All Ears

Since I have landed back on US soil, I have spent many minutes trying to pretend that it is really easy to pick up right where I left off. However, pretty much everyone knows that I have never been very good at pretending...

Although I have jumped right back into a busy schedule of teaching and grading and coaching and cleaning and laundry, all the while trying to maintain being a good family member and friend, I have (somehow) been able to drive up to Boulder twice this week for my exercise therapy.

Both Dave and Quint, my trainers and slave drivers at the SCI Recovery Project, have verbally admitted to a few "WOW!"s during the two 2-hour sessions this week. They have both remarked on my increased core stability and hip control. Naturally, I was eager to show them my baby crawl, and immediately they made me travel three times the length that I had previously done in India. With a lot of grunting, sweating, and the occasion loss of balance I was able to take it one knee at a time down the length of three mats.

I am very intuned with my body right now. It tells me that it needs to stretch and be moved. It needs to feel loved and taken care of. I feel extremely encouraged right now and have been swimming and cycling and yoga-posing in every spare moment that I can find. It's hard, but I know that it is very worth my while.

At school, I was welcomed back with cellphone and iPod-bearing open arms from both my swimmers and my students. It was a really meaningful experience for me to be able to share my story with each of these kiddos. On Friday, I made a special effort to remind kids about the quality and care of a life, being it the day before the Snowball Dance (the very dance that I found my life drastically change a whopping 12 years prior). It is really important to me, almost my duty, to remind these young adults that the decsions they make not only affects themselves, but trickles down its way to everyone that has ever come in contact with them. Making good decisions not only paves the way for not having to create regrets, but it also ensures that you are trying to keep pain and terror away from the people you love, and most of all... yourself.

This is always a bittersweet time for me. I really do feel like I have a message to fly across the world and back, calling out to any alert ears that cross my path. I just only hope that there is understanding and recognition within ear's shot...