Tales of Reinvention: Janne Kouri

My father had his first stroke in October of 1985.  When most of us think stroke we think brain impairment. But our family rarely likes to do anything conventional. While my father had full use of his speech and intellect he was left unable to walk.  The doctors are not particularly encouraging when it comes to anything involving neurological issues. They use words like never, words no one wants to  hear.

At 63 my father was by far the youngest man on the spinal injury floor of Magee Rehabilitation.   Most of the other spinal injury patients were victims of tragic accidents. But they all had one thing in common. Blocking out the word never as they relearned how to  literally  put one foot in front of the other.

I spent a lot of time on that floor. I witnessed courage and fear.  I saw the joy in the eyes of these men when they made the slightest little bit of progress and the frustration when their bodies refused to cooperate with their determination.

I remember the look on my father's face when he took his first steps. A man who stood six foot one and had survived active combat in WWll was now finding  joy shuffling one foot in front of the other and   being able to stand with the help of a walker and a team of therapists behind him.

That memory caused me to burst into tears when I saw the video of Janne Kouri learning to walk again.

I learned of Janne through my friend Regena Thomashauer. Janne was a young, strong man just starting out in life  when a simple dive into the Pacific to cool off after a game of beach volleyball left him paralyzed.

He was told he would never walk again.  There are  a lot of things he could have done with that information. Janne chose to block out the never part and instead reinvent his life from where he now found himself. His experience showed him that there was a need for affordable, community based state of the art fitness facilities for people like him, the physically challenged. He and his wife Susan took a tragic accident and turned it into  a non profit organization called Next Step Fitness .

It has been twenty five years since my father's spinal injury. They are still telling the people this happens to never. I am not a fan of the word never. I believe it holds us back from what is indeed possible. My father did learn to walk again, but for him his heart was not as strong as his will.  Had it been he would have loved to have had a place like Next Step Fitness to go to.

So many of the spinal injuries happen to young people who still want a healthy and active lifestyle.  Next Step Fitness can help them. I invite you to support them with a donation or perhaps a ticket to their fundraiser on May 20 in NYC.  You can go to www.nextstepfitness.org to find out how.

Sometimes we choose to reinvent our lives, other times something happens that forces us to do so.   In either case, there is no place for words like never. 

Time To Reinvent: Warning Sign #5

You hide all the sharp, pointed objects in your office.
You are afraid you might use them on someone.

Getting It Right Or Getting It Perfect ?

I couldn't sleep Saturday night. I'm talking eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, noticing every drop of rain falling on the sidewalk outside awake.This doesn't happen very often. I'm not one of those people who has sleep issues and resorts to chemical intervention to fall into REM. Just the opposite. My problem is usually waking up. That's how much I like sleep. Maybe it was too much wine. Or maybe not enough.

I've been so immersed in reworking the first section of my novel that just lying there waiting to get tired enough to fall back to sleep was not going to work. I got up, turned on the computer and started catching up on my blog reading.

It got me thinking, mostly that I haven't been writing enough blogs. Wondering how so many blog writers manage to get a post out every day. My excuse has been the novel. I haven't been able to concentrate on much else. The muse has not left my side and I don't want her distracted. This beginning is important, critical in fact to getting sold. And we all know that is my goal. To get published.

Now I'm wondering if the absence of my blogs is because I want them to be as perfect as the novel. But blogging is not about stressing over every word, worrying that if you don't grab someone in the first five pages they won't stay with you for the whole novel. Because blogging is about saying something in 500 words or less. Blogging is writing for the new generation of the attention deficient.

But I have been writing to get every word perfect. Polishing that first fifty so everyone who picks it up doesn't want to put it down. And in my quest for perfection I question whether I can really write at all, whether any of my words hold any importance. This desire for perfection in the novel has stifled my ability to get anything else on paper.

Seth Godin talks about doing the work and shipping it. But can you ship before it's perfect? Or do you just hope that you got it right enough?

I was so tired Sunday after my disrupted sleep that I was forced to take the day off. I brunched with friends, walked in the rain, bought lilacs, read the New York Times, and baked cookies. I also waited anxiously for the feedback of a wise and smart friend who I had asked to read those first fifty, someone who had not read one page of this manuscript before.

She liked it. She wants to read more. I don't know if it's perfect yet, or if it ever will be. But I know I'm getting it right. And if I'm getting it right that's pretty perfect.

In Gratitude For Our Planet

April 22, 2010 is Earth Day.

I invite you to click through this link and spend two minutes in gratitude.

HeartMath - Connecting a Million Hearts

Gratitude is good.

In gratitude for our planet.