Injury Grief: The Difference Between Strength + Resilience

Not all grief or mourning is resultant from bereavement. Loss can manifest in myriad ways, and injury is an oft-overlooked catalyst to grief that, because it’s temporary, we tend to categorize as “less than.” I believe that grieving injury, however, is essential to truly heal.

In 2012, I flipped over the handlebars of a motorbike in India, and badly broke my right leg. We were in such a rural village that the only way to a hospital that took traveler’s insurance—and that had reliable electricity—was to travel the 12 hours to Bangalore by taxi. It was such a bumpy, long ride that most of the nerve endings in my leg were irreparably damaged, something I wouldn’t learn until I was diagnosed with Reflexive Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) a few years later. 

In 2015, an open wound began to fester on my leg, near the site of nails in my knee. I’ll spare you most of the gory details, but for five years, I had a hole—and then holes—in my leg that leaked blood, pus, and huge chunks of scar tissue. This was separate from the RSD, which was the culprit for severe aching pain, and for my many falls. In those falls I sustained significant other injuries, including a torn ACL and a torn meniscus on two separate occasions in my left leg. Those injuries took precedence over seeking diagnosis for the leaking wounds. Mysterious blood-holes I could live with, torn ligaments I could not. But it’s not as if I didn’t try.

From 2012–2020, I endured four surgeries, three MRIs, two EKGs, one EMG, one CT scan, one vascular ultrasound, one metal allergy analysis, one full-body bone scan, and 20+ X-rays. I saw seven specialists in four different hospitals, and had four nails, six pins, six staples, one aluminum rod, and one cadaver ligament implanted into my legs, and a meniscectomy. It wasn’t until last spring that I was finally diagnosed with chronic osteomyelitis, and began a protracted, year-long journey to save my leg from amputation—during a global pandemic. 

Last week I completed 100 hours of hyperbaric therapy, 40 2.5-hour treatments in a glass tube, filled with pressurized oxygen at 20.5 PSI, the equivalent of being 45 feet under water. It’s the closest I’ve been since that fated accident all those years ago to finally having a resolution to my injury—and to the grief it has borne in my life. 

It’s difficult to overstate what background noise my injury has been. Debilitating pain has been a constant for a quarter of my life, and I’ve grieved a more carefree way of moving through the world. I’ve grieved my inability to hike without being hyper-aware of roots in the path, or branches to hold on to. I’ve grieved the mindlessness of commuting in New York City, having to consistently reroute my path to avoid stair-heavy subway stations. As a yoga teacher, I’ve grieved the “comfortable” poses that I could never do. I’ve grieved the ability to wear shorts without people looking in horror at my leg, and I’ve grieved the sensation of blood running down my pants without warning.

Whenever grief is present, there are judgments—both self- and externally-imposed—of strength. Family and close friends have on many occasions praised me as “being so strong,” though I don’t consider myself to be particularly so. I do, however, believe that grief begets resilience. What we perceive as strength is rather a willingness to push on, because of and in spite of challenges. I believe that the degree of privilege into which we are born affects how quickly we are able to commute grief into resilience, but I do believe we all have the innate ability to cultivate it. 

Before I left the hospital after my last treatment, my doctor (angel, savior, heroine) reminded me that we still have to wait six months before we determine that my bone is no longer infected, and that this long ordeal is finally over. While, yes, this is scary, I’m choosing to grieve for the years my injury affected my life, and commit to turning that grief into resilience. The osteomyelitis may come back, and I may yet again be grieving the loss of my mobility—and if this comes to pass, possibly, the loss of my leg. But still, my injury has been a great teacher of resilience, and an experience worthy of my grief. It is only when we pay attention to the lessons of challenge that we are able to integrate them into our narrative. 

Integrating injury into the narrative of grief breeds resiliency. And allows us to begin to truly heal.