Seconds before disaster

One night this week, when my insomnia was intense, I took a break from my usual window shopping (digitally that is). I looked through the folders on my phone to clear out any unnecessary photos or videos, like duplicates, old ones, or anything that is no longer needed.

The first folder I looked through happened to be my camera’s photo, and very early on, I stumbled upon a video I don’t recall recording – it was a video showing my husband and our dog walking towards me.

It took me a second to place the location where the video was, until it hit me – it was taken literally just before I fell and broke my ankle.

It was so surreal watching it, knowing what happened next. I wish I could reach in and warm myself to stop and look where I’m going, but my Android phone unfortunately doesn’t come with a time-turning ability.

What stuck with me, even now, after seeing it several weeks after the event, is how tangibly different the passage of time can feel in life. The video, although only seconds long, is infinitely longer than the actual fall. The breakage is instantaneous, but the consequences are prolonged and will continue for many months.

Since finding the video, I’ve become hyper-aware of time and what I want to do with my time on Earth. The hyper-awareness, which is on par with my emotions generally, is coupled with the lyrics of a song. In this case, the associated lyrics are from a song (Another Day: 1999) in the musical Rent, which was one of the movies that made me fall in love with musicals:

“The heart may freeze, or it can burn
The pain will ease if I can learn
There is no future, there is no past
I live this moment as my last

There’s only us, there’s only this
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss
No other road, no other way
No day but today”

It feels like a lifetime ago that I first saw the movie. I can still vividly remember the moment I heard these lyrics, exactly where I was, and how it made me feel – as if it only happened 5 minutes ago.

I’m not sure why it took a broken ankle to remind me to make the most of each day, week, month, season, and year. It won’t always be possible, I know. I’m human. But it is something to strive for.

Oh, the distance

I know this move is what we were meant to do to bring us where we are meant to be. God opened every door that needed to be opened and provided everything we needed to make our dream a reality. Our new life and home are the fruit of years of trusting and waiting on God’s timing.


I love our new home. There is still some stuff that needs to be sorted, but we will get there.
The broken ankle was a stick in the spokes of my idea of what arriving and exploring would look like.


It has kept me housebound for the most part. The 2 flights of stairs to our apartment stand like a mountain in front of me each time we go out – a mountain I can, at this point, hop up one stair at a time. And my innate clumsiness poses a risk of hurting myself further.


I might be going a little stir crazy, however not to the extent of mustering the resolve to climb down and then later up the stairs. So at home I am.


For the last week or two, there has been a tugging at my heart – the figurative one. It’s not the type of tug I get when watching a sad movie or hearing a song that reminds me of simpler times.


There used to be only one tug; however, more were added. The very first one is a thread leading to a wonderfully weird and wise woman, who skipped my defense and hopped straight into the best friend position.
Somehow or sometime between the bonding over musicals, coffee, and inside jokes, she chipped off a piece of my heart with a thread still connected to me and kept it close ever since. When she moved across the country to start the next chapter of her life, it was the first time I felt the tug. The thread that spans cross-country and the piece of my heart that is permanently tucked away in her heart.


Flash forward a couple of years to now, when it was my family’s turn to start our new adventure – our much-anticipated move across the country. I’m no closer to my bestie than I was before we moved. According to Google Maps, we are actually further apart.


During the move, I left behind two more pieces of my heart and uncoiled two additional threads to two different hearts.


These threads are a dozen or more degrees right of my OG bestie to my other two best friends who remain in the city we left in the rearview. The one thread leads to a beautiful mommabear who modeled what love, nurturing, and being a mom are long before she had baby bears of her own.


The other thread leads to an unexpected older sister (not by blood) who taught me kindness even in the face of undoing and how to paint the world around her with her overflowing compassion and vibrance, she may not realise she has.


Being confined makes me feel the tug of the three threads constantly reverberate in my heart in everything I do. As long as my mind keeps reminding me of the distance, I will keep reminding my heart it wasn’t “goodbye”. It was just “see you later”.


As expected my husband had no problem making friends wherever he goes. It comes so naturally to him. His outgoingness and confidence are two of the many characteristics of him that I adore. And I wish I had more of either of them. He made his first friend the night we arrived and now with the neighbour that just moved in – how does he do that?!


I know my ankle eventually will be better, climbing the stairs will be simple once again, and we will go places where I will have the opportunity to find friends.


But for now, my hands are firmly wrapped around the warmth of those three threads as I wait on the Lord for my own outgoingness and confidence when meeting the friends He already hand-picked for me.

