Tag: photography

Grateful to be okay

Christy CollinsLeave a comment

Well, if there’s anything I can say I learned last week week (in addition to chiropractors are dangerous), it’s this:

How very, very grateful I am not to have a permanent nerve injury.

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I guess that’s sort of the obvious thing for anyone to say in this situation.  But what really surprised me was that my biggest fear was not how difficult daily life was going to be if my nerve issues turned out to be permanent.

Instead, what scared me the most was that I might have to give up my chosen career– or, at least, not be able to do it in the way that I want.

It was sort of a reminder for me, in a way, of how much I really want to become a physical therapist.  Because in my daily life, I often get bogged down in the practicalities.  The few remaining prerequisites I would need to take in order to apply to certain programs.  Taking the GRE (again, that is– let’s not talk about how I scored the first time!).

Last Friday, I consulted a neurologist, and was very encouraged by what she said.  On the way home, I stopped in the town of Newburyport, Mass., which is always one of my favorite places to go in the summer.

I could feel my body telling me it was okay to move, that it was okay to start using my legs again.  So I walked around and took in the sunset, gathering my thoughts.

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And I was just sort of thinking of everything I’ve been working on so far– my classes, my blog, my Youtube channel (I have so many ideas for videos I mean to make!).

And of course, the e-book I’ve been working on– Exercises for the Sacroiliac Joint.  It will be quite a bit easier to get back into concentrating on that, now that the question of whether I’ll be partially paralyzed for the rest of my life has been taken off the table.

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As I have said before, I don’t necessarily think everything happens for a reason.  But as my friend Nicole told me once, “You can make meaning out of things for yourself.”

So there a few lessons I can draw from what happened:

1) I need to explore alternatives to chiropractic adjustments.  Who knows where this will take me?  Maybe I’ll discover something even better, something that will benefit my future patients and make me a better PT.

2) I have such a better understanding now of what it feels like to have nerve damage.  Before, it was something I only could imagine.  Now I have felt it– thankfully, only for about a week.

And 3) What a reminder of how much I really do want to do this.  I want to teach people, I want to educate (and thank God I’ll still be able to use my own body as a tool to do so with).

Sometimes I feel myself get slowed down by the demands of daily life, and the things I have to do just to get into school.   So in a way, it was quite the wake-up call to get in touch with the fear I had, at the thought it could be taken away.

So now, I am grateful to be okay, and it is back to business.

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The push & pull of when to keep going, and when to rest

Christy Collins2 Comments

Yesterday I was trying to drive home in rush hour traffic, along a route I wasn’t familiar with, and I ended up taking one wrong turn after another.

For those that know Boston, I was trying to get on Storrow Drive West, but somehow ended up going up Route 1 North, over the Tobin Bridge.

I took an exit and tried to turn around, only to find I kept making more wrong turns.  I thought I was going up a ramp to get back to Route 1, only to realize I was driving on something I wasn’t quite sure was a road.  (By the way, normally I’m a very good driver, it was just a weird area!).

And then, the next thing I know, I ended up in Chelsea, driving up this beautiful hill towards a residential area, and I look out and see this as my view:

Don’t worry, I pulled over to take these photos!

For some reason, it got me thinking of all the twists and turns in my journey.

All the times I’ve been mad at myself for trying too hard (like starving myself and running a billion miles a week cause I was afraid I was going to get fat).

And all the times when, looking back, I was afraid to try too hard and so gave up too soon.

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Honestly, what I think now is that you just never know what lies ahead. And blaming yourself and giving up are, in a way, just our attempts to try to have control over a difficult situation.

The older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve learned, the more counter-productive I’ve seen that self-blame can be.

I‎t just isn’t useful; it doesn’t prove a point; it doesn’t get us any closer to the answers.

The truth is that there are answers I’ve found through hard work, and there are answers I only found because I happened to stumble upon them.

The one thing I wish I could really change, though, is all the times I held back because I was afraid of looking too hard. As if giving in and admitting I truly had a problem was the same as giving in to it, when actually that’s what it was going to take for me to overcome it.

Sometimes the right path will look like the wrong one, or the one that couldn’t possibly work (like me driving on a road I wasn’t quite sure was a road).

You just have to keep going and have enough faith in yourself to know that, ultimately, you’ll figure it out if something is or isn’t right for you.

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Someone asked me the other day how I found my physical therapist Paula– the person who finally really helped me with the SI joint.

The answer is simple, but also complex.

Technically, I found her because I happened to do a Google search for “physical therapy sacroiliac joint” and the name of my hometown (where I was living at the time). The website for the practice she worked at popped up, with her online staff bio, where it listed the SI joint as one of clinical interests. Simple, right?

But there are so many more layers to this. Such as the fact that she’d been working there for over five years, and somehow never came up in any of my millions of Google searches. (I’m still not sure how this happened, if someone redesigned their website at just the right time, or what).

I’d looked and looked and thought I knew of everyone in our area, but somehow, I’d missed her.

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I wasn’t going to look at all, actually.  I’d already seen FOUR other physical therapists, all of whom had either failed to help me, or made things worse.  I felt done.

It was my ex-boyfriend Tim who convinced me to look again.   He pointed out that maybe this was just what it took for me to find answers.  He got me to see that maybe four physical therapists wasn’t really that many.   Not if my entire life was on hold.

He told me about one of his friends, who, for years, suffered from constant sinus infections.  This friend saw multiple doctors who said there was nothing they could do, yet he refused to take no for an answer and kept seeking out other opinions.  Finally, he saw a specialist who told him that by luck of the draw, he’d been born with nasal passages that were too narrow.  This doctor was able to fix the problem with minor surgery.

So there are no hard and fast rules here. There’s no way to guarantee an easy answer.

The only guarantee is that if you waste time judging yourself, or being afraid to admit that you really have a problem, or assuming that no one will be able to help you… you’ll be more likely to push away your chances to find answers.

I finally found Paula through luck, probably because my search engine results changed.

But I also only found her because I had someone who cared about me to tell me I was judging myself and my situation too harshly; that I was jumping to conclusions about not being able to find help.

***

This started off as a post about finding answers, but in a way this post has turned into somewhat of a thank-you to Tim, as well.

So thank you, Tim. (We’re still friends and I’ll be sending him the link to this after I hit publish).

I hope you all are able to believe in yourselves and keep fighting.

And I hope you also, in one way or another, have a Tim.

A way of giving back (free photos!)

Christy CollinsLeave a comment

Some of the stuff I’ve been writing about on my blog has felt a little bit heavy recently, so I thought I’d just take a moment and share something I’ve been meaning to for a while:