Thinking about what can be retrieved or.... Where We Did Not look for the Pearls

This is my story about recovery which is different than wellness.

15 years ago my son was hit by a truck. He is now very ok and happy and has a wonderful wife and baby and races VW's. His life is full. That whole situation was a life changing event for me. He had 27 operations on his legs. Legs that now work fine. But during that time I learned the meaning of the word Recovery.

Recovery is what you can gather up.

Once my grandmother broke a sting of pearls in our kitchen. We never found all of them. We recovered a great many and put them back together but not every single one was retrieved. It was suggested at the time that the dog ate a few of them. No one was willing to look and see if the dog might return a few in some magical dog returning way. So we recovered what we could, what we were willing to and she restrung what was gathered.

So wellness is what you can gather, what is available. It is a direction to walk in. It is an art, a personal unique art form. Sometimes we are just in a miracle we can not see. ( If that is too Pollyanna for you, I deny saying it. I can not prove it, I do not always live it. It just came out while I was writing)

My son, Christopher, now says, if being hit is what brought him to the life he has now it was worth it. I sometimes bring up that time with him, telling him I learned so much from it and checking with him that I am not taking his cost, his story and just running with it. He says there is more than enough experience there to share. Not to worry.

I really only know about these things from my own experience. I do not really know about them from the experience of others. We managed to escape. Or at least that is how we look at it.

I have a cousin who used to drink. Alot. She was an alcoholic. But one night, she says, the Virgin Mary appeared to her and told her that she was taking away her disease. And so my cousin never drank again. But she says this experience gave her no understanding of going through recovery. She was just released from her addiction to alcohol. She escaped.