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

At a certain point, I explained to her how the stroke had actually become both a blessing and a curse. If I had the chance to live my 19th year over again, with or without the stroke, I find myself always saying, “I would love to not have ever had the experience — but, only if I could retain the lessons I learned from it.”

The caveat is this interesting thing about human nature. I’m not sure if such a thing is possible, to live as though it never happened, yet fully keep the wisdom gleaned from that experience with us. I told her that after each strokiversary, I find myself farther from the pain of being in the hospital or of being almost completely dependent on others for basic needs.

Today I forget, as I buckle myself into my trendy brown-and-gold sandals, what it was like having to secure my leg into a custom-made AFO every day, which meant I had to wear gym shoes every single damn day of my life. (As cute as sneakers can be, they are still ultimately more utilitarian  than they are fashionable/stylistically congruent with my everyday look.)

Or more seriously, each day I spend without the alarming experience of suddenly having to surrender all power and personal agency to a full-body (or even partial) seizure, I forget. I take for granted a seizure-less day, since this is now what’s “normal” for me.

What the lady said in response was lovely. She replied, “I think that’s by design. If every mother in the world remembered every day the pain of childbirth she could never focus on the all-encompassing love she has for her children.”

Bam. There it was.

There is a grand design to our tendency to let go. We all shed the layers of who we once were in order to become who we will be — let go of the stories of the past in order to transform. Because as long as we carry that baggage with us, we can’t move forward as lightly, as gracefully as we could without it.

Would you be able to focus on the all-encompassing love for who you are today if you kept remembering the stories of your past pain?

To our healing,

Pamela

[Editor’s Note: Revisiting this post in April 2025 — 10 years later! — this post is super cringe. There are a lot of broken promises in this post, but I am committed to backposting for posterity and embracing my cringe until it transmutes into self-compassion.]

Every year, my “strokiversary” rolls around as though it were a ninja — swiftly, quietly. Behind the scenes.

The one exception to this is a couple of years ago when I anticipated the big one-oh and signed up for The Color Run: I was happy to hear that the event was open to walkers as well as runners, and I rented a GoPro and strapped it onto Anthony’s forehead so I could document the experience.

The good news is I’ve recently succeeded in reaching a self-imposed consistency challenge goal: releasing weekly Style Tip Tuesday videos for my jewelry biz — which means I’ve somewhat undergone a crash course in video editing. So I’m working on a video for you in honor of my strokiversary, and I would love to complete it soon.

I have a confession to make. In 2008, I started my memoir. When I began this blog two years later, I really wanted to offer a resource for survivor-thrivers where they could look for ideas and therapies, and most importantly, find community to lift each other’s spirits up in a way only we can.

But in order to do so, I had to make myself more visible. So that the Rehab Revolution movement could truly take off and reach the people who needed it most, I had to become seen. (I’m going to explore the concept of “being seen” in more detail.) I’m sure any stroke survivor reading my words right now can relate to the fears that often accompany physically being seen by the world — as well as emotionally — and it’s important not to forget that I’m right there beside you.

Some of you reading these words right now may have just had a stroke a month ago, or a year ago, or perhaps more time ago, or less. I simultaneously want you to know that a) you’re not alone in your experience, and b) now that it’s been 12 years, I’ve had a lot of time and opportunity to give me the “street cred” to guide you along the way. I’m living the reality of surviving from a debilitating stroke that ground my life to a screeching halt at the age of 19, and because I know I’m bigger than some brain injury, and because I’m blessed with an expressive voice, I’m willing to hold myself up to a new standard, and to help advocate for those who come after me.

This new standard means I’d like to step up in a greater way so I can serve you. I want to inspire those who experience the total upheaval and intensity of a stroke so that they know that life doesn’t end there. Those who came before me (like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor) have given me the same gift, and I want to provide that for those who came beside me, and those of you who will come after me.

Here’s a surprise for you. I’ve hinted at this on my Facebook page — so if you were anxious to find out what’s coming, here’s the Official Announcement:

I’m not super techy, so I don’t know how long it will take me to transfer everything over to the new address, but I’m hiring some people who know what they’re doing.

The new website should be under construction for a little bit, but in the meantime, you can still contact me on the Facebook page (I’m changing the name on there, but the address will stay the same) or e-mail me at revolution.rehab@gmail.com. (That address will remain dedicated to my oldest, loyalest readers.) I’m not super certain whether my original content will remain at this URL, though. (I’ll make sure to get the right team of people to get the answers to any of your questions.)

I’m working diligently to come up with a plan for how I can better serve you in the near, near future — there are a lot of ideas, and I’m bubbling over in excitement. You can expect a multimedia experience, from a stronger social media presence, to regular blog content, to videos, to podcasts, livestreams, and more!

Tomorrow I begin a six-week blog challenge, so you’ll definitely see much more of me very, very soon. Looks like year 12 is a pivotal one for me! I’m declaring a #StrokiversaryWeek, so we can explore the mixed emotions, feelings, memories, and experiences that often come together on this date.

What do you usually do on your strokiversary? Leave it in a comment!

To our healing,

Pamela