I made it my life’s work to raise a family. I never questioned what my destiny held. To me, it was full of promise and wonderful surprises endorsed by generations upon generations of women who came before me.

Even though I knew it would be hard, I was sure that the sum total would amount to more than a mere ‘living’. The fortune I would find would be life itself.

When I brought home each bundle of joy, I never wondered what my purpose was or what led me to that moment. By some miracle, I dove in with both feet, excited for the adventure that lay ahead of me.

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.
She never existed before.
The woman existed, but the mother, never.
A mother is something absolutely new.”

-Rajneesh

It was a journey all my own, something I had created for myself, yet totally separate from the ‘me’ that I was. These beautiful creatures would blaze their own paths, form their own thoughts, and have their own feelings, and I was but a small part of their origin story. It made me feel so powerful to have co-created human life in all its wonder.

As I molded these little people into whomever they would eventually become, I didn’t think much about my future, at least not with the trepidation with which I think of it now. I didn’t feel myself changing but I did feel myself growing, oblivious to the fact that growth, while gradual, is the most drastic of changes.

Every now and then, I turn around and notice little things that remind me of just how much time has passed. An age spot on my cheek, a wrinkle here, a grey hair there. A child I once knew grown into something greater than I am. When I feel my age, my heart begins to ache.

The Start of My Symptoms

My metamorphosis began with a light-headedness in a store one summer afternoon. With my children in tow, I scoured the aisles of my local Wal-Mart for a ten-year-old’s birthday gift when the world around me suddenly felt different. A sinking. A rocking. A subtle yet unmistakable ebb and flow. I tried to shake the dizziness away and go about my busy life, but it lingered and wouldn’t subside.

As the days passed, I grew more and more distracted and more and more concerned. My mind, in its ever-ready attempt to explain and protect itself, cautioned me of the one thousand and one possible causes of my new affliction. Some of them harmless, others straight out of my worse nightmares.

The anxiety was so raw and real that it flooded my thoughts and held my body captive. I went to thirteen separate doctors trying to solve this terrifying mystery. The process gave birth to something new and ugly in me. The life I breathed into it made me frozen. Immobilized.

I was afraid to leave my house. Skills and talents that used to flow freely atrophied into stone. I felt friendships drop to the wayside and family relationships strain from the weight of a burden that had grown uncomfortably familiar. I carried it everywhere I went. The people and things that once excited me filled me with dread. I felt passionate about nothing and worried about everything.

Losing Myself

Then came the pain. It shot down my spine into my shoulders and seemingly out to everything I touched. It was a pain that destroyed me both inside and out. It took with it, my job, my energy, my memory, my confidence, my freedom, everything that I loved most about myself. The things that made me most proud. My youth. My optimism and naivete. The sparkle in my eye in photographs.

I could no longer rely on the body I lived in nor the mind I spent many years cultivating and there was no escape. When a woman loses her investment in herself, it feels as if she can no longer care for anyone, especially herself. She falls into a deep depression punctuated with moments of extreme anxiety. The future becomes lost, hard, and scary.

No one knew the girl behind the smiling mask. I grew desperate to find my way back to myself, but I had thrown myself into raising this family. I ignored my own cries for help and felt I was no longer worthy of my own trust. All I could do was blindly trudge forward looking for anything and anyone to come along and point me in the right direction.

Thus began my search, not for answers, for I had learned those aren’t always forthcoming. Instead, if I was to call the abyss my new life, I wouldn’t sit around waiting for victimhood’s spoils.

If I had once created life, surely now I could conjure my own happiness. I made a deal with God that if he gave me back to myself I would never take ‘me’ for granted again. So, to every doctor’s appointment, every physical therapy session, every scan, blood draw, and pharmacy visit I took a book titled, “14,000 Things to be Happy About.”

I thought reading in waiting rooms would take my mind off of things. Maybe the anxiety would be kept at bay by thinking of things that made me happy. But to my disappointment, the author and I had little in common. Her privilege oozed in every line of her ode to affluence.

Her “reasons to be happy” were things like “summers in the south of France.” or “raspberry scones with clotted cream on the veranda with old friends.” It only made me more frustrated with the injustices of life. Of course, this lady could find so many things for which to be grateful. Her life had afforded her opportunities and experiences some only dream of. Whereas I, sitting in countless waiting rooms dreading my uncertain fate, didn’t even know what clotted cream was.

Taking Myself Back

And that was it. I was done with settling for whatever the universe spat out after it had devoured its feast. I would take back what was mine.

I decided to create my own list. I would use this book as a reminder that life isn’t fair, but we can’t let that stop us from finding…no…rediscovering ourselves. I filled in my own experiences to remind myself that I, too, had much to be thankful for. And the more I wrote, the more grateful I became.

We all start off small. Life knocks us around and we lose our way. The reason that it’s scary is because we feel like so many people are watching us fail. But inviting the unexpected shows us what we’re really made of. After all, if there was no free fall, how else would we know we can claw our way back.

Two years in, it’s becoming more and more clear. My medical miracle is me.

The woman that I let become best-supporting actress is the true talent of this show, and she’s the only one that can do the job.

Mothers give birth to so many things, not just babies. But the most important life she gives is the one she gives herself.