Surgery & Surrender
What is this here to teach me?
On January 2nd, I woke up from my knee operation. The prognosis was good— they had repaired my meniscus. But my recovery would be longer than expected, and I wouldn’t be able to walk for four weeks. My world has shrunk accordingly. Everything has come into a very narrow focus and now I am able to see tiny, magnified details. I lay in bed, staring out the window and watching how the snow laces the tree branches like powdered sugar. I hobble outside on crutches once a day to sit on a bench and feel the cold air pierce my lungs. I am experiencing everything I have spent my whole life running from— winter, loneliness, stillness, living in my parents’ house. But I am more curious now. It’s easier to sit with myself and ask, what is this here to teach me?
Of course, I did not want this to happen but as Pema Chodron writes, “Life is a good teacher and a good friend.” I can see how the pre-injury version of me was obsessed with physical movement as the means of cracking open the human experience. I saw embodiment as the pathway to healing and aliveness. Even my work-in-progress memoir, Soul in a Body, is about my spiritual journey of learning to longboard and surf and dance bachata. Now, I am being asked—what happens when this is all taken away? In these quiet winter days as my body recuperates and absorbs its stitches, I am learning to access a deeper kind of freedom. I have the power to create peace and joy even when my body is bruised and fragile and swollen. Even when I know I have months and months of recovery ahead of me.
For many years, I was caught up in the game of feeling good when my circumstances were going well. I was happy when I was healthy, when my bank account was full, when I found myself successful, desired, and worthy in the eyes of other people. When things didn’t go my way, I ruminated and resisted and spiraled into stories that nothing ever worked out for me. The gift of failure and rejection and loss is that it forced me to wake up from this game. When our egos shatter like little pieces of glass, when what we want doesn’t work out, first, we must grieve. But then we are given the opportunity to start over. To look at our crumbled expectations and hopes and say what else is here? How can I put these pieces back together?
Disappointing circumstances can be a portal to deeper consciousness. Perhaps we can only really know who we are when everything around us seems to fall apart. It was after a season of loss that I moved to Mexico and began my journey at the Free Bird Hotel. It felt a little silly to pursue my teenage dream of learning to surf in my thirties, but once I loosened my grip on what my life “should” look like, I was free to do whatever I wanted. I had nothing to lose, so it was easier to throw myself wildly into the human experience.
These days, I am finding a deep ease in surrender, in trusting that life is giving me the circumstances I need to evolve. Interestingly, when I am not so controlling and attached to outcomes, I see more opportunity. I find more joy in what is when I am not caught up in the fantasy of my ideal alternative life. I share myself more vulnerably when I don’t need a specific response. My best writing comes to the page when I stop worrying about how other people will perceive it. This is a new level of spiritual work for me, and I am grateful. Feeling free on a longboard is one thing, but feeling free on crutches is another.
If you are out there in a body walking around, please borrow my magnifying lens for a moment to notice something tiny and beautiful about your human experience. Tell me what you saw.
T-1 week until I can go back to Mexico, walk, see friends, and sit in a café with the sun on my face.
Thank you for reading!
Love,
Em