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I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to heal lately. How do we move to wholeness when sometimes it seems like the views of others are stacked against us?
A few months ago, I tore a tendon in my shoulder, maybe from overuse while swimming. Swimming had become an important way for me to feel light and centered, to leave my worries as I glide through the water. Sometimes I would feel like I’m floating on clouds, with the water becoming a gentle caress. But then the partial tear became a full one, and my arm began to fail me in ways I couldn’t ignore. Cramps, weakness, and a feeling that a part of me simply wasn’t working anymore. And swimming became an impossibility.
Two surgeons told me I’d have to accept it—that I’d have to learn to live with a damaged arm. One told me that current medical thought is that the risks of surgery should be avoided, and most people do fine without repairing the tendon. But that didn’t sit right with me, nor did it really square with the paper he handed me as support for his position. I was deeply triggered by this doctor, recalling the memory of the abusive household I grew up in with parents telling me constantly what to believe, even if it didn’t align with my own knowledge, experience, and what I could plainly see with my own eyes.
I knew my body, and I knew that I wanted to live without cramping and pain. And I wanted to swim again. Eventually, I found the right surgeon—someone who listened, who saw the value in restoring what was torn. The path ahead wouldn’t be an easy one: surgery, a month in a sling, months of physical therapy. But it would be a path toward healing. And taking that step felt like choosing myself, seizing on possibility, and electing for hope.
My decision about this also carries an echo of something deeper. Long before my shoulder injury, I carried a deeper kind of wound—one left by sexual abuse and assault. That injury didn’t manifest with visible wounds or show up on an MRI. And plenty of people told me just to just move on from that, just live with it, as though you could just ignore the wounds. But the journey to recovery from trauma is slow, layered, and complex. It doesn’t come with a neat timeline like surgery and a predictable schedule for rehab. And ignoring it means never aspiring to reach back to wholeness.
I don’t take surgery and the subsequent time needed for healing lightly. It frightens me. Still, the courage I’m drawing on now—the courage to pursue real healing for my shoulder—reminds me of the courage I’ve already shown in facing the emotional and spiritual injuries of the past. Both require listening to myself, trusting in my own ability to think—even when others think they know better, and believing that healing is possible when others say, “Just live with it.”
Choosing shoulder surgery is, in its own way, a reaffirmation of my larger journey: I am allowed to want healing, to have hope. And to pursue wholeness—whatever that looks like, in my body and in my heart. I make this choice for myself. No one else gets to tell me I can’t move forward.
