process the processing.  To talk about the dark alleys we walked down. To share our struggles. How we almost lost one another in the darkness. How we almost lost ourselves. The storm battered us until the boat we rode in no longer sailed. For a long time it drifted. Lost in the doldrums. The winds that punished us died off, and we were left with peace and quiet. Our thoughts bouncing around in our heads as nothing seemed to change. Each day we worked on mending our sails, so that when the wind finally did pick up again, we would be ready. And now we sit in a boat that is moving forward. A patched together sail now catches the wind. We are no longer in the storm. The doldrums are behind us. We are both looking toward the horizon as we warm ourselves in the sun and the warm breeze that came to push us forward. It is time again to share our journey.

“Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.” –Pema Chodron

Acceptance. Acceptance is a hard one. At least for me it has been. I will gamble a guess and say that most of us grapple with it now and then. Maybe this is all a part of the healing process. I cannot be sure. I have read that finding acceptance is fundamental to finding happiness. To finding peace. To moving forward. I believe this to be true. All along I have known I need to allow acceptance into my heart and into my mind. All along I have worked to allow life to be as it is. It has been a torturous experience in many ways. The hanging on to how I wanted things to be.

It is not just the accident. I have had a hard time coming to terms with a lot of things in my life. In our life. The accident magnified our problems and our difficulties. More were added along the way. We wanted to focus only on healing. Sometimes life has other plans. It does not always do what we want it to do. Sometimes it really challenges us. In every way. There are so many things I would change. But I feel compelled to ask myself, if I did change things, would our lives be any easier? Better?

I believe acceptance is an important piece in the healing process. It comes in time, and we move into it when we are ready. It does not come because we want it to. We cannot force it into existence. We have to work through the mud and the muck to one day find it glistening before us. A precious gem. Found when we let go of the what ifs and the should haves. Allowing the world to exist just as it is. Not with bitterness and not with anger. Instead with a weary understanding that soon morphs into something different. It is no longer a sad moment. It is a liberation. A new sense of freedom. A transformation of self, into something akin to a butterfly. It is beauty. After all the discomfort comes ease. After all the clinging comes release. After all the sadness comes joy. I believe that it truly will be beautiful. A beautiful surrender.

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When we arrived home, Chris needed to relax and to rest and heal. Unfortunately, there were some issues that had to be dealt with. Chris needed a painkiller prescription. The hospital Tylenol 3s were not cutting it. The bottle was almost empty. We were living in a new city, and did not have a family doctor. Hard to come by. We did not know it at the time, but a prescription for a major painkiller. Not easy to fill. My first task. Find a family doctor. With a lot of research and phone calls I was finally able to secure one. A new doctor about 15 minutes away.

We left the kids with my sister, grabbed their bathroom step-stool. Chris climbed painfully out of bed and hobbled to the truck. The kids bathroom stool. A precarious step up into the now too high truck. The 15 minute ride to the doctor. Excruciating. Chris was in so much pain. 3 days spent sitting in a motor home probably didn’t help. His newly mended, but not healed broken back, his chipped tailbone, his broken ribs, his puncture wound all plagued him as we drove. I sat beside him. My body tense as I drove.

So there we were. Off to the doctor. Acting like we were strong enough to keep it together. Brave and fearful. It was a crazy post-accident situation. We were so far out of our comfort zone. So very far. We parked as close as we could, but still a bit of a walk away. Chris uncomfortably, dangerously lowered his foot on to the wobbly step stool as I tried to steady it. Slowly, ever so slowly, we made our way to the doctor’s office.

What we must have looked like to the doctor as we told him our story. He was nice, but I could see that it sounded incredulous to him. Like too incredulous to be true. We did not have paperwork with us. A mistake. Easy things were hard at that time. Simple decisions. Complicated.

Chris had the messiest hair. If you know Chris, you will also know that he has BIG hair if not tamed. And that day it was not tamed. He looked tired and drained, with dark circles under his eyes, and a big messy head of hair. We had a certain desperation to us. We were jittery. Awkward. We were still coming to terms with this life. This foreign life. The only thing we had as proof. The scar on Chris’ back from his back surgery. Seems like it should be enough.

Through this experience we have come to learn this. Painkillers are dangerous. They are often killers themselves. They should be treated with utmost care, and this is what his doctor was doing. So I do understand his reaction to us. It did not make that day any easier, but I do understand. While he seemed sympathetic he did not fill a prescription for Chris that day. Thankfully, Chris had enough T3s to last a few more days. The paperwork from the hospital reached the doctor’s office quickly. Then the doctor was more than happy to fill any prescription Chris needed.

That day. Somehow now it makes me laugh a little when I think about it. It makes us laugh. In so many ways. Not funny. But when I picture the two of us I think we must have looked like quite the pair. I am proud of us. We did it. We made it through. We did not give up hope.

