Letting It Go

We interrupt your regularly scheduled recipe for a quick-ish life update.

As you guys might remember, last summer I had a bit of a detour, as I broke my left kneecap in a freak accident. I haven’t talked about this much, aside from a line here or there, for a few reasons, but namely, I let the legal system stifle me.

It’s a long story, but I fell in the locker room at a city community center, on a polished concrete floor which had some water I didn’t see (water is practically invisible on polished concrete). For the past 7 months, I’ve been keeping quiet at the direction of my lawyer, while we waited for a decision on the claim we filed to help pay all the medical bills. I stopped Twitter-ing, and stopped posting to my personal blog, which is completely against my nature!

Last week, the decision came back basically as “your client is clearly a total klutz and we are not paying you anything.” Never mind that they shut down the community center for a week after my accident and totally resurfaced all the floors so they have traction now. I wasn’t looking for anything outrageous – just some help with the actual medical bills – but, that didn’t seem to matter.

After getting the news about the city’s decision, I had a tough decision of my own to make: I could take them to court, which would only draw this process out — potentially for years — and promises no guarantees, and could cost me more than the medical bills, or, I could move on and get my life back.

After a week of really mulling it over, you won’t be surprised to know, I have decided to just move on and get my life back.

Aside from the actual rehab itself, one of the hardest things for me has been to not talk to anyone about what I’ve gone through, to not share the trials and tribulations of what it takes to get better. To not celebrate when I started walking again, or to share the frustrations of a completely atrophied quad muscle and the learnings about how to reprogram muscle to work again. It’s not about money. I can make more money. What I need now is mental healing, and that can only be had by letting it go.

You keep your heart above your head and you eyes wide open
So this world can’t find a way to leave you cold
And know you’re not the only ship out on the ocean
Save your strength for things that you can change
Forgive the ones you can’t
You gotta let ’em go

-Zac Brown Band, Let It Go

They say scars are memories you can’t forget, and in my case, I have a good 5 inch scar front and center to remind me of my progress, which is not insignificant (the scar or the progress!). In good news, I am starting to feel more normal again. Not 100%, but, maybe 80% and feeling positive! It helps that the winter Olympics are on right now and pretty much every athlete has a knee recovery story.

You may have noticed that my posting frequency has decreased to only Tuesdays since the accident, and for that I’m sorry! Now that I at least have an answer from the city, and have decided to move onward and upward, I hope to start posting more like I used to, with a aim to provide recipes on Tuesdays and general content at least one other day per week. Sometimes, letting go is the most liberating thing you can do for yourself!

What do you have going on in your life that you need to let go?