Ready. Set. Adapt!

It’s been a little over two weeks since I broke my ankle. And much like my previous medical experiences, it felt like those weeks crept and flew by at the same time.

I thought we had crossed the hardest part of the process – being the surgery and the first couple of days. But life likes reminding me that recovery is not a linear process.

Some days the physical part is harder – like today, where my leg ached more than usual after I slept weirdly last night.

Then there are other days when the emotional/mental drain is harder. Even the simplest of tasks, like brushing teeth or changing from PJs to day clothes, felt like a mountain I was not equipped to climb.

And the worst days are the ones where both facets are just exhausted and over it. And this week has been filled with a touch more of the “both” category. The exhaustion and anxiousness feed into my frustration with being unable to do what I normally do to relieve some of that anxiety, which is to scrub down the shower.

Obviously, there is no sitting on my hands and knees at this point because:
a. The epiphany of sitting in such a way that I can freely use both my hands while keeping my casted leg dry has not yet come to me.
b. I’m even more vertically challenged than normal. The idea of my trying to reach for items while balancing with one crutch loudly sounds off all the red alerts. One broken leg is enough…

Reflecting on the last two weeks, I am once again reminded of how adaptable humans are if we allow ourselves to.

I’ve gone from nearly face-planting when just looking at crutches to moving around very comfortably. Although still a definite “fall risk”, I don’t wobble nearly as much as I did last week.
Hubby has gone from not knowing anything about buying furniture or hanging curtains or packing/unpacking boxes to doing most of that solo. I honestly couldn’t be prouder.

He never ceases to amaze me with his adaptability. He is the embodiment of “always good”. He can be having a bad day, be frustrated and tired, but he will still smile and make sure to put a smile on someone else’s face. A quality which I completely adore, and sometimes envy (not in a resentful way). He makes it look so easy to be his authentic self and take change in his stride.
I’m grateful to have him there to hoist me to my feet when I am too tired to lift myself from the floor. He doesn’t mind taking over duties that are just physically too difficult for me. The list of all the small acts I can never repay him for keeps growing.

So we are where we’ve prayed, where we would be. The road to get here may not have been what we thought, but the joy and excitement of the trip is not overshadowed by the gravelly bumps.

Broken, but not broken

Nothing cements the end of a cross country move like an unexpected surgery!

Our little fam has been praying about moving to a bigger city for years, and each time it was a resounding “not yet”. Until this year, when God finally gave us the clear message that now is the time to go. And so we listened.

It happened so very fast from the second we nudged the ball to get it rolling.

Apartment found and lease signed – check.

Boxes packed, and repacked, and even MORE boxes packed – check.

Getting car services and tyres check for the 12+ journey – check.

Movers arranged and bigger furniture sold before we left – check.

Taking our pupper for a check up and getting her some meds for the road – check.

Spending some quality time with the loved ones we were leaving behind – check.

And then we hit the road. All 3 of safety belted, armed with coffee and breakfast buns. No coffee for pupper obviously… but she had a lovely breakfast to wash her relaxant down with.

The driving part, in my opinion, is one of the most fun parts of a trip. The opportunity to see new surroundings, listen to good music, eat yummy snacks and chat about anything and everything.

We thought this trip would be no different. We thought we would have nothing to worry about except taking breaks for the pupper and make sure we reach our destination within a reasonable time.

But as is par for the course for me when on the verge a big life change, I once again, publicly and embarrassingly, took a tumble. I misstepped off the sidewalk into a ditch and landed with all my weight on my leg. There was a definite “crunch”.

We are thankful to the four strangers who rushed to help us. We were in such a state we didn’t get their names. I was in full ugly cry mode and hubby was in full superman mode – even in his unfit state he lifted my overweight body like it was nothing and carried me to the car.

This was the first time in my life I broke anything. I used to be more of a scrape-or-bruise kind of gal. When the dust settled we learnt I broke not one, not even two… but THREE bones in my ankle area. The breaks themselves were clean, but the number required surgery to make sure it would all heal properly. It had me in tears again not that I didn’t want to have my leg fixed, but the idea of sleeping in a hospital is still a trigger for me.

Thankfully, we found a wonderful orthopedic surgeon with lots of experience and a kind heart. With it being a low risk surgery being admitted to a day hospital was perfectly fine – no need for me to sleep over in hospital.

We are so grateful for the people God handpicked to be there on the day from the receptionist to the nursing staff who handled my discharge. They were all beyond kind and willing to go the extra mile to the strangers still getting their bearings in a new city.

