Peace & Perseverance

For nearly 10 months I’ve been fighting, determined, single minded in trying to get better. I’m convinced that mindset is so important and I’ve held on firmly to the fact that I can and will recover from this brain injury. I’m doggedly persevering.

Yet it comes with a tension. The struggle brings with it a resistance to my current reality. I wrestle with the headaches and the tiredness and all the things I still can’t do, even though in my head I know there are so many things I now can do. It robs me of peace. It slams up against the encouragement of the meditation and mindfulness crew to ‘be in the present moment’ and not harking back to the past or holding out for the future. What about the place of acceptance?

If this is to be my new reality, if these are my new limitations and boundaries and the thorn in my side, am I not creating suffering by fighting against my reality? How does acceptance sit with perseverance? What does it look like to accept when nothing in me wants to accept that this is it? How do people do that? And how do they do that without losing hope? or is that where hope is found?

Do I somehow find peace in the present through accepting it whilst simultaneously persevering in pursuing recovery as if I’m fine about it either way? I don’t know. I’m just so tired.