“That Won’t Be Necessary …”

When I was 9 years old, I broke both the bones in my right wrist playing in a pick-up game of tackle football with my neighborhood friends on a rock hard sandlot just across the cul-de-sac from where I lived. It’s one of those memories that’s as fresh today as it was the day it happened.  I was streaking down the middle of the field en route to what seemed like an easy touchdown when I was struck in the back by the human equivalent of a semi-tractor trailer.  His name was Ken McCray.  Ken, who was, by a considerable measure, the biggest kid in the neighborhood, clumsily launched himself onto my back WWF-style and drove me and my right wrist into the ground.  The pain that ensued was excruciating.  I remember getting up without a word, walking across the street into my living room with tears pouring down my face and having the following predictable exchange with my mostly intolerant dad:  Me (looking down at a hand that now hung limp at a 90° angle to my right arm): “Dad, I think I broke my wrist?” “What do you mean you ‘think you broke your wrist’?” he replied.  “It’s not broken – just move it.”  Me (about to pass out): “My brain is telling it to move, Dad, it just doesn’t seem to be listening!”  And with that, we were off to Baptist Hospital, where my arm was casted just above the elbow and put in a sling, where it would remain for the next 6 weeks.

Most would have used the occasion to at least miss a day of school. It was after all only the third grade. But missing school was not really something that ever crossed my mind – not that it would’ve been a viable option even if I had suggested it – and so the next day, after only momentarily basking in the attention that casts, black eyes, etc. invariably garner, I settled into my front row seat in Ms. Chena’s class at Howard Drive Elementary as if nothing had happened. It was business as usual. Before the class was over, Ms. Chena came to me and explained that she had taught students with broken right arms before and would gladly make arrangements for me to complete assignments that didn’t require writing. “That won’t be necessary,” I told her – not entirely sure where those words had come from – “I plan to learn to write left-handed!” I don’t know which one of us was more perplexed by that statement.  I’d never really done anything left-handed in my life, save for swinging a baseball bat – poorly. But, having made the commitment and setting the goal, I wasn’t about to back out or back down from the challenge. It’s who I was – even at 9 years old.  In the days and weeks that followed, I actually did teach myself to write left-handed, much to my and Ms. Chena’s amazement.  She was effusive in her praise – to me and to my parents. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, until I got to be 50 years old and started to think about it – “it” and what “it” symbolized.

I suspect (at least I hope!) there’s not another 9 year-old on the planet who would’ve done what I did – not a single one!  So why did I do it?  What exactly was I trying to prove by learning to write left-handed, who I was trying to prove it to, and, most importantly, why did I feel the need to prove whatever “it” was at all?  Why couldn’t I be satisfied being just like every other right-handed 9 year-old with a broken right wrist – taken a day (or two!) off of school, milked the broken arm for all the attention and special privileges I could, and enjoyed a few weeks respite from written homework and classroom assignments?  Why did I feel compelled to try so hard? Why did I feel the need to go the extra mile – and then some – even to the extent of volunteering to change something about myself as fundamental as the hand I wrote with?!?  Why was I so quick to insist on proving myself adequate, capable, up for the challenge? Unfortunately, it would be decades before I stopped long enough to ask, let alone try to seek answers to any of those questions. And believe me, it was unfortunate, because, over time, the roots of that vine, borne of a seedling planted in my family of    origin, would run deep and its “never enough” sprawling limbs would find their way into every crack and crevice of my life – my schooling, my sports, my relationships, my parenting, and, most noticeably, my work.

I was reminded of that “little boy” again this weekend, when I stumbled across a piece that Teresa Scanlan, Miss America 2011 wrote in the aftermath of the tragic death of her fellow Miss America winner, Cheslie Kryst. In it, Ms. Scanlan poignantly and powerfully describes the “struggle for rest and peace” that seems to elude those who are hard-wired to please, to do, to achieve, to avoid disappointing – to feel that there is always more of themselves they could/should be giving in furtherance of their gifts and in the service of others:

“You work so hard your entire life, striving to always be the best, always making the most out of what you’ve been given, never wanting to squander a single moment. You enjoy it at first, but the pressure creeps up on you before you even know it.

Suddenly, the pressure bubble is crushing, suffocating, squeezing the breath out of your lungs … you’re racing on a treadmill, trying to keep up. Don’t slip. Don’t fall. Don’t make a single wrong move. You’ll disappoint them all. Keep the smile on your face.

You focus on grinding, on your goals, on your next move. You’ll show them. …but wait, do you even want to? No time to think about that now! On to the next [challenge, to overcoming the next obstacle, to more, bigger achievements] . Move, move, move.

You’re scaling a ladder, limbs quivering as you frantically reach for the next rung. The moment you pull yourself up on the rung, gasping for air, the only thing you can do is reach for the next, and the next… and the next.

‘I have to find another thing to accomplish,’ you say to yourself. Something, anything. And, it has to be bigger, better, faster than the last.

What am I doing? Why am I doing these things? No, no time to think, just go – just do.”

