The Darkest Road

Jul 22

You won’t know the true beauty of your soul until you’ve faced the darkness that tries to block your path home.

Since many of you are new here, I thought it would be a great time to take you through my journey to resilience.

I wouldn’t be a very reputable coach if I didn’t share how I got here in the first place. Every wild ride, as well as the laughs and heartbreak that come with it, is better shared with friends.

THE FIRST STAGE

It was a beautiful summer morning when I woke up thinking I was having a heart attack at the old age of 26.

I tried to stay calm as we drove half an hour across town to the hospital. We didn’t realize it, but it turned out to be the first of many failed attempts to extract information from an unfortunately unsympathetic Emergency Room.

As a passionate mountain biker, snowboarder and previous adventure racer, I was suddenly hit with a terrible doubt, an unshakable distrust in my body and its ability and/or willingness to support me. I was scared.

Over the following weeks, we did our best to find answers to what proved to be an ever-growing, entangled web of strange symptoms and neurological dysfunction. I bounced around from doctor to doctor as much as I bounced between symptoms, from extremely weak hands and feeling horribly uncoordinated, to trouble swallowing, nearly choking, vision trouble, breathing difficulty and pervasive dizziness. My heart, meanwhile, kept dropping out of rhythm for an hour at a time, the rhythm of being alive falling away with it.

Suddenly my entire existence seemed in question. Fragile. Complicated. Not a single doctor I met had an answer for me.

No 26 year old should wonder “Is this the beginning of the end?” But there I was, thinking just that.

THE DESCENT

My symptoms worsened.

In fact, they got so bad that I was forced to take time off work. A time during which I could barely leave the couch, not to mention make it to the grocery store two minutes down the road. I was no longer a functional human being. The way my body felt was intensely sick but equally as challenging was not understanding why.

I started seeking healthcare advice outside of our city. Every doctor’s visit came with a clean bill of health. Some, in fact, were beyond that… my cardio system is exceptional and healthy. “Are you an athlete? Do you compete?” Yes. In any other situation I would have loved to hear that.

There comes a time when the pain of not having answers outweighs the fear of what is physically occurring. At least that’s how I felt.

I remember a time I thought I had landed on an answer and I was so relieved to put a label on it that I didn't care it was a terminal illness.

Luckily, a terminal illness wasn’t the case at all.

I slowly but surely, over the course of years, took little tidbits of information from each professional I met. Each opinion. Every idea of what could be going on. Over time, I started noticing patterns and connections between events in my life and the potential cause of all that had abruptly gone wrong with me.

Tediously and excruciatingly, I built my bigger picture of what had happened.

As the picture grew, the true weight of just how much I had been through began to dawn on me.

How I had treated my body, approached my life, how I had treated my mind. I had lived like I didn’t want to be here.

The monumental task of healing my emotional self began.

HOW IT HAPPENED

I count myself incredibly lucky to have met the walk-in clinic doctor who took me on with all the patience, communication and open-mindedness in the world. Underlying his constant insistence that I had probably just been abducted by aliens, was a willingness to actually listen and try to help me piece my life back together. A willingness I hadn’t yet found in any other doctor.

He helped me with my first life changing realization: My first concussion had been 15 years prior and I had never been aware of it… nor of the fractured jaw that came with it.

My life changed in that instant. Half the puzzle fell into place.

I had always fought the concept of ‘seeking help’ through counselling but, at my sister’s relentless urging, I finally broke down. With my beautiful therapist’s help I managed to extract myself from some massively painful beliefs I had about my performance in the military where I received, and actually worked through, that first concussion.

Armed with the new knowledge of where all of this physical dysfunction began and some renewed strength, I started making more even connections.

I had a few head impact falls that I simply shook off more recent to my first trip to the ER. Suddenly, I saw these inconsequential falls as what they really were: additional concussions.

Along with these concussions, just like the fractured jaw, came no treatment of either the head trauma or the compounded whiplash injuries I had also been ignoring.

Not only was it time for a serious slow down and physical healing, I was also desperately overdue for a shift in the self love category and a complete upheaval of my life approach.

I needed to finally appreciate that I belonged here. I needed to stop abusing and ignoring my body.

