The grief when sport and spirit are intertwined
I like solo adventures because it’s the only time I feel free. I intuitively set my pace. I feel the rhythm. My thoughts start to fade away. I smile to myself.
It’s the only chance I have to ignore the voice in my head telling me to slow down and stay on course.
It’s the only time I don’t feel repressed.
I love to adventure with my friends, but I live in prison.
When I’m alone, my pace is smooth. I don’t feel bound.
When my body feels good, I need to flow.
I need that feeling of freedom because I know, at some point, I’ll be back in prison, and my body won’t be able to flow.
There’s research behind the importance of setting your own pace. According to the study conducted by the Universities of Stirling and Edinburg,
“Ultimately, we found that 15 minutes of self-paced exercise can significantly improve a child’s mood, attention and memory — enhancing their ability to learn.”
I can relate. I know that setting your own pace as an adult is just as important, especially with a limiting condition or disability.
When I feel good, I have to take advantage of the freedom to move on foot, on my bike, or in the water.
I spend my entire life catering to my injury. Everything I do is routine, controlled, and planned accordingly.
I miss out on a lot. As much as I want to solo adventure, I want to be with my friends, but I have to stay on course. I have to say no a lot. I live in isolation during debilitating periods. Luckily, I’ve always liked alone time, but it still hurts. I want to play outside with my friends.
I injured my back working as a raft guide 13 years ago. There’s no escaping it.
Mentally, the recurring debilitation destroys me.
I have a glimmer of hope that someday, I can live free of these shackles and chains.
I should have lost hope by now.
Hope is only hurting me worse.
When debilitation sets in, I know I can’t exercise much for a week or longer. I can’t tolerate a lot of sitting, standing, bending, twisting, and lifting. Fatigue and weakness take over.
I can’t put forth enough effort to break a sweat.
The stagnation wears on me.
I fight the boredom — the deep yearning to move.
I try to savor the slower pace, the short walks, the sound of nature. I try to cherish the recovery phase.
Each day I’m down, I get more frustrated and lonely.
It’s summertime — my favorite time of year. My friends and I are making plans to ride, boat, and hike. I take caution to decide if I can go because I don’t get to choose — my debilitation does.
My husband gently reinforces that it’s okay to rest and not make plans. But he knows it would kill him just as badly if he were living this nightmare. He lives to move too.
I have to ask him to do so much for me: carry the laundry, pick up my things, cook, drive, and so on. I try to accept it. He reassures me that he’s not annoyed. I get depressed.
It’s the loss of independence and repetitive grief that kills me.
Once I recover from a bout of recurring debilitation, I’m back to square one: foundational exercises only, no bike rides, runs, or long hikes for a while.
I have to start over. I lose sight of the momentum I’ve built. I feel like I never move forward. I reach a plateau, then I crumble, and the cycle repeats itself.
I’ve started over a billion times.
I live in a body that was born to move. My sister and I are natural athletes. I’ve spent years conditioning myself to take on substantial athletic feats.
I’m strong enough to put a ton of miles on my legs, but I have a short circuit that stops my engine from running. It’s like I’m tuned up, with brand new parts and a paint job but an old, unrepairable engine. My legs, arms, and head are ready for the journey, but my back says no, park it, honey.
I can’t explain exactly how it feels — to hold myself back — constantly.
I’m only 38 years old, and 25 when I suffered the injury. I work with patients of advanced age. I relate to them — a loss of independence, isolation, and depression.
I tell myself to be grateful for the health I do have and to stop self-loathing. I tell myself I have a good life, appreciate it. I tell myself I have everything I need. Stop wanting more.
I remind myself of how far I’ve come.
Positive self-talk helps. But I still want more.
I want to break the chains. I want to be free.
I recently went on a camping trip with my family. To start our adventure, my husband and I did a 27-mile, three-hour, mixed terrain bike ride in the mountainous Canaan Valley in West Virginia — our favorite place to staycation. I prepared and did all the right things leading up to the ride.
Or so I thought.
It was my longest ride of the year, and I was ready. My body felt great.
After the ride, we hopped in the camper van, met my sister and family, and drove an hour and a half to the top of the North Fork Mountain to camp for two nights. We planned the trip so my sister could establish an F.K.T. (fastest known time), a speed record, on the North Fork Mountain trail. She’s an avid trail runner. It’s a rugged bucket list trail that I’ve hiked parts of, and my husband has biked a dozen or more times.
It’s not for the faint of heart.
I got caught up in the views from the passenger seat.
I talked to my husband, giddy with excitement from our bike adventure and the fun we would have camping.
I should have been in the bed of the van, recovering, doing yoga, and deep breathing.
And I forgot to take my magnesium recovery drink.
I shouldn’t have gotten lost in the moment.
I veered off course ever so slightly.
I should have known. I’ve been through this a million times.
Every time debilitation sets in, I over-analyze the events leading up to it. I search for answers. Where did I go wrong? I fight self-criticism and search for a way to learn from the experience. What can I do differently next time?