Mrs. Chena did her level best to teach me an important life lesson that day. In an hour of need, when I quite literally was “broken” and vulnerable, she offered compassion, understanding, empathy and support.  She wanted me to know that, in my brokenness, I was still enough, that I already had more than demonstrated that I was an exceptional student and that it was “okay” for me to take my foot off the accelerator for a moment – without fear that it would somehow alter what she thought of me. Looking back, I’d like to think that if Ken McCray had broken both my wrists that day, I would’ve gotten that message and that maybe, just maybe it would have changed the trajectory of my life – of my heart. But, chances are, knowing that 9 year-old boy the way I do today, I’d now be one of the few able-bodied people on Earth capable of writing with his mouth instead!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKkIt5uphdA

A Few Thoughts About Oxygen and Other Heart Essentials

If you’d told me when I started my blog nearly a decade ago that, in the waning hours of the summer of 2022, I’d be penning a post accompanied by a photograph of a ResMed 11 CPAP machine and an AirFit F20 full face mask on my nightstand, I almost certainly would’ve thought you were crazy. And yet, here I am and there it is. But actually, that’s not the crazy part. What’s crazy – in the most literal sense of the word – is that it took me as long as it did to get here and, in retrospect, that I got here at all. You see, the truth is: I was first alerted to the possibility that there was a problem more than 5 years ago, when my wife mentioned that my breathing seemed to stop with some regularity while I was sleeping. I, of course, immediately dismissed the concern – a uniquely male trait – as impossible, given the arduous work schedule I was keeping, the amount of physical activity I was routinely engaging in, the mental acuity I was enjoying, and the fact that I seemed to have more than enough energy to spare at the end of the day – all of which were “contraindicative” of a person suffering from what otherwise sounded a lot like sleep apnea, at least based on the 20 minutes of research I’d allowed myself on the Mayo Clinic website! And so, rather than ask someone who actually knew what they were talking about whether there was an issue and, if so, what I could do to correct it, I decided I knew best and, in this instance, my idea of “best” was to ignore and power on.

And, power on I did. In the intervening 5 years, I would bill about 10,000 hours, walk about 3,000 miles, endure a marital separation, pack up and move to five different homes in two different states, change work locations 3 times, organize and host a weekend Summit that brought together a number of the country’s leading eating disorder experts, spearhead a year-long effort to draft and publish a first-of-its-kind, consensus-based report and recommendation inspired by that gathering, experience a 2-year global pandemic, present (albeit virtually) at an international eating disorder conference and two legal conferences, write several feature articles in various legal publications and several dozen blog posts, co-present on a number of webinars, attend my daughter’s wedding – and, perhaps not surprisingly, spend a helluva lot of time in therapy along the way! But, here’s the kicker: I finally broke down and decided to undergo a sleep test – mostly to prove I’d been right all along and, in the process, silence those who claimed to know better once and for all. The thing is: I hadn’t been right. In fact, the two day test revealed that I’d been very “wrong” (which, in this case, meant I’d stopped breathing) an average of 57 times an hour! That means that, assuming I slept an average of 8 hours a night during that same 5 year period, I had stopped breathing a mind-numbing 166,440 times! Thanks to modern technology, it’s now under control. But, even today, as I type that number, I shudder to think what could’ve happened – and likely did happen – as a result of my insistence on doing things “my way” and, in the process, deprive my heart the full complement of the oxygen it needed to not only survive, but thrive.

My recklessness made me pause and wonder what other essential nutrients I may unwittingly have been depriving my heart of all these years. Months later, I got the answer in the most unlikely of ways, when, quite unexpectedly, a remarkable young woman, in a very dark season of her life, found her way to my doorstep. To the outside world – both personal and professional – my friend is a poster child for the Seemingly-Has-It-All-Together brand – a brand with which I am intimately familiar. She is hard-working, diligent, thorough, punctual, unflappable, even-tempered, eager to please, and would never compromise work responsibilities for personal needs – to name just a few of her many admirable-in-the-eyes-of-the-world attributes. But, the tears that suddenly – and, at least from her perspective, embarrassingly – flowed freely as we started to talk told a very different story. “I’m sorry,” she said, apparently sensing a need to apologize for feeling. “I’ve always managed to power through times like these by doing, by distracting, by compartmentalizing, and, when all else fails, by numbing. But, this time, it’s just not working and I’m afraid.” We sat for a few minutes in silence, now both in tears, each reflecting on their place of origin, and then, as if speaking into a mirror, I offered this, borne, in part, of my recent bout with heart deprivation and the better part of a lifetime spent living in her skin: “It – the denial, the stuffing down, the diverting our eyes, etc. – works until it doesn’t,” I began. “And the little girl inside you, the one trying to bear the weight of a lifetime of hurt, the one gasping for air in the mountain of stuffing, is telling you, ‘it’s not gonna work anymore,’ that her heart – your heart – needs healing, that she (and it) need the freedom to feel.”  

About an hour, half a box of tissues, and enough knowing smiles to convince both of us a seedling of hope had been planted later, my friend got up to leave. As she did, I had the “craziest” thought: “If I managed to deny my heart the oxygen it needed to breathe at least 166,440 times in just 5 years, how many more times had I, like my friend, just as recklessly denied it the freedom it needed, longed for, and deserved to experience and express its feelings – all of them – in the course a lifetime?” More than enough I decided.

https://tinyurl.com/2ej2z45d