WHEN DARKNESS TAKES OVER

It’s hard to talk about how truly dark it got during those three years I was off work.

Going into this experience, I assumed life would stop for me, that the world would wait. I would be able to unplug and really focus on healing so I could come back strong and healthy.

Life gave me anything but that.

I began a desperate fight with every insurance company that I did business with. I slowly started to drown in paperwork and deadlines for information that proved time and again to be insubstantial for them. I was flying between doctors and specialists and companies who were supposed to be in place to support me.

Months went by. They turned into years. We started rolling coins for food. Taking help from friends and family. Private investigators came by our home with video cameras, craning their necks from the street to see in through the living room window. Collectors called several times a day. Every day. Relentlessly.

I started giving up.

The darkness set in and my willingness to fight began to dwindle. I started hating other people. I hated the world for giving up on me. I started realizing that I felt less human and more like a dollar amount… but that dollar amount was less than zero. All this while I was desperately still trying to keep my corporate job so I could return to it at some unforeseeable date. Trying to keep the home we had just bought. Trying to keep my family together.

Under this unbelievably immense pressure, I received my final call from the last insurance company. The answer was no, and I broke.

HEALING

I was never contemplating suicide, but I saw the end from there.

I saw how people could make that decision. I saw how the world takes all your power away. I saw how people can become homeless. I saw how darkly the world can try to dictate your value and worth.

When I had absolutely no hope, the only decision I had left to make was to keep going.

In the darkness of that despair, the only thing that kept me moving was stubbornness. The decision that I wasn't going to give up simply because I am not that person. Breath by breath, minute by minute, day by day I kept trying.

I developed a vision in my mind for those lowest moments. Anytime I felt like giving up, I would pull up this image. It still serves me to this day.

I flirted every day with the idea of giving up. I desperately wanted to. I gave up one million times in my head, I just never put it into action.

If you ever feel like tossing it in, please ask yourself one question: Can I do one more thing before I quit?

Some days, that meant taking one more breath. Some days it meant allowing the full scope of pain come into my experience so I could process it. Sometimes it meant fighting, and fighting HARD.

THE LIGHT

Every day I showed up for my life, despite raging anger at the outside world, despite the awareness that this anger and stress was keeping me from healing faster. I showed up despite how much it hurt.

Excruciatingly slowly, my luck began to change.

I discovered NUCCA chiropractic, another puzzle piece that marked the turning point of my journey. Instead of spiralling downward, I started turning that momentum around.

Doctor Gary Thompson at NUCCA Kelowna changed my life. I daresay he saved it. He helped me when I couldn't afford to be helped out of the goodness of his heart. I am deeply grateful for him and his family, and for their heart-centred healing practice.

As a post-concussion treatment for C-spine, it was the miracle help I needed.

Suddenly, all those puzzle pieces started clicking together, making more and more sense. The pressure slowly started decreasing against my brain stem, alleviating the inflammation in my spine. I began feeling human again. Through orthodontics, we also changed my jaw position to further heal and support that area. Physio entered the scene and I slowly, tediously, with monumental focus and effort rebuilt the core and spinal stability I had totally lost through my injuries.

My symptoms slowly started to fade.

As was the descent, so was the climb to the top; the physical pieces came together as the emotional body healed.

I kept fighting.

THE PURPOSE OF THE FIGHT

I am a completely different person because of this journey, this fight.

One thing will always stand true:

Given the chance, I would not choose to change any part of this journey. It has given me my life.

All I want is for this journey of mine to reach out and help others who need it.

I want you to know that you don’t need to wait for the light, you are the light. You can manufacture your own hope. You don’t have to win every battle to win the war.

It doesn’t matter how badly you want to give up, it doesn’t matter how broken you feel. You are worth fighting for. Take one more step before you quit. Then one more step after that. Use all the resources you have at your disposal and the full power of your mind to direct all your energy to a positive outcome. Focus on your growth. Face your demons. You are born with the capacity to withstand their wrath and dispose of them.

This journey has changed my life, as any journey will, but it’s exactly the way it was meant to be.

It’s the same with yours.

Keep fighting.