As my book gets closer and closer to publication, I find myself thinking more about the Revisionary Woman as a whole person with a rich and varied life. Until now the blog, as well as our Yahoo Groups forum FeistyScolioFlatbackers, has focused fairly heavily on our medical problems, surgical crises, etc. Yet there is so much more to each of us than a bad back and a series of spinal reconstructions!
To focus on work and expertise, for instance, we include professional fashion designers, nurses, lawyers, novelists, nonfiction authors, motorcycle mavens, avid avocational cooks and bakers, devoted full-time parents . . . you name it. Many of us have been classified as permanently "disabled" and have had to give up long-term careers in which we invested enormous amounts of education, training, and real-world experience. Traumatic as this may have been, virtually all of us soon rallied, using our unexpected imposed "sabbaticals" to develop ourselves in ways we could never have foreseen when our jobs ate up most of our daily lives.
Take me, for example. Twenty years ago, I could not have been dragged into a hardware store. I have to smile at this now that an expedition to Ace or Home Depot has become a total pleasure -- at least on "good days" (pain level 6.5-7 or lower), I can window-shop for hours amidst the roof flashing or the PVC and copper piping or -- Lord, help us! -- ALL THOSE POWER TOOLS! Someday I will have my very own jigsaw, a Kreig jig for pocket holes, maybe even a workbench. For now I find plenty to do around my small abode with a decent corded drill and a panoply of bits plus the usual home-repairs basics (wood glue, spackle, anchors, etc.) and the painter's essentials. That's right: I moved into the usual stark white apartment but now have a lilac foyer and a cheerful blue and yellow kitchen with a snappy red set of built-in shelves. My bedroom and bath are soon to become equally colorful. OK, so maybe it takes me days to paint four small walls; that's simply because PT has taught me the importance of pacing myself and taking appropriate breaks. A project is no less well executed or aesthetically pleasing because it took forever to emerge from the blue painter's tape and dropcloths. I also find gratification in any number of smaller projects, from rewiring a lamp to building an (albeit rudimentary and interim) office work table screwed to two old bookcases of the right height for such chores as sorting and collating documents.
Not only am I the resident handywoman these days; I have accidentally found myself the resident artist. I gave up art, for the most part, in the second grade, when a delightful girl called Amy appeared at our school and turned out to be better at drawing than I was. Sad but true. Almost a half century later, newly handicapped and derailed by my spinal problems, walking disconsolately down a small street full of shops, I impetuously wandered into an art supplies store. The rest is history. For well over a decade now, I have found indescribable joy and healing -- of a kind I previously experienced only through reading and writing poetry -- in mixed-media art projects of every conceivable description. For more than a year now, I have dared to call myself a self-taught mixed-media artist without hesitation or apology. My place is bedecked with some carefully curated relics of my learning process, ranging from a fanciful wall hanging to a range of experimental collages and a wabi-sabi assemblage or two.. I craft my own jewlery and dye my own fabrics. I repurpose old clothing so as to feel rather chic even when my checking acccount balance is, say, $3.16.
And, oh yes -- my cooking has improved geometrically over the years! I'll plan to write a whole other blog post on that.
Accordingly, I have decided to expand this (let's face it, awfully quiescent of late) blog from assorted surgical-spinal aspects of my life to: My Whole Life, Uncensored. So watch for favorite quotes, mini-book reviews, descriptions of my latest project or newest discovery in the arena of cool art supplies, recipes, philosophies, hopefully even photographs and more pictorial content in general . . . To snitch from the title of my upcoming book dealing with flatback syndrome and botched back surgery, I am rebuilding my spine and my mind and my spirit and my life. With that kind of wide-ranging agenda, why constrict the subject matter of this blog? Why leave out anything potentially interesting or relevant to readers, even if it doesn't happen to relate to doctors or hospitals or Harrington rods?
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I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it.
Maya Angelou
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