The Good, the Bad, and the Painful

Reflections on a challenging 2023

Dec 29, 2023

Hi friends,

Welcome to a special Friday edition of Snippets and Sketches! I decided to send this out today in order to wrap up 2023. I’ll send something short and sweet on Monday to kick off the New Year.

This past year has been a challenging one, which can be divided into two distinct halves. I’ll talk about the first half first because…well, because that’s logical!

January through June, 2023

I think of the first half of this year as the dark half of 2023.

In December 2022, right before Christmas, I started having back pain. It wasn’t limiting at first. But it lingered. So, when I had my annual check-up in early January, I mentioned it. An x-ray revealed nothing alarming, so I was told to try some exercises that can help with lower back pain. But the pain got worse. A lot worse.

The doctor ordered an MRI. I remember going to the imaging center, alone in the waiting room on the verge of tears, pacing like a mad woman because it was the only way to get some relief. The MRI was easier than I expected. I lay there, more still than I thought humanly possible, the music on the headphones barely audible over the hum of the machine, trying to rest in the belief that God held me, no matter what I was going through. It would be okay.

Later that day, the nurse called. “You have a large herniated bulge,” she said. They were referring me to a neurosurgeon for a consultation. Great.

My appointment with the neurosurgeon wouldn’t be for another three weeks. Three weeks of living a nightmare of constant agaony, little sleep, and fending off depression that loomed like Silverstein’s Skakagrall in the shadows.

There were so many things I couldn’t do without pain. Sleep. Put on socks. Open the blinds above the kitchen sink. I could walk, but only on even surfaces. I could sit, but only on hard chairs, and only for a few minutes at a time. I couldn’t ride in the car. Couldn’t cuddle with my husband to watch TV in the evenings. It was the dead of winter, and I couldn’t even go for a walk in the snow.

Also, I couldn’t focus. Even with the standing work station I had set up in my office, my mind simply refused to cooperate. Standing gave me some relief, but the pain was still there, especially for the first several hours of the day. I was in unfamiliar territory, and as much as I joked about all the new life experiences this…adventure…brought me, I just wanted it to end.

But that was going to take time and effort and no small amount of crying out to God on my (figurative) knees.

In the meantime, life went on. And I wish I could say that everything was rosy besides the pain I was going through. But no. I lost my agent. My son got covid. Then he got an intestinal virus. Fortunately, he kept those to himself (the last thing I needed was to be coughing or vomiting while trying to recover from a herniated disc). My husband got a kidney stone. My sister, who’s been battling stage four breast cancer for a few years, almost died from kidney failure. I remember saying more than once, “Lord, how much more can we take?” But I never doubted his faithfulness through it all.

My sister recovered. My son’s health improved. My husband passed his kidney stone. And I got better. After my visit with the neurosurgeon and a course of steroids to help with the pain (at last…persistent pain instead of constant agony), I began physical therapy and was gradually recovering.

I didn’t work very much during this time. I closed my critique service for a couple of months and barely wrote anything. I did a lot of baking because of my inability to sit! But somehow I managed to send out submissions and complete an illustration course through the School of Visual Storytelling. The standing work station and evening class sessions turned out to be very helpful for that!

By the end of June, I was well enough to go on a road trip to Florida with my husband and son. I wasn’t pain free, but I felt like a million bucks compared to where I had started in January. Things were looking up!

July through December, 2023

I had my last physical therapy session on July 6. Though I hadn’t yet reached my goal of 100% recovery, I felt almost normal almost all the time. I could even walk uphill comfortably! Not only that, but I could tell that physical therapy and being more active in general had made me stronger than I’d been in a long time.

It was also in July that I got an offer from Bandersnatch Books for publication of MARI IN THE MARGINS, my middle grade novel-in-verse, which I had submitted during the dark first half of the year.

My productivity over the next six months more than made up for my lack thereof over the previous six months. I got right to work creating the art for the interior and the cover of my novel, and worked with the editorial team to make revisions to the manuscript. Also, selling my book was the motivation I needed to get back to sending out a regular newsletter. I’ve been consistently publishing a newsletter once a week since July! Some other good things that have happened are the birth of my fourth grandbaby, my picture book FEDERICO AND THE WOLF being a Kohl’s Cares book, and my sister celebrating her 50th birthday with family and friends and a cake like the one Bilbo had at his 111th birthday.

The second half of 2023 was not without its challenges, though. My dad got remarried in August (I wrote about that event and the jumble of emotions it produced here). Also in August, my son injured his head, resulting in a concussion and a couple staples (he’s really ready for a fresh start in 2024). And the week before Christmas, my father-in-law had a heart attack. Sheesh. He’s doing okay now, though. We’re all doing okay. Christmas was chaotic, but lovely. We even had snow on Christmas Day!

Now that the quiet, in-between time of the Christmas season is here, it’s been good to reflect on all the good and the bad and all the good that came from the bad this year. I’m looking forward to what 2024 brings, even if some of it hurts. I trust that, somehow, good will always work out.

Happy New Year!