Advice From Shark-Infested Waters

by Gail Lowe

Is anyone ever prepared for a life-altering crisis?  I wasn’t.

Our day started like any other day and ended with a back injury that left my husband with crippling pain.  Eventually he had surgery where they fused his back using rods and screws and bone grafts to stabilize his spine.  

In less than two minutes, an accident altered the course of our lives.  It took years of purposeful living to rebuild.  The following are lessons from our survival manual.  

Learn fast.

Figuring out what to do in the middle of a crisis felt like learning how to swim in shark-infested waters.  If I wanted to survive, I had to learn fast.  

Separate your fear of today from your fear of tomorrow.  

When things went sideways, fear became my constant companion.  Suddenly, I had become responsible for everything.  I worried that if I let go of a single thread the whole family would simply unravel.  Once I had all of those threads securely fastened, I felt calmer.  Even though we were facing an uncertain future, I had today organized.

Hang onto normal.  

Just because one part of our normal was broken, I didn’t throw the healthy parts away.  I held on to our existing routines whenever possible, it helped the kids feel safe and brought me comfort.

Get help.  

When family and friends offered to help, I let them.  [Ask the bank for extensions on loans and mortgage payments.  Use the food bank if you have to.  Let the schools know, teachers are a support system for your children.]

Rest.  

It was hard to stop working.  I felt as if I was one step ahead of a landslide.  Then I realized that I was in it for the long haul and exhaustion, whether it’s physical, mental or emotional, created more problems than it solved.  I learned to focus on my breath and shut off my mind.  If it wouldn’t stop talking I would think the word “in” as I breathed in and “out” on the exhale.  [Ear plugs help to quiet an extra stubborn mind.  It increases the sound of your breath while shutting out the rest of the world.]

Accept what is.  

Of all the things I needed to learn, acceptance proved to be the hardest.  Even now, I have times when I do the “if only”.  If only my husband hadn’t gone to work that day, if only there was a way to fix his back.  There is a lot of grief when a person’s life is irreversibly altered.  Focusing on the good frees you of the past.  The anger, the fighting against what is, traps you.

Look for happiness.  

Start small.  I listened to my kids laughing, looked for their smiles and watched them play.  I found moments that made me happy and stretched them out into minutes.  A song, a cup of tea when nothing needed to be done or a snuggle with my husband.

Hold on to your future.

Every day I looked in the mirror and told myself I was strong enough, that we were headed in the right direction and everything was going to be ok.  I stubbornly stayed in that place because, how was any other belief going to help me?  

The new normal.

The new normal arrived without fanfare.  No fireworks.  No parade.  Just fewer moments of pain, and longer periods of predictable, everyday life.  

What I learned in those shark-infested waters became my life skills:  

I don’t believe that anyone can truly be prepared for a life-altering crisis.  But we can recognize the importance of life skills and have our survival manual ready before we need it.