Another dangerous step back in and out of the truck and a slow walk back to the house. An exhausted and sore Chris eased himself onto his bed. He would have to get through the next couple of days without the pain care he needed. He did. Chris is strong. Very strong.

I will leave it there. At the beginning of the next leg of the journey. The hospital was like the plane trip to a new destination. We had arrived. We were in the arrival zone, waiting for our luggage. We had so much to learn. So much to learn and no choice in the matter. Happy to still be together. No idea what the new world had in store for us. We understand this world a little better now. It is not really foreign anymore. It is no longer new. That is not to say there has not been culture shock. It has not been easy to accept the land we happened into. We are here though. We are living it. Making the best of it. Who knows maybe one day we will thrive in it. Maybe we are already and we just do not know it yet. Perspective has yet to come.

“Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — “Life is good,” “I’m safe,” “People are kind,” “I can trust others,” “The future is likely to be good” — and replaces them with feelings like “The world is dangerous,” “I can’t win,” “I can’t trust other people,” or “There’s no hope.”

— Mark Goulsten, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for   Dummies

As I drove the motor home up to the driveway and parked, I felt grateful to be home. We both did. I relaxed my shoulders just a little. As much as I could. Somehow, I had gotten us home safely. Tired, burned out and still coming to terms with what happened. In a too big for me motor home that now felt somewhat like a car. The highway had stretched long before us, and after what seemed like a lifetime away, we had finally reached our destination. It was not an easy trip, but it did not matter anymore. We were home. Our kids were there. Joy.

Chris was in pain. Of course, he was. He had just travelled hundreds of kilometres on minimal painkillers with major injuries. The pain had been his constant travel companion. He climbed carefully from the motor home. Walking was still difficult. His cane provided him with some stability. I cannot imagine home must have felt like to him. Seeing the faces of his children must have been beyond emotional. We moved toward the gate. Our children were waiting for us. We had been gone too long.

Some family members were waiting to welcome us home. My sister and mom made us a welcome home sign. The kids stood beside it. Welcoming their mommy and daddy home. Too little to really understand what was happening. Too young to understand why we had been gone so long. Our kids were used to their father coming and going, but I had always been there. I was their constant. My daughter had only just turned one. I had never left them before. Not even for the night; I had been gone for two weeks.

My sister watched as my daughter saw us. She says it still breaks her heart. It was as though my daughter had just realized we had been gone, while at the same time she was surprised we had come back. What does a one-year-old brain do with that? Does it feel abandoned? Does it feel traumatized? Does it store it? Remember it in some unconscious way?

My son, he was just three years old. Old enough to know his daddy was in an accident, old enough to know his mommy left to take care of him, but too young to really comprehend the realities of what that meant. He was definitely traumatized. He showed it. He would not let me out of his sight for a long time. He needed me near him. Us near him. As he tried to understand that his daddy could no longer wrestle with him on the trampoline, that his daddy could barely walk, and that his daddy was changed.

I look at the pictures of those first few months home, and I still somehow cannot believe those people are us. We were so elated and happy to be home. Chris was alive and walking. We still had so much hope. At the same time, we were so naive. So unbelievably naive. Me, I am no longer naive. Chris, well I think he would say the same thing. We had no idea that we had a mountain to climb ahead of us. A mountain the height of Everest. And not just one mountain; in the years that have followed we have climbed many. We have fallen into crevices, and pulled ourselves out, only to see yet another mountain awaiting our feet. There are still some before us. I can see them, but when I look back, I see the tallest and most jagged behind us. We are veteran survivors now. Our innocence left on a peak long ago.

“It is essential that we seek to understand the experiences of crash survivors and surviving  family members so that we can develop the means to mitigate both economic and non-economic cost of crashes.”

— Krista Haugen (“A Shot in the Dark”– Vertical Magazine)

What does an accident cost? For us. To be honest. We are still calculating it. We are still paying. Today. Three years later. I would like to tell you a story about an inspirational family. A family who pulled its shoulders back and got through it in no time. Whose lives did not change dramatically, except in ways that would make us feel proud. I cannot share that story. It is not mine to tell. It is not our story. Our story instead, is of a family that has struggled to find its footing along the way. Stumbling more times than we would like to admit. Making mistakes as we struggled to heal. As we tried to find the glue to put us together again. To hold us in one piece. To survive in the aftermath of a helicopter accident.

The cost. So very high. Higher than I could ever have imagined. That day on the beach. With my children beside me. When I got that call. The call. “There has been an accident.” I did not know what it would cost us. The high price we like so many others would pay.