The surgery was two days ago now and went well. Despite my wide range of medical treatments and procedures, this is the first one that called for a nerve block. I’ve heard about it before, but never needed one.

It was so strange. My leg from the calf down was numb. The kind of numb when your foot has fallen asleep, and it was just before pins and needles would start. Every time I woke up from a nap I felt it, my brain automatically sounded the alarms to get that leg moving to return some blood flow. But the leg was fine and the blood still circulating.

The anesthesiologist joked that I would miss the nerve block once it wore off. And, man, was he 100% correct. This broken leg is one of the most painful moments of my life – second only to the horrendous back pain I woke to after 6+ hours of surgery with no physical way for me to sit up straight yet.

Despite the medical madness, the chaos still can’t steal the joy we are feeling about our new adventure, new plans and new home.

It may look different from the dream in our heads or not be working with our initial plan, but let’s be honest – life rarely does follow the “plan”. In between the pain and hardwork the move has still been so much fun.

It’s all worth it because I know:

  • We followed God’s timing and we are now where He wants us to be.
  • I have one amazing husband to share everything with.

Struggling

I recently learnt something, that I wish I could unlearn, about a couple of people whom I thought I’d become close to…

It wasn’t a shocking revelation or even surprising really.  But still, the wave of shock managed to wash away the thin veil of the benefit of the doubt that kept long-held suspicions neatly from the observing eyes.

I blew through the first stage of grief and crashed solidly into the wall of anger.

Some would call it righteous indignation, and they would probably be correct. But the thing with righteousness is you can only really call yourself righteous if you’re blameless and without sin – which I most definitely am not.

But why do I find myself this angry? Is it really just because I know what they are doing is wrong? Or is my anger a symptom of a subconscious struggle I wasn’t necessarily aware of.

Turns out, it wouldn’t be long before the Holy Spirit drew back the curtain to show me the bigger picture.

Yes, I am angry because what they are doing is wrong, and they know it. The blatant disrespect is astounding.

But the thicket of anger that is rapidly spreading also comes from:

1. A sprout of recognition of a part of myself that I still struggle to forgive and forget. A young women who thinks that she knows best when life still has many lessons to teach her before she can really even understand what “best” means.

2. A seed that people can so flippantly take shortcuts to circumvent very important milestones of commitment without realising why the longer route is necessary to build and understand the significance of each milestone.

3. Deep roots of cynicism that what is done in the dark may never come to light until it is much too late to prevent disaster.

4. A hundred cuts from the thorny branches that are a constant reminder that sometimes those who come to love and respect the purpose of God’s design for relationships, will still be forever robbed of the opportunity to achieve some of those milestones.

I am thankful that learning this thing revealed a portion of my heart and thoughts that I need to actively Jesus to work through and help me heal.

My logical mind knows that He has other things in store for us, but sometimes my crown still slips, my vulnerable heart still aches and insecurity still creeps into my thoughts.

Still me, let’s see

With how quickly the first semester of 2025 has flown by, I’m grateful that I didn’t dive into the “new year, new me” trap.

So muchs happened that it feels like the last seven months were at least three and a half years long.

It’s not that I didn’t have dreams to focus on or goals that I wanted to reach. I rather opted to go into the year with an full prescription of extra kindness.

Kindness toward my inner child who had her parents (biological and not) scattered in different directions leaving her feeling a bit lost at times.

Kindness toward my inner professional who sometimes needed to do breathwork from the bathroom floor on the days where the feeling that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get to everything started to overwhelm her.

Kindness towards my inner student who wanted to accomplish more academically / technically but couldn’t muster the energy to focus on that after hours.

Kindness towards my inner artist who is surrounded by so many WIPs and is crippled with indecision about what to complete first.

Kindness towards my inner survivor who tries to manage anxiety, the lingering effects of medical trauma and chronic migraines with a sweet spirit but sometimes needs to slip on a porcelain mask of forced strength to keep those around from seeing how truly tired she is.

Kindness towards my fallible nature who repeated needs to consciously decide to endure prolonged frustration and uncertainty when het patience wears thinner with each passing day.

So with this theme ooming in the front of my mind, I’ve learned some things about the act of being kind:

  1. It requires practice. Much like exercising a muscle to strengthen kindess a conscious commitment to do it.
  2. The more one practices being to oneself the easier it becomes to be kind to others.
  3. Being kind doesn’t require one to abandon their boundaries that protect one’s peace from external influence. One can be kind from behind those boundaries.

