May 10 to May 10 to May 10

Ten years ago, I was living in Seattle, working at a job I loved as the first travel manager for an international fiber-optics company, starting a new relationship, making terrific money, living a life surrounded by great friends in a city that filled my soul and loving every second of being alive.

On May 10, 2001, I was rear-ended by a large truck heading southbound on I-5 in a five-car pileup.  It was the third serious accident I had been in from 1988 to 2001, creating more damage to my neck and back than I realized at the time.  I had previously had spinal fusion surgery in 1992, followed by nine  glorious pain-free years.  But those pain-free days ended with that huge white truck bearing down on me in the rear-view mirrow.

A month later, the great job ended when the company went bankrupt in the dot-bomb fiasco in the Northwest.  And then...9/11.  It was the trifecta of life-altering events that was to begin a ten-year period of loss and grief that I am just now beginning to understand in those terms.

I'm going to be writing about experiences during those ten years in the coming weeks and months.  It's the only way I can really process what happened to me, the good, the painful and those things I thought were unbearable at the time, but that I survived nonetheless.  And have received gifts of joy I would have never dreamed possible in the darkest stretches of those years.

Along the way, I passed another milestone on May 10:  on that date in 2003, I married the man I thought for sure was the love of my life...my soulmate.  But we were two battered, broken souls, drawn to each other for a variety of reasons and neither of us healthy enough to make it work.


I still look normal...never in any of the three accidents did I so much as break skin.  No broken bones, no bruises other than from seat belts...just soft-tissue damage like whiplash and some herniated disks, creating havoc with nerves and setting up years of degenerative disease and arthritis.  But on the outside?  No sign on my forehead saying "beaten to shit by large, moving objects."

Or..."lives with bipolar disorder" - no caution sign around my neck for the unwitting.

So, on this May 10, 2011, I marvel at the place I am now, after traveling those bumpy, winding roads over the last ten years.  So many of you are new additions to my life during that journey and I could not be more blessed.  And for those who have remained with me from the years before, I give thanks every day.  And to the many who have left footprints on my heart, you will never be forgotten.

The First Step

I keep thinking I'm a writer...but as Stephen King says so eloquently..."writers WRITE!"  And so, instead of jotting all my notes on the insides of my eyelids and etching countless drafts in the gray matter, this time, it's really going down in black and white...or umber and soft green.   Whatever...I'm venturing out for the world to read...and who knows what wonderful things might happen?!