Our children were one and three when the accident happened. So young. Just babies. They will know no other life. They will not remember the time they spent with pre-accident Chris and Shani. They will not know our innocence. Their lives have been altered. Fundamentally. They will know no other way. It has cost them. A mother who now often struggles with anxiety has replaced a much more carefree one. A mother and father who know the worst-case scenario happens. Lives can be changed in an instant. I know in my heart in some ways they will know us better now. Maybe we love them more purely. Maybe we now live more purely. Their lives though. A part of their lives was stolen on that day, and the days following. Though we shelter them from it the best we can, children are wise. They feel our feelings. I pray we have cushioned this for them in a way that has protected them. That this cost won’t weigh heavy upon them. Now or in the future.

Financially. This is something I am not very comfortable talking about. I feel it should be addressed though. It is part of the price. I would like to say it does not matter. For most of the time, I have pretended to myself it did not. It’s not what really matters. This is true. We still have Chris. This is what really matters. To say it does not matter at all though. Is false. Money means security. We are a family of four. At the time of the accident, Chris was the only one working. He paid the bills. He provided security. What do you think happens when there is an accident? Do you think the people carry on normally just a few months later? Insurance will cover all the costs? The finances won’t take a major hit? Something else I did not get at first. For a long time. We had worked so hard to get where we were. Financially sound. Secure. The accident changed everything. While our friends, family and peers were still building, we were going back to the beginning. We have gone back past the beginning. Much deeper than that. We are just starting to recover now. Three years later. Like I said, I do not like talking about finances. We have hidden our struggles from everyone we could. Shame, I suppose. The feeling of weakness. Failure. It stings. There have been so many roadblocks. Turned backs. Forgotten support. Mistakes on our part. Made in the midst of dealing with the trauma. When we are talking about the cost though, I do not believe we are the exception. The financial cost. Huge.

Our relationship. We have had more than one person in the know tell us it is not common for a relationship to endure after major trauma. I now understand why. I swear it has pushed almost every button. Both in ourselves, and in our relationship. Hard. We have gone through this together, and we have gone through it apart. We all deal with trauma in our own unique way. Though there are similarities, no one heals or deals quite the same. These last few years have not been easy on us. Though we have learned so much, and have much to be grateful for, I do wonder where we would be if things had been different. Where would our relationship be? Would we have struggled the way we have? The way we still do? Again, it is another cost which is hard to calculate. I do not think we will really know what it has cost us until we are much further into the future. Further away from the accident. I do know it has cost us dearly though. There has been a price to pay. I just hope in the end it has brought us closer together. So the price will be worth it.

Our relationship with others. With the world. With the universe. With aviation. The cost to our loved ones. To those who have supported us along the way. There is so much more I could say about these costs. So many more I could add. If I sat here long enough, I could come up with a much longer list. I could fill pages. I am not saying everything since that day has been negative. That every day has been a withdrawal. No, there have been plenty of deposits. Many gifts along the way. We have much to be thankful for, and we feel blessed in so many ways. I would be lying though if I pretended this accident has not taken a lot from us. Sometimes it feels it has all been taken without our consent. Make no mistake. An accident. Any accident costs too much. For anybody. The costs. There are so many others who have paid. Who will pay? The cost of an accident. Hard to calculate. So, I will call it this. For us. Priceless.

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” — C.S. Lewis

Tomorrow is three years since the accident. July 5th. A day that will always hold significance in our lives. To this family. I find myself looking forward more these days. I think this is a good thing. We are starting to try and make plans again. Real plans. Ones we think about. For a long time, I think we reacted. We did not know it at the time, but we were reacting over and over. Trying to find a way back to our normal. We did not realize this was not the point. Our pre-accident normal will not be again. Even when many days have passed, and the accident is but a distant memory. Our normal will never be the same. The accident has changed us.

We talk more about other things. About outside interests and finding paths that bring us joy and happiness. These feelings seem not as foreign now. It feels as though one day, we will feel the same as the majority of those who walk beside us. We won’t always think about the fragility of life. Of the dangers that surround us. Instead, we will focus on the things in this world that make us feel good. It has been a while since we have focused this way. For so long our sights have been set on survival. Surviving. Making it through the day.

We are still rebuilding. In so many ways. The accident hit our family hard. It has taken us so very long to adjust our sails to let the wind favour us. For so long we have fought against it. We were always looking back. Trying to get to the place we had made for ourselves before that fateful day. We have now adjusted, so it does not topple us over, but instead sends us in the direction of our dreams. We forgot about them for a while. We forgot we were dreamers. Music makers.

So, on this day. The night before our world changed so drastically and permanently, I look forward to better days. To days filled with laughter, and adventure and love. I do not want to just survive. We are no longer content with merely getting through our days. Let this year treat us better than those before it. May our struggles fall by the wayside, and the sunshine down upon us. Let us live the life of dreamers. Whatever those dreams may be. A home in the woods or an apartment in the city. Travel or being surrounded by friends and family. Dreams do not always have to be big, they just have to hold significance. Today, I dream of finding our place in the world again. Of feeling comfortable in the minutes that make up our days. Of finally finding solid ground upon which to stand.