Your Disability and Health Stories

Having the Courage to Face Your Demons

This past March, a business trip brought me to Granville for the first time since I was injured.  I felt an avalanche of emotions flooding over me as I drove by the entrance of the path. I parked my van in the same parking place where I parked two years ago and wept. The nightmare was returning.

Often times we have bad memories tied to specific locations. Perhaps a crisis, dispute, death, injury or illness occurred in a particular place and you have not been able to return to that location due to the bad memories that it provoked.

Every time you think of, or drive near that site, you become emotional and purposely avoid going back.

That’s how it has been for me for the past two years. I have purposely steered clear of the bicycle path in Granville, Ohio. On June 13, 1998 I was crushed by a tree while riding my bicycle on this path and was paralyzed from the waist down.

This past March, a business trip brought me to Granville for the first time since I was injured.  I felt an avalanche of emotions flooding over me as I drove by the entrance of the path. I parked my van in the same parking place where I parked two years ago and wept. The nightmare was returning.

As I returned home I thought about the sense of accomplishment that I would feel if I could ride that trail again. I had been shopping for a bicycle that I would be able to pedal with my weakened legs and paralyzed feet and ankles. I had researched and tested many three wheeled recumbent style trikes and found one that met my special needs. My trike was delivered in May.

On June 13, 2000 my husband, Mark Leder, and I were off to Granville. This ride was one we both were uneasy about taking. A return to our favorite trail, yet a return to the memories of the worst day of our lives.
As we face our demons, we build courage. Courage to stand up to what we fear. For me, the act of literally standing for the first time while clenching a walker, was a courageous act. Like the properties of a magnet to repel, our bad experiences cause us to go in opposite directions to avoid a confrontation.

For so many of the tasks that I have accomplished during the past two years, I needed courage. Regaining my life back meant learning to do things all over again. It took courage to learn to drive a car with hand controls, walk with crutches, ski on a monoski and bike again.

Courage is the power to face your adversities. You are more powerful than your outside circumstances. When you recognize that you are bigger than your problems, you gain the courage that is necessary to overcome anything.

It is inevitable that deep emotions will come to the surface as we return to a location where sadness prevailed. A purging of emotional tensions is good for spiritual healing.

Mark and I celebrated our victory over tragedy. We rode to the exact spot where the tree fell on me. We were there and the tree was gone. It was then that we were able to put many of the missing pieces together.

The site is identifiable due to the clearing in the woods where the tree once grew, the spliced electric lines, the broken branches on trees still standing, and logs cut from the tree that crushed me which lay on the side of the trail. After riding on the trail and retracing the rescue operation, we better understood how hard the rescue team worked to get me out.

It is better that we rejoice over our accomplishments following a tragedy than to dwell on self pity. What happened is in the past. It is more important that we focus on our present and future. It is as if sometimes we are dealt a hand of cards in our game of life. Sometimes the hand we are dealt is unfortunate. What we must do is to take our misfortune and make the best of it.

Many people are walking around wounded, caught up in the past and unable to make the changes that are needed to move forward. Oftentimes we disable ourselves with self limiting beliefs. We have to make some changes if we want things to change.

To book Rosemarie Rossetti, Ph.D. to speak at a conference, contact her at: (614) 471-6100; rosemariespeaks.com/

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