This time one year ago, I was a little over 8 months pregnant, and a sharp, unrelenting pain began throbbing in my lower right back with each step I took. It was not sciatica as many of my friends and colleagues predicted, but rather, a displaced pelvis. The weight of my baby boy had pulled my hip just short of dislocation, and there it would precariously remain until I started labor (at which point, everything elastic-snapped back into place and I could walk without a problem).
You know that old song that Counting Crows did a cover of all those years ago? "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone..." Well, all of the sudden in November 2017, that's how I felt about walking. Running. Stairs. I would watch people out my window jogging for exercise or making their way through the cold to their university classes. Oh, how I envied them.
However, as I hobbled around with my cane or did my best to manage in a wheelchair, I remember seeing others with various plights doing the same--and it was all I could do not to shout out and cheer them on. Never, ever had I seen a cane as a symbol of heroism until this experience. But when it hurts to stand, hurts to step, hurts to walk--you see someone else doing so, making their way with their means of transportation, and it's a bonafide act of valor in my eyes.
Today I'm grateful that this year, my cane resides in the back of my coat closet and the wheelchair is returned to it's kind owners. I'm grateful that this morning my beautiful, capable hips walked me and my little man more than four miles around the charming streets of our college town. Today I'm grateful for all the folks who walk, in their own way, assisted or no, using the mobility they have to do and to bless others. Today I'm grateful for walking.
You know that old song that Counting Crows did a cover of all those years ago? "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone..." Well, all of the sudden in November 2017, that's how I felt about walking. Running. Stairs. I would watch people out my window jogging for exercise or making their way through the cold to their university classes. Oh, how I envied them.
However, as I hobbled around with my cane or did my best to manage in a wheelchair, I remember seeing others with various plights doing the same--and it was all I could do not to shout out and cheer them on. Never, ever had I seen a cane as a symbol of heroism until this experience. But when it hurts to stand, hurts to step, hurts to walk--you see someone else doing so, making their way with their means of transportation, and it's a bonafide act of valor in my eyes.
Today I'm grateful that this year, my cane resides in the back of my coat closet and the wheelchair is returned to it's kind owners. I'm grateful that this morning my beautiful, capable hips walked me and my little man more than four miles around the charming streets of our college town. Today I'm grateful for all the folks who walk, in their own way, assisted or no, using the mobility they have to do and to bless others. Today I'm grateful for walking.
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