My name is Finabelle, I created Gratitude, and this is our story.
* Trigger warning: car accident.
It all started with Barbie.
In August of 2023, I saw the Barbie movie with my best friend.
(Absolutely loved it by the way.)
While I was driving home to my parents house in Northern Maine, I was struck by a distracted driver operating a commercial truck. Seconds from home, my car entered the air and flipped multiple times, landing on the drivers side in a ditch. This was seconds away from my parents driveway.
(I am okay.)
This is what we say to make people feel better. Through all of the humanness I have experienced on this earth, my top take away is that it is also "okay" not to be okay. To be okay after a traumatic event, is an unreasonable expectation. If one was to ask my soul how she was feeling, she would have a very different and much more encapsulating answer. Instead, we choose to say "I am okay." as a way of saying "I am masking my pain, and working very hard to function in an acceptable manor for you, and this society".
Post event, I felt very lucky to have survived. However, existing simultaneously, was a massive alter of lifestyle. In ways that I never could have envisioned, my life changed in an instant. I left the scene with a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), loads of physical injuries, ongoing pain, and PTSD. When my time on bed rest had come to an end, I was advised against returning to work for some time. However, I didn't exactly have that luxury. My TBI and injuries were standing between me and my ability to productively build my future, so I had no option but to crawl back to work (part time) on doctor’s restrictions.
This became the most tumultuous time for my body, mind, and soul, that I had ever experienced. Suddenly, a 4 hour serving shift felt like a double in the middle of summer. I worked my butt off harder than I have ever had to for a part time job, Dodging mistakes and TBI moments like Neo in the Matrix, just to keep my standing as an employee at a local restaurant. However, eventually my energy and hours were reduced to a non livable wage.
Prior to my accident, I would occasionally find myself ignorantly incomprehensive to a peer struggling. During a task or situation where myself and others could easily preform, it would remain a mystery to me how another could not. Now that I have experienced reduced ability post accident, allow me to benevolently encapsulate this concept:
There are some limitations we simply cannot see.
Some curtains that we are able to walk through,
may be a wall for another.
For the months following my accident, I spent a lot of my days inside, horizontal. I struggled to re-learn things that used to be easy for me; that were supposed to be easy for me. This made me feel like a newborn child with a fully developed body, and the responsibilities of an adult. Being plunged into a space in life where authentic self care was a necessity to survive, yet a rarity to come by, felt almost hilariously redundant.
I decided for myself, that I would attempt to use this time intentionally. I made a self promise to someday incorporate all of the things that I (through societal expectation and conditioning) had restricted myself from before the accident. - The things that I would have wished I did for myself in my time alive, if I hadn’t been so lucky.
As I searched through my mind for these things, I found an unanticipated set of answers. No... It wasn’t to be the winner of a marathon, or to stand on the top of a very tall mountain, or to sky dive...
It was, to feel ~gratitude.~
It was to truly embrace the love that I have for my soul.
To fill my lungs with crisp Maine winter air, the winter air that I once loathed.
To give awkwardly long hugs, the hugs that once made me cringe and shake my body upon exit.
To fail a test, and tell myself that I am proud for trying.
To feel ~everything.~
To especially feel everything when it is hard, synchronously embodying in my soul, a loving space to nestle within.
To take a walk peacefully, with no pain, and pick up a pretty leaf on my way home. Just because.
To reach out to an old lover, to give that person compassion and apologies that were to painful to give before.
To finally learn how to set boundaries.
To say no.
To say hell YES.
To fall in love with myself again, through active practice in self care.
Self care should not be a luxury. It should be an every day practice. <3
Thank you for reading this far. Gratitude is grateful for you, be grateful for yourself! Let’s continue on this path, practice self care, get back in our souls, and THRIVE!
-Gratitude. (Belle) ;)