To quote Maya Angelou, ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel’. Remember the “people” includes you – so be kind.

Queens wear crowns

August is women’s month in South Africa. And coincidentally it also baby season! There were 3 baby announcements in my immediate vicinity in the last month or so. Some planned, some less planned, but all welcome.

I knew there would be micro seasons where the topic of children would be pervasive and unavoidable. So consciously preparing for the announcements, pregnancy shoots, gender reveals, and baby’s first has been high on the priority list, and so far, it has been helpful. I find it much easier now to be truly grateful and happy for the parents-to-be while being content with our situation.

But sometimes there is still a niggly little voice that sows seeds of pain and insecurity. A voice that likes to make me feel like I’m incomplete even if this is the journey God chose for us.

Our particular situation isn’t common and finding support from people who can truly empathise is difficult. I know of only three women in my life who chose not to have children, while there are about a dozen who wanted to, but simply couldn’t.

In a semi-recent session with my psychologist, I brought up how, after having had my reproductive system dismantled (by emergency, not choice), I sometimes feel like I’ve been stripped of my womanhood to an extent.  I can only imagine that breast cancer survivors or alopecia warriors feel similar about their losses. For me, there is a feeling of inadequacy brought on by the strangest things, like missing the routine of having a period.

The psychologist’s response echoed in my heart still: “What does it mean to me to be a woman?”. Her question had me stumped. How do I view being a woman? How would I describe what being a woman is? Is it primarily linked to reproduction or is there more to it?

The answer was simpler than I thought. Women nurture and show compassion even when, while also being assertive and much stronger than we think. It never ceased to amaze me how much some women can physically and emotionally endure, while also keeping a sweet spirit and their heads held high.

Another question of hers that hit me square in the chest is if I would ever tell someone else the things I tell myself. So on the topic of womanhood, would I ever tell another person she is not a woman because she can’t or doesn’t want to have kids? The answer is in all caps, bolded, and with many, many exclamation marks: “NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”.

I am not the type of person to use something like that as a weapon against another so viciously, so why is it acceptable and almost easy to use it against myself?

I feel it’s still very much hard-wired into society for any family nuclei to have to want children and for women to want to fulfill that biological role. But why does it have to be? There is so much good to be done in the world that doesn’t require heavy labels being chained to ourselves.

At this stage, we don’t want kids, not just because we can’t; we are content with enjoying our lives and each other. We might change our minds in the future. We might not. Our decision does not make me less of a woman. God will reveal other ways for us to cultivate the next generation and leave a legacy, and that’s enough.

If I could, I would give the world’s most expensive and rare treasures to help you see yourself as the incredible lady you are who brings compassion and grace to everyone you know, even if you are facing battles others can’t comprehend. I hope you never discount their worth. Just know, you are worthy, and more importantly, God sees you for the queen you are, so rock that crown.

Oh, the ticking clock…

Throughout my life, I’ve become very well acquainted with nightmares.

It’s something that I experience periodically, but more frequently during times of intense stress and/or anxiety.

Although I know it’s a pretty standard thing that happens, it’s the brain’s way of processing things in our subconscious. Knowing that, unfortunately, doesn’t help me make sense of what I dreamt or feel less terrified when I wake up.

I naively hoped that after having the hysterectomy sleep would come a bit easier. Boy, was I wrong!

On top of the regular visits from the dysfunctional dream center, I also struggle with periods of insomnia, which together make a delicious cocktail of tossing, turning, and turbulent emotions. The irony is that the more tired I become, the more emotional I am, so going through prolonged periods of fitful sleep (if any) leaves me feeling like a child that my body can no longer carry.

There has been an interesting change to the underlying topic of the nightmares as of late that took me a while to recognise.

It used to be more surrounding failure to protect something or someone I love either from imminent physical harm or a battle that they were (or had) faced. I would always be a helpless bystander unable to save them or ease their suffering. Waking up would be a relief (eventually) when I knew we were safe or that the loved one’s suffering had long since ceased.

Another irony that is not lost on me is that the cause of my nightmares – the fear of the future and uncertainty – all stems from the ticking clock, the biological clock. I always hated that term and its connotation to being a woman. It’s like being faced with genetically acceptable infertility somehow invalidates our value.

But it’s not that biological clock that’s nagging at my subconscious mind… It’s becoming more and more away that big changes will happen that I have no control over or cannot prepare for.

