The little boy on his bicycle asked me, “Mister, are you okay?”

      My reply was a bit tentative, I wanted to be both realistic and reassuring. “Well, not at the moment but I hope I will be soon.” Then I told him he didn’t do anything wrong to cause my crash. I’d picked up too much speed coming down the hill on my bike. As I rounded a blind curve I suddenly saw the boy riding up the hill. Fortunately, I was able to avoid colliding with him. Instead, my body collided with the asphalt path.

      My bicycle was beneath me on its side. I had no strength in my shoulders as I struggled to get up. Two other cyclists came along and helped me get my chain back on the sprockets and figure out that my rear brakes were binding against the wheel. I was able to walk the bike back up the hill, adjust the brakes and ride the two kilometres home.

      A few hours later in the emergency waiting room I suddenly felt very weak, sweaty and had chest pain. My ECG was okay but after the CT scan things got really serious really fast. Quickly my body was equipped with both input and output tubes and immobilized in a cervical collar. Then I was off by ambulance to the surgical ward of a regional trauma hospital.

That was about seven weeks ago. 

      Since this happened, things I used to say in the therapy room to traumatized clients have echoed back. As a psychotherapist I’d used the amazing healing capacity of the human body as a metaphor for achieving psychological wellness. Scabs and scars are part of the process. 

      I decry the popular expression “time heals all wounds”. It’s not time that does it. It’s the capacity built into the human body, and into the human mind, to heal and find renewed ability to function again. 

      Now with my own muscular-skeletal and internal injuries I rely on the body’s healing capacity. A lacerated spleen engages its own repair over a period of three months. One of the four tendons in my left shoulder rotator cuff is completely severed. The other shoulder is still sore too, probably with lesser tears there. Months of rehab will be needed. 

      A whole of lot of the body’s resources are going into this healing program taking place inside of me. No wonder I’m still prone to fatigue. There has been pain and soreness. My previous stamina was shot; regular long walks are helping to rebuild it. I even had to patiently wait for my intestines to get themselves back into a comfortable physical arrangement with each other. 

      But overall, I’ve experienced relatively little suffering.

      Certainly there have been moments of “OMG, what have a done to myself now?” Largely though this has just been a nodal point on the journey through my senior years. Life will proceed after this accident and my recovery. For sure, I’ll no longer let myself pick up so much speed on my bicycle riding down hills.

      Healing, both the psychological kind in the therapy room and the physical kind taking place in my body, requires something of us. It is not a passive process (I rail against all the advice to just rest and take it easy for a while). Healing benefits from a posture of awareness, perspective and good decision-making. I share with my Great Pyrenees a personality of stubbornness and independence. I can receive guidance but I have to actively decide for myself what would be good to do and commit myself to it. I have to make it my own. 

      As a psychologist I learned about how we as human beings are wired up. Built into our bodies and minds are alternate mechanisms, one of alert-and-energize and another of nurture-and-repair. I rode home from my bike crash despite significant injuries under the mechanism of alert-and-energize. Now I’m in the space of nurture-and-repair. 

      To a certain extent our body automatically dials in one or the other of these modes. But we also have a mind that has a say as to which mode is activated. The alert-and-energize response inhibits the healing process (through adrenaline and cortical steroids). We can turn on this half of the system with thoughts of this event being terrible and our suffering being awful and the world being treacherous. We can also dial this process down by shifting our perspective to gratitude and acceptance. 

      This collision has stimulated a response of gratitude for me. I’ve had amazingly competent medical care, humanly reassuring and kind. It has not cost me a single dollar and so I’m thankful for universal health care in this country. I’ve got a great physiotherapist to help me rebuild my shoulder. I’ve had practical and emotional support from friends and family. To all of this, a vigorous “thanks”.

      I’m also thankful for my prior decisions about my health, they have served me well to get through this. Because I always wear a helmet when cycling, I saved myself a significant head injury. Because I was consistent with doing yoga and weight training my body got through the trauma and got me home and to medical care. The unique exercises of kettlebells for weight training has resulted in a more rapid rehabilitation process. My previous diligence in keeping physically fit has morphed into present diligence in doing my physiotherapy exercises daily.

      But I’m also thankful for the therapy room that structured my life work. The metaphor has reversed. I take motivation from what I witnessed in the therapy room to keep believing in my own capacity to heal physically. The comments I made to the little boy came out of my work in dealing with traumatized children. I knew he needed to be told the truth. I knew he needed an adult not to blame him or be mad at him for something terrible that happened. I’m sure I said those words while in a state of shock.  But those words came immediately to mind because of the life work I had chosen for myself.

      And for that too, I am grateful.