Convalescing: Stage 3

How does anyone navigate healing? When you are sent home after surgery there is a feeling that you have been set adrift upon unknown waters. As I mentioned in my last few posts I am eternally grateful for the visiting nurse and the many check-ins from the hospital, but still, you are generally left wondering if you are doing what you should in order to fully return to your productive self. Now that I am just about one month on my recovery journey, I have discovered a few helpful tips, which I hope will help anyone who is convalescing after surgery or is on the road back from an injury, and these I will share.

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Light in the Dark

What a week! Without going into too many, or any actual details, suffice to say, this week has been a tough one. Days that start in the dark predawn and end with the same blackness all around, with little time to get outside or feel any sunshine are onerous. Seems like burdens just mount after a string of days like that, doesn’t it? Hard to motivate. Thankfully, I live with a dedicated illuminator, who takes her job seriously, and plots out all the ways to shine brilliant light in the darkest of the dark days.

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What to be Called?

Whoopi Goldberg became a grandmother at 34 and is now a great-grandmother. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of “Vogue” magazine, has three grandchildren. Meryl Streep became a grandmother in 2019 (Insider). And, yes, now I am one too. What an extraordinary club! But what to be called? Vanity suggests something cute and sassy like Mimi or Yaya or Gigi, but Grandma, oh that has so many connotations that might suggest baking or needlepoint, or at least level-headedness, right? Might I still be in a nightclub at midnight or be dashing around the south of France or even, dare I say, unsure about my future with a moniker like Nana? Didn’t we all think those matriarchs, a bit round in the middle, coiffed grey hair into a bun, always in an apron, knew their way around a kitchen, and knew for certain what their tomorrow would bring? Seriously, those names and every association with them is weighty. How can I step into those shoes and feel they fit while there is so much I am still learning about life? Grandmother? Feels tight.

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