It’s the time that I have left to love my floofy, or soulmate, or family, or friends, getting less and less. I can’t imagine a life without them. How do you say goodbye to something so deeply integrated into your life?

It’s adding up the lines of my resume. The accomplishments, experiences, or changes that feel like yesterday are getting further away. How do you stay on top of the game when the rules keep changing?

It’s checking and re-checking the dates and times for the next blood test, scan, or doctor’s appointment, in the hopes of it not being a bombshell, but knowing it can be. How do you plan for the future without worrying about the future?

Lately, waking up doesn’t bring immediate relief because they are much more focused on what’s ahead than the past or present. It takes a lot more conscious processing to help ease the anxiety.

I don’t have the answers yet. It will probably be like facing a pandemic or cancer – we’ll find a way to get through it. It wasn’t easy. It didn’t make sense. But when we got there, God was there. And He will continue to be there if something comes up in the future, and it will become a new normal. 

Scanxiety

This month is check-up month and the scanxiety is real.

I find it much easier to not worry about the outcome when the appointments are still a couple of months away. “Out of sight, out of mind,” as the saying goes.

But once the notifications become visible in my calendar, the little gremlin of fear starts tugging at my ear…

What if, much like the first diagnosis, the “nothing” is actually something? Am I mentally and emotionally ready to go through a cycle of treeatment again? What if it’s inoperable? What if it requires chemo? Will I be redeployed as part of the earthly warriors who are fighting with their bodies again? Or could this check-up be the start of my journey to being promoted to the rank of warrior-in-heaven?

After 3 years of hopping onto this rollercoaster for a quarterly ride, I’m thankful to only return to it every six months now – eventhough it feels like yesterday that the bloods, scan and examination came back with “no evidence of recurrence”.

But the thing with cancer is how unpredictable it is. It can come back without much warning and it can be anywhere. So for now, I’m counting down the days until we know for sure whether or not the whirlpool in the pit of my stomach is founded or not… only 14 days.

Triggers

I recently started rewatching the TV show, House MD, for the umpteenth time.

It’s one of those shows that triggers mega nostalgia from inside jokes with friends to bonding with hubby over it when we were still very newly wedded.

Despite how big of the big role such shows played in shaping the early-twenties-me I came to avoid it (and other shows with medical themes and scenes) completely to avoid those triggers.

My self-preservation slowly consumed any rational reasoning. Even ridiculously impossible medical situations such as emergency surgeries in an apocalypse scenario or pseudoscientists experimenting on supernatural creatures would leave me on the verge of a panic attack.

With each character in a hospital bed, I felt myself terrified, alone and trapped in a hospital room. I was stuck again in that intense mental struggle at height the pandemic when visitors were limited to hospital staff.

With each doctor scrubbing in for a procedure, I felt myself anxiously waiting to be put under for one of the many procedures and fighting with my body to do it’s thing that I could go home.

With every scan done on screen I could taste and smell the barium contrast I needed to drink before each CT scan and the sick feeling that kept me bathroom locked for that afternoon.

With every needle, my brain flashed through every time a technician drew blood, a nurse set up an IV line or a doctor administered anesthetics. Sometimes it hurt, sometimes it didn’t.

These are only to name a few…

I honestly thought I was just broken and I would forever be triggered by any semblance of a medical facility, worker or procedure. And the more time passed the more emotionally and mentally taxing coming in contact with those triggers became.

Ironically, the vicious cycle of intense, chronic migraines was the “trigger” needed for me, but more so the people around me, to see I needed help… the unprocessed trauma had caught up with me and it was wreaking havoc in my life.

I was fading deeper and deeper into fight-or-flight. The fear and aftermath was slowly suffocating the warrior in me.

I thought this was just who I am now. I was so focused on just “getting through” the cancer journey and ended up leaving a band aid over a deep laceration and hoping for the best – but it festered.

At the prompting of loved ones around me (after finally noticing the denial I was neck deep in) I took steps to drain the infected wound.

I found a phenomenal counsellor who not only gave me a significant appreciation for mental health professionals and how far the world has come with spreading awareness of and caring about looking after this very important part of the pillar of holistic well-being.

She not only helped to recognise the triggers and identify the symptoms, but also practically deal with triggers as they come up in every day life.

After nearly three months of weekly sessions I am not magically immune to triggers. I would be triggered again or I sometimes still feel broken and removed from myself. Thankfully, I am more equipped to confront, manage and work through what a trigger brings to the surface.

Listen to your body and listen to your loved ones. Find a mental health professional and help yourself. You are worth the effort.