The Flourishing Soul

My Final Wellness Post

I‘m a mother to a child with medical complexities, and the problem is this: I’m tired of feeling like I’m surviving, or enduring, but rarely thriving. So, I paid $200 and signed up for a 15-week wellness program out of The University of Michigan for parents of children with special needs. This evidenced-based program, “Mood Lifters,” is modeled after Weight Watchers. This means, instead of a focus on losing weight, weekly goals are set and points are earned within the categories “body, actions, mind, mood, and relationships.” This is my final wellness post, and I am pleased to say, life to date feels something like flourishing.

The Flourishing Soul

The podiatrist points to my right foot and explains,

“I would do surgery on this foot first, and place pins in these three toes,”

I lean over my knees, tracking his hand gestures and open my mouth to ask the size and material of said pins, but with the sweep of his hand, he’s pointing to my other foot and explaining,

“When you recover, we’ll do the other foot, likely with pins in these two toes,” he says using his index finger to point to my pinky toe and its companion. I consider asking him if pinky toes are necessary, or just more of a formality, but I’m frozen, mid-thought and thrown into ice cold panic by his assessment of my situation:

“I can’t save your feet, but I can buy you more time, especially for running.”

I stare at his face as I let out a slow exhale, an attempt to relieve my quickly building anxiety, “I’m running out of time?” I say with a sheepish laugh, “Get it, running out of time”  I say with a smile, clinging to pleasantries and laughter as an attempt to suppress and relieve the rapidly evolving emotions building inside my body.

He nods, but doesn’t smile. “You’ve taken great care of your feet, but you’re going to need intervention, yes.”

I attempt to stay present, to gather the information I need, “I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I don’t think I have time for surgery, can you explain the recovery process?”

“For five weeks, following each surgery, you can’t drive, lift your children, or obviously run…”

I interrupt, “My daughter… she’s not typical. She’s six years old, and forty-six pounds, but it can be like moving, carrying, or changing an infant… She can’t move, or sit up or anything by herself. I can’t not lift and take care of her for five weeks. Or a cumulative ten weeks… I don’t know how it would even be an option for our family.”

He watches my face and says, somewhat sympathetically, “If you want more time on your feet, and to continue running, then I recommend surgery.”

I look over his shoulder at a sculpted replica of bones within a foot — the replica of a design which fuels momentum and connects us to the ground— to the earth.

“Maintenance mode is awful, isn’t it?” I say with a half-hearted laugh, “I thought I had all the time in the world.”

I sling my purse over my shoulder as I exit the medical building. My mind races as I strategize about the organizational logistics of two potential surgeries; would Tyler be forced to take a leave of absence to help with the kids? He didn’t even take leave when Nora came home from the ICU, or had G-Tube surgery, or even when she had reoccurring respiratory infections and hospital admissions. We just always made it work — God only knows how.

I locate my car, swing the door open, toss my purse to the passenger seat and start the engine, I rest my head against the steering wheel and whisper, “I don’t need surgery, I need a vacation” to the car horn. I sit up to stare out the windshield and begin to consider the obscure and unlikely possibility of utilizing a five-week recovery process as a personal retreat— I imagine the look on the podiatrist’s face if I were to ask, “Do your patients ever recover out of the country, perhaps on a beach, on something like a vacation for a surgery like this?”

 Surely this would result in nothing less than a deeply unsympathetic stare…suddenly, I’m angry, and I’m shouting, exacerbated by his imaginary, unamused, response to my vacation ponderings, and his not so imagined general lack of warmth, “It’s like he didn’t hear me! My daughter CANNOT MOVE — I have to be able to LIFT her, I cannot just disappear for five weeks at a time.”

I release another long exhale knowing my daughter will only grow and in the interim, my feet aren’t going to heal themselves. I tilt the driver seat back, open the sunroof, and stare at a purple sky — twilight — the quickly fading day. Quickly fading, like the time left on my feet…. “The parallelism is astounding,” I whisper to God — the fading daylight.

I whisper to the now-night, I can’t just forfeit running — it’s my lifeline.

A lifeline that developed quite suddenly, and without any real strong explanation, just two years ago, after I read a research-based article about the positive effects of intensive cardio, for thirty minutes, five days a week on mental and physical health for women. I took this recommendation and created something like a training schedule by dividing my runs into slow runs, and fast runs throughout the week, and since I started running, my goals have stayed the same — run in 30-minute time blocks and enjoy being outdoors: the wind, sky, changing leaves, the setting sun and the sliver moon.

When I first started running, Tia told me, “Never stop running — it’s going to save you.”

The world could not have known how a global pandemic might impact our lives, that “STAY AT HOME,” orders might close down the gyms on every corner, hiking trails, and even the parks and beaches. But, at least in my neighborhood, the runners kept running. And at the end of some very long and hard days of caregiving, virtual learning, and entertaining a preschool child with no preschool to attend, running out my front door at the end of the day might be what was, and continues, to save me amidst the fluctuations and uncertainty of our lives. Running is freedom — it’s my sanctuary. And as today proves, it is also a privilege.

I close my eyes and try to envision life without running, without my sanctuary. And then life in five week increments without lifting, moving, and exercising in the ways I’m used to, life without being able to lift Nora — life as a primary caregiver who can’t provide care.

It was my dad who told me that as a caregiver, I would need to fight many battles on behalf of my then 3-month-old Nora. She had just come home from the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) with the diagnosis of “abnormal brain structure,” and epilepsy. He gave me a letter titled: “Nora’s Mom, Warrior Princess” in which he detailed the many types of battles mothers fight on behalf of their children, and listed the many battles I would face on Nora’s behalf, but he emphasized this point:

“…And although the battle to protect and advocate for Nora’s well-being is an important battle – I want to make sure you know that the most important battle you will fight for her is not about medicine or therapy or diet or schools or treatment plans. The most essential – the most crucial – battle you will fight for her is the battle within your own soul.” 

This defines my motherhood:  the best gift I can offer my children is the gift of a thriving, healthy, and soul-flourishing mother. From there, I move with strength to mother my children in the ways they need me.

I know flourishing, even in this pandemic, has always been less about running, or setting wellness goals, or even the act of doing battle within my own soul. Instead, it has everything to do with saving space to learn and grow, to engage in relationships and practices that make me feel alive, space to run, pray, date my husband, read my bible and Annaliese’s hand- me- down novels, watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean with my family, and of course, write.

This, the pursuit of a flourishing soul, is what saves me.

I open my eyes to a sunroof filled with the night sky. I bring my seat upwards, turn on the headlights, and point the car towards home as I decide, quite uneventfully, to get a second, and maybe even a third medical opinion.

I have time. And, I’ll make space.