When I heard the voicemail of my wife, lying on the floor having fallen from a ladder, landing on her back and hitting her head on a stone floor, I felt sick. I could hear the pain, fear and panic in her voice whilst she waited for the ambulance.
The accident resulted in a fractured spine. As you may expect this potentially fatal and life changing incident has evoked a number of thoughts, feelings and reflections. Thankfully she has avoided the worst case scenarios and even surgery. After a number of weeks bed-rest and a long recuperation, she should make a full recovery.
When I first heard the message my mind started racing. It is amazing how fragile life can be and we take our mobility and health for granted.
My thinking was telling me all sorts of stories of what this would mean for us as a family. Of course I didn’t know for certain. Our thinking cannot predict the future. However we keep falling into the trap of believing it.
I believed the story I was telling myself on our fertility journey that I didn’t deserve good things, that there was something wrong with me.
What has been a real blessing from this accident has been the ability to see the gifts in it. We can only do that when we accept the reality of our situation. When we spend our energy wishing things were different, feeling the frustration, resentment and anger that goes with that, we miss out on the gifts of the moment.
After eight years on our fertility journey and being told there was no reason why we couldn’t get pregnant naturally, my wife had her full cycle/fertility for the first time in her life, and we found out I was infertile… spectacularly! We went through all sorts of emotions over the following months. We finally got to a place of acceptance.
We recognised more of what we did have in life and decided to pack up everything and go travelling with our dog. We could see the opportunities of the situation. It didn’t mean we were giving up by any means. We were just going to enjoy life to the full and realise our sense of happiness was no longer dependent on pregnancy tests.
I am amazed at how, from the very first moment, my wife was at peace (emotionally at peace whilst physically in a lot of pain!) with it all, seeing the opportunities for learning and transformation through this healing process.
I wonder in what ways you can see your situation differently that open you up to new learnings, opportunities and being thankful for things you perhaps had taken for granted. I’m not saying you don’t want to have a baby, far from it. It is just when we have the thinking pattern ‘I’ll be happy when…’ we are on the hamster wheel of life, we don’t get to the destination.
It is when we begin to accept where we are, recognise we have innate wellbeing inside us regardless of circumstances (it is only our thinking that tells us otherwise) we find peace of mind. We re-connect with our body/the here and now. It is from that place things are more likely to happen. As they did for us. And they can for you.
With love
