In 2007, I accidentally crashed my motorcycle and almost died. (True story.)
While I’ve talked about it a lot over the years, I don’t really think about it much anymore. And while I have a lot of scars from the whole ordeal, if we met today and I never told you about it, you’d never know it happened.
I bring it up now because it is a significant mile-marker in my life and created a lot of defining moments in the story of what it means to be ‘myself’, including parts of me where my shadow was, for a long time, hiding in my light.
I made some important commitments to myself at that time that were conceptually forward-thinking, positive, and healing, but were driven from a shadowy place.
Shadowy doesn’t imply evil, or negative, or bad.
Shadowy simply means that some subconscious belief about myself or how I fit into the world was informing my behaviors and actions in ways that I did not realize.
As one might expect, this produced mixed results.
Three vows to be and do good.
For the sake of time, I’m not going to go into specifics about the accident here, but for important context, I’ll mention that due to the location of the crash and the severity of my injuries, I was taken to Mass General Hospital in Boston, which is one of the best hospitals in the country. The doctors weren’t sure I would make it through the first night. After multiple surgeries and a two-week hospital stay, I required several months of physical and occupational therapy, as well as an additional surgery. (I’m fine now. I promise.)
When the initial flurry of shock and drama passes after a big trauma like this occurs, you enter a long, quiet healing phase during which you’re forced to spend a lot of time sitting alone with your thoughts and feelings.
In addition to the expected grief, heartbreak, frustration, confusion, loneliness, and body-image questions, I remember three distinct themes emerging.
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