The Road Ahead (2019)

Reaching back to this image, I thought today I’d share a little more of my story.

Over the year following my husband’s death, I found it increasingly difficult to walk. Here and there, my hips would buckle underneath me, and the pain up and down my legs forced me to turn back more quickly. Quite suddenly one day, I had disabling sciatic pain up and down both my back and legs. I thought a lot about the poetic irony of my legs being unable to support me any longer, in the aftermath of such a great loss.

It took a many months to get evaluated by the right specialist, but once I did, I went in for two successive (and successful) hip replacement surgeries. The combination of grief and incapacitating disability made continuing in a very demanding job impossible. It wasn’t pretty—it was more like the perfect avalanche! I extricated myself from underneath a mountain of responsibilities and a beloved cause, and began a very long trek towards recovery through art.

This image was taken at the beginning of that journey into a new life. It was about a year after the second surgery, when walking even a mile was still a challenge, and about three months before the pandemic shut everything down. It was late in the dry season in Sonoma County, where we had all been traumatized by another major wildfire; the arrival of cloudy skies seemed a blessing. 

In later posts I’ll share more of the story. Thanks for coming into my world.