Whether I feel a life storm approaching and don inadequate rain gear while taking shelter in a hut made of noodles (because how prepared can any of us really be), or end up in the throws of the storm of the century, which uproots everything I thought I knew and hold dear… I try to remind myself “this too, shall pass.”

Sometimes, though, the storm just gathers intensity and the waves rise up and up. It feels as though it won’t end. The older I get, the more I begin to realize that there will always be a sort of storm in my life, and what I need to do is learn how to beef up my storm shelter.

Recently (the last year), my life has been in the middle of what I’d call a 100-year storm. It began with a busy-all-the-time job and summer. A summer where August had three sunny days when it’s normally my Vitamin D charge-up-for-the-winter-month.

It continued with a gloomy, sunless fall. A fall that made it impossible for me to want to get out of bed. Worse, it made me not want live. And when I mustered up the strength to call for help, I had to wait five weeks (FIVE WEEKS) to see a psychiatrist. The hope this created was enough to help me go through the motions until I could find some relief.

I knew that while helpful, therapy wasn’t enough. I needed a better starting place that only medication could give me. And I didn’t like my last experience on medication, so I desperately wanted (and needed) to get it right.

I started the medicine in November. We increased the dose in December. By January, I no longer wanted to kill myself. We increased it again and in March, I began to feel better still. I’m in no way “healed,” but I get to start the day from a much better place, a place that allows me to work on myself.

I thank God for being in this place, because that storm I was talking about… it didn’t pass… it got crazy violent.

In early April, my son woke up with a stomach bug. At least, that’s what we thought it was. When he came upstairs at the end of the day to brush to his teeth and was gripping his lower right side, I took one look at my husband who nodded, and I took him to urgent care. After numerous tests, including a CT scan, we got checked into the hospital and settled around 2:30 in the morning. Surgery for his appendectomy was scheduled for a few hours later. Everything went well, but the surgeon found dual inguinal hernias that he said would need to be repaired this summer. Another surgery.

We spent one more night at the hospital and once we were discharged, I had to pack and take off early for a girls’ trip because there was a blizzard expected. It felt wrong to leave my fresh-out-of-surgery child to go on a trip, but for many reasons, I needed it.

While on that trip (to Denver), I dislocated my knee cap and tore cartilage. After flying back to Minneapolis (I got to cut to the front of all the lines in my wheelchair and a personal care assistant pushed and helped me, which made the whole experience a little bit better), then driving to Sioux Falls, all on a leg that didn’t really support weight, I went to bed in the middle of the night.

The following day, I went in to the orthopedic clinic and they ordered an MRI. That scan revealed that my knee was built wrong and I’d be a frequent flyer for this injury, causing me to need a total knee replacement in my early 40s. The other option, was major surgery that would put me out of commission for a long time. I had to make a decision fast, because our insurance year resets in July and I’d need to get it scheduled soon to make that deadline.

While all of that was going on, I was still managing a team of five while trying to help with an annual, five-day operations conference at work. A conference that was so far behind and delayed due to another organization acquiring my organization. So yes, a major reorganization with little-to-no job security was also taking place. Mass chaos was the name of the game since the previous October.

I scheduled my surgery, and got my son’s hernia surgery scheduled for the day before. With the delays and since I would be out the two weeks leading up to the big event , I had to get roughly a month-and-a-half’s work done in two weeks.

No big deal, right? Ugh.

Just prior to my son’s and my surgeries, I also found out at work that while I still get to be a manager, my team was being split and I was taking on some new-to-me faces. The storm was intensifying.

I managed to get the work done, my son to his hernia surgery and myself to mine. Thanks to my mother for taking the kids, because I can’t imagine how much harder things would have been if I had had to parent in addition to recovering from surgery.

My surgery went well, but my recovery was much harder than I allowed myself to believe it was going to be. I was to be non-weight bearing for six weeks. That’s a long time to be unable to roll over in bed normally, or to use the bathroom without complications. It’s a lifetime of not going down all the stairs to tuck my son in at bedtime because it was just too much work by that point in the day.

Walking is part of my routine again, but I’m still not really doing stairs normally and I may never return to crawling around on my hands and knees (not too bent out of shape over this). My PT sees me two times per week yet, which can complicate things at work. Soon, we’ll be down to once per week… just in time for me to start going to weekly counseling again because it’s Finter (fall that acts like winter).

I took 2019 off from my side photography business to work on my mental and physical health. I feel like that was a huge blessing. That time freed up allowed me to focus on the storm swirling my schedule and sanity.

This is a very long story to bring me to my point: It isn’t getting better or easier. Things aren’t slowing down. The storm may ebb slightly from time to time, but whatever breaks I find soon fill with new struggles.

Thanks to my medication, though, I’m holding up (barely, but it counts). And I’m learning just how strong I am, how lucky I am, how loved and supported I am. So maybe, my storm shelter is better protection than I thought.