The Messages In Disappointment

At the end of April, I felt pretty indestructible. I was fitter than I had ever been in my life, climbing mountains with ease and following the daily yoga practice I’d aimed for for years. I’d just turned 30 and had made my list - and as part of that list I’d booked a guided trip to do the Welsh 3000s at the end of June. I was excited to start training, and excited for a summer working through my list and being out in the green hills and woods.

And then came May. I managed to get a persistent bladder infection which knocked me sideways for two weeks. A blood test revealed I was low in iron and I started on supplements which made me bloated and lethargic. And just as I was back to feeling myself and catching up with my training schedule, literally days back into it, I leaned on my knee going into full lotus and heard an undeniable pop. Luckily it wasn’t a tear, but the sprain, the physio told me, would take 10-12 weeks to fully heal.

Just like that, my summer plans were over. I had to cancel the Welsh 3000s, and couldn’t walk to the end of the road without my knee hurting, let alone through the newly flourishing green oak woodlands. I was so, so angry with myself. So frustrated. I went between blaming my body for letting me down, before quickly over-correcting to blaming me for letting my body down. To be honest, my days are still laced with frustration; every day I miss walking, especially when I look up at the mountains and see they’ve turned from grey to green now.

But I also decided early on that I couldn’t let this summer become a festival of disappointment and frustration. I knew that this wasn’t just bad luck – my body had carried me through an incredibly hard winter, and it was trying to tell me something important right now. I decided to look for the messages, the lessons and, yes, the opportunities within this disappointment.

What have you been distracting yourself from?

I came across an Anais Nin quote the other day which said“when one is pretending, the entire body revolts”. While I feel my body and I have a positive relationship and it’s not revolting against me, I do know it’s having to take drastic measures to get my attention. I’m not sure exactly where I’m “pretending”, but I do feel with hindsight that my focus on physical challenges and training was a distraction from everything else in my life. It was something I could control when so much else (like where I’m going to live come August) is, for now, out of my control.

The last eight months have been pretty tumultuous – ending an emotionally abusive relationship, moving into a holiday let, health scares, selling my house. While I’d say that on the whole I’ve coped with this pretty well mentally, my body has been keeping the score. Probably the last thing I needed this summer was a mammoth hiking challenge. Probably more what I need is a little tenderness, some space to vent out the stress and heal what I can’t see.

The mountains aren’t going anywhere

This quickly became my mantra. Every pang as I drove along a scenic road and longed to be up in the hills, every time yet another person told me they were doing the Welsh 3000s (literally everybody I’ve met is doing them), every photo of Snowdon on my feed: the mountains aren’t going anywhere.

Everything I want to do this summer will still be there next summer – the only thing that won’t be, is my house. And there’s the opportunity. I am writing this sat on the bench outside my front door; the sun is warming my feet, there’s a blackbird singing in the sycamore overhead and the breeze through each different tree is an orchestra of leaves. I won’t live here (if all goes through) after August. It’s unlikely I’ll ever live anywhere like this again.

So maybe that’s what I need to make this summer about. Not traipsing off up all the hills that will be here still in autumn, and spring and next summer and every year til long after I’m gone. This summer is about healing in this magic spot, drinking in and enjoying every last bit of it so I have the memories forever.

Taking the long view

As much as I’ve felt frustrated and wanted to “just” see if I could go walk up through the woods, the stronger impulse has been “don’t make this the thing that ruins your knee forever”. Because although ten weeks feels unbearable, especially when your greatest solace is climbing over rocks and winding up tiny paths (it is where I feel most myself) – in terms of my lifetime, it’s nothing. Impatience now could mean that my knee holds me back forever, and I just don’t want to do that to myself.

So while life is short, it’s also long. There is time to do all the things I want to do, and also I have (god willing) a long while left in this body. All any of us has, at the end of the day, is our bodies. They are our most precious resource, and I know we need to work together to keep it operational and able to do what I want to do for decades to come. So that has had to be my priority.

Earlier I said that I “decided” to look for the messages and opportunities within the disappointment. It was something I had to decide early on after my injury, and something I have to decide every single day too. An ongoing choice to look for how this can make me better, rather than dwell in how it didn’t work. I find that looking for the meaning, looking for what I need to see in a situation, make the work of positivity that little bit easier.

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