Time to Start

I remember one day laying in the hospital and thinking to myself “all I want to do is have a normal life”. I wanted to get out of bed and walk around, I wanted to go the bathroom in privacy like a normal person, and I desperately wanted to take a hot shower. For that matter, just being able to move my hand up to scratch my face where I hadn’t been shaved in a week would have been a giant leap towards the return to “normal”.

None of those things were happening on that day. It seemed that as I laid there with a nearly severed spinal cord the doctors, therapists, and nurses were all quick to tell me of all the things I would never be able to do again. I was told that I would never walk again, that I would never be able to live on my own, I wouldn’t be able to use my hands and arms, and that I wouldn’t even so much as be able to sleep on my stomach again.

All I could think was “who would ever want to live this way”? So how was I going to go back to college? How was I going to have a career? Would I ever be able to have a family? If so, how would I go about supporting them? How was I going to lead a “normal”, productive life? I certainly wasn’t going to go live in my mother’s basement for the rest of my life!

18 years later life looks a lot different than it did on that day. I still can’t do a lot of things, but I know that I have accomplished much more than I would have if I had never broken my neck. The wisdom that accompanies time has led me to realize that I failed in my original quest to lead a normal life. I now see that I am blessed to lead an extraordinary life and I wouldn’t change a thing about how I got to this point.

So now it is time! Time to share what’s on my mind, time to share my adventure, and most importantly, time to hear about yours! I’m going to post entries that feature what I went through to finish school and build a career, live on my own, get married, and give back to the community that helped me along the way.

Together, with my wife, we’ll share what new challenges we’re facing, and try to provide some practical responses to what YOU, our readers are going through. Please take a few minutes and sign up for our newsletter and share the link to our blog on social media. This is going to be content that you don’t want to miss and we can’t wait to get to know about you and what you’re facing.