Sometimes the post-stroke journey has sucked. I literally fell to my knees in the middle of the grocery store yesterday because I was walking too fast for my current energy level and stumbled over my own feet. (This doesn’t happen often at all — it never really has — but since the stroke, it’s something that does happen occasionally, so it keeps me humble!)

I used to treat wiping out in public as something SUPER embarrassing and I would’ve worn the embarrassment on my shoulders like it was a backpack filled with rocks. I’d use it as evidence of a false belief that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and other things would happen and I’d add more rocks into my backpack until practically everything was a fricking drain on my life.

Yesterday, though, I simply got back up and carried on. Not because I wanted to bypass any uncomfortable feelings, but because there genuinely weren’t any(!).You know what this means? It means I’ve taken the backpack off.

This is HUGE.

It’s the result of being intentional about where I put my regular focus in my life (as trite as that sounds). I’ve focused more often on giving myself grace, not adding meaningless things into that backpack, making a practice of letting go of guilt and shame. Prayer. Connection to something greater than myself. Developing a healthier and healthier relationship with my body and what it needs.

It’s a beautiful thing to see the fruits of my labor become manifest in my actual experience, and that is what I’m celebrating today. (I’m also celebrating that I wrote a post today. ;))

Before I go out for my strokiversary dinner with the fiancé(!! Yes, we got engaged a couple months ago!), I’ll leave you with these “MercRetro Strokiversary” questions:

Do you celebrate your Strokiversary?

What little wins (which add up to big ones) can you celebrate right now?

Drop your commentary below.

Love you. Thanks for coming along with me on this journey.

Happy New Year!

Some things:

1. My word of 2019 is “lighthouse.” I’ll be experimenting with broadcasting in fun, fresh new ways, more often.

2. Since that is my intention, the content is not always going to be as long-form as some of my past posts. I’d like there to be a variety of long and short creations in my “portfolio,” as it were.

3. None of this will always look very polished. I’ve been honing my writing chops for 2/3 of my life and am very comfortable hiding behind the written word — but by committing to becoming a lighthouse and experimenting with creative license, there’s gotta be some room for me to put out content that’s done, but not perfect. Be prepared for a little ghetto fabulosity.

A note on new beginnings, and incidentally, the piece for today’s Forgiveness Friday:

Today coincidentally is my eight-year anniversary with my partner, and over the years, we’ve been steadily building a foundation of shared values as we uplevel our relationship. As this has happened, I have found myself unconsciously “testing” him and myself because there is some old junk from our pasts that hasn’t yet been fully resolved or cleared out of the way.

This is super normal in any close relationship that has withstood a long time. Even with people who are so like-minded that everything generally feels easy peasy, closeness always comes with checkpoints where “stuff” needs examination. I’m the first person to say that relationship duration is only one factor in relationship strength; I’ve had superclose besties that I became that close to in the span of a couple months, and acquaintances of several several years whose life aspirations and preferences I couldn’t even begin to tell you.

Intimacy is always evolving, and it’s a practice. It’s a commitment to self-care, so that you can show up energized and generous with others, and vice-versa.

You know why resentments build up between people whose lives are very close, but lack emotional intimacy? Because one or both (usually the case) of the people is holding on to baggage from the past and carrying that baggage from year to year. They aren’t clearing what’s preventing them from being as generous and loving as they’d like to be, and they’re allowing that resentment to build a case for not being giving and not loving that person.

And if you’re doing this with another person — your partner, your friend, your family member — then, chances are, you’re doing it with yourself, too. (Even if that’s a lack of forgiveness for a post-stroke condition.)

I descend from a line of impossible perfectionists. The levels of toxicity that would build up in my body holding grudges against myself or others who didn’t meet my (often completely unreasonable) expectations kept me so blocked off from true closeness with others that I’m actually astonished I had any friends prior to 2015. Yup. That recently.

A lot can change in a really short time, even if it feels like transformation can take forever. Hint: It goes faster when you’re willing.

I wasn’t truly willing to take the chance to ask for what I needed, which suddenly increased in a huge way after having had the stroke. Obviously.

It felt like too much to ask, to ask for anyone to slow down as they walked beside me, or to give me more time to physically do things.

Instead of empowering myself to voice these things, I just hoped for the best. Hoped friends would intuitively know how much time I needed to go from A to B, hoped men I dated would read my mind.

I got lucky sometimes, and other times I lost people because I didn’t know how to talk to them about these new things I needed. (We definitely don’t need to go into how the mind-reading thing went in my love life!)

Part of it was that I was only 19, part of it was that I wasn’t raised with modeling of effective communication, part of it was a lack of discussing any of this in therapy at post-stroke rehab. Regardless, I hope that my 15 years of practice in powerful communication and developing self-trust models some valuable tools for you.

So the first practice of 2019 I’d like to leave you with today is the practice of getting to know what your needs are. Your needs can be practical (“I need a full week to pack a suitcase before I travel anywhere,” “I need my phone to be fully charged at the start of the day”), they can be basic (“I must be fully fed before I start my workday,” “I need eight hours of sleep a night”) — in fact, I encourage you to start there, and they can be emotional (“I need to ask for five minutes to vent before I can move forward”). The last area often feels the hardest to ask for, in our emotionally constipated society, but it is KEY.

Just blindly going through your life not even knowing what your needs are is a great way to not get them met. It’s a great way to add to the baggage everyone’s carrying around year after year (especially you), and that’s frickin’ exhausting. Right?! Stop the madness!!

You have to name it to claim it, and that’s the first step to letting it go and creating more space and less conflict in your life and internal experience.

Don’t get caught up in creating a list that consumes you. If you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, you could go on forever with a list of grievances/demands. If that’s you, start with a list of five things only, and know that even if only one of those needs started getting consistently met that would be a huge improvement from where you were before.

If you find yourself consumed with despair at how many unmet needs you may have right now, there’s a part two to this exercise. Balance this list with a second list — a list of appreciation. Flood your mind (and ideally, your heart) with everything and everyone that you do have in your life that you truly are grateful for and remind yourself there is no lack in your life. Let that list be as long as possible. Really let it into your heart and mind and bathe in that feeling.

Take a deep breath. Know that you’ve taken an essential first step to taking ownership of your own personal power, and that that’s something to celebrate!

Questions? Comments? Share what comes up for you below, and share with someone you know. I would love to hear how the exercise adds to your life!

To new beginnings and renewed aliveness,

Pamela