two different lives

In December, I had the privilege of meeting a lovely woman at a holiday party.

I don’t normally bring up the fact that 2023 is The Year of the Book for me, especially with people I’ve just met. Well, guess who else happened to be at the party and summoned me over so that I could meet this woman? Yep, my mom. And guess who happened to mention that I’ve written a book? You guessed it.

You’ll recall that my mom is the one who played a critical role in my getting better. In fact, without her constantly advocating for me, I don’t think I’d be here. While I’m not as much of a sharer as she is, I’ve come to understand that publishing a book is a public experience.

I don’t like this aspect of the book-writing process. Yet the reason I’m going ahead with all of this is because my desire to help people outweighs my reticence.

Back to the holiday party and the woman I met, whom I’ll call Martha. Since my mom had already shared an overview of my book by the time I’d walked over to meet Martha, I talked more philosophically with her about what it’s like having two different lives (i.e., one in which I was chronically sick, and the other in which I’m healthy). I mentioned how it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the two dueling realities.

This segued into a fascinating conversation. Martha, an ophthalmologist, shared with me how she had spent time on the east coast working with Iraqi war veterans who had suffered eye injuries as a result of their time in combat. Tragically, some of her patients had become so visually impaired that they are now legally blind. As our conversation progressed, Martha shared with me how these patients had described the same experience to her that I did, how they felt like they had two different lives. For Martha’s patients, they divided their lives into their pre-injury life, when they could see, and their post-injury life, when they were blind.

Martha told me that it’s not that these people felt as though they couldn’t eventually carve out a meaningful, post-injury life. However, what they did need initially was time and space to grieve what could have been before they reimagined what their new life could be.

That makes a lot of sense.

As I’ve gotten more comfortable sharing my story, I’ve come to realize that, while my illness was unique, the life lessons I’ve learned from it are more universal. Which makes me wonder.

Do you have an event that splits your life into two separate parts? How have you – or how have you not -- reconciled these different paths?

*Note that going forward it is my plan to post the second and fourth Fridays of each month.