Or was it something I did or didn’t do leading up to the ride?
Maybe it wasn’t the following events but the preceding ones.
I drive myself crazy with questions. Blame and frustration overwhelm me.
We had a great first evening camping. My sister, feeling good and ready to run the following day, prepared and talked about the trail. We figured out the logistics to make her feat possible. My young nephews took delight in doing their part to help set up camp. We built a fire, cooked dinner, and admired the sunset on the driest high mountain in the Appalachians.
Well before sunrise, I woke up feeling slightly dehydrated, and my back was achy. I tried to stretch it out.
My back pain got worse. I got the foam roller out in hopes I could work it out. It was inevitable — debilitation was about to take over.
My sacroiliac joint had slipped out of place for the trillionth time, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I feel an intense loss of control every time it happens.
I wanted to keep denying it, but I knew the “achy” was the “bad” kind. It was not the tired muscle kind, but the kind when you feel your back losing stability, slowly, torturous, until it settles in like painful concrete, decreasing movement and function.
What if this lasts for days and I have to call off work? What if we have to leave today and miss celebrating my sister’s big adventure? What if we stay and I can’t sleep tonight and feel worse in the morning?
And the thoughts carried on.
My sister had started her quest bright and early, so we were getting ready to pick her up at the end of the 24-mile trail. My stomach sank. I knew I couldn’t sit in the car for a few more hours. Every movement began to hurt.
I told my husband, “I can’t go. I want to go. I am supposed to be there to see her finish.” After all, we planned the trip so I could be there for her.
I cried. His heart sank.
Debilitation wins every time.
My husband, brother-in-law, and my two nephews left to cheer for her finish. I laid in the van bed, crying, my dogs below my bed, looking at me with concern. I took all the herbs and anti-inflammatories I had on hand for pain and sleep.
My husband planned to bike back to camp — on the epic southern half of the trail — something I had wanted to do for so long.
Not this time. I laid in repression.
I fought the feelings of denial and anger and tried to replace them with acceptance.
Here we go again — the mind game of replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. It’s exhausting every time.
I finally found enough peace and deep breathing to fall asleep.
My mental health waxes and wanes with the state of my physical health; I’m depressed when I’m debilitated. I’m happy when I’m not.
It’s too much.
It feels like a roller coaster ride that never ends.
I’m up one day and down the next.
I’m overly grateful, and then I’m hopeless.
I’ve made drastic improvements to my reaction to the recurring debilitation.
Sometimes I can go six months without experiencing debilitation, sometimes only several weeks. Sometimes it settles in for a day, sometimes many days.
My emotional response varies but slowly improves over time.
I over-analyze everything I do — from the way I bend to pick something up or stand up from a chair to how I hold myself on my bike. I’m hyperfocused on my every move.
I have a routine I’ve perfected over time to avoid throwing my back out. Except it’s not perfect. There are too many unpredictable variables in life.
No matter how much I try to control the short circuit at the center of my engine, it’s always there.
I can try to manage as much as I want and be grateful for all I’ve learned and all I can do now compared to then, but it’s always there.
My chronic condition forces me to process grief over and over again.
Any chronically injured active person or athlete can relate. Mentally, it’s more difficult for us to recover from a sports injury than the general population because we battle loss — a loss of identity and our ultimate joy — our sport and spirit are intertwined.
But we know how to dig in when the going gets tough. We have grit.
According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross from her book On Death and Dying, the five stages of grief include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
I dig deep for my purpose in life and emotional expression. I let the dark feelings process. Then I latch onto the feelings I need to move on.
It’s a long climb out of a dark downward spiral, but if I’m going to relive it for the rest of my life, I’m going to adapt and figure out how to live a quality life.
I won’t quit.
I find other ways to cope —creative expression, reading, relishing in recovery regimens like hot baths and restorative yoga. I take advantage of the time lost to do things I wouldn’t normally do, like meditate and stay home all weekend.
I let myself cry.
My sister set her intended F.K.T., and my extreme pain improved the following day drastically, even after I decided to stay one more night. My family sat around the campfire following her epic run. I laid in the van bed, doors open, so I could still be a part of the camaraderie. I didn’t get a long hike or bike ride on the North Fork this time, but I still had the view.
After the pain subsides, I have weakness and fatigue to overcome.
Two weeks after our trip, I’m still on the road to recovery. I haven’t ridden my bike or went on a long hike. But I did feel good enough to kayak for the first time this season. I’ve bounced back and forth from depression to acceptance. The roller coaster feels less jarring.
I sincerely appreciate each time I’m able to do my sports.
I have real hope again — not hope that this will never happen again, but hope that I will grow from it. I reassure myself that all the effort I give to stay conditioned and strong pays off.
Until next time, I hold my head up with a smile and know that I will handle the debilitation when it comes.
I put the work in to handle it — the lows and the highs, the pain and the grief, the fight for freedom and acceptance.
I take accountability for my health because, without it, I’ll fade into dust.
Yet I still crave more — more miles, more sweat, more challenge. That’s the grit that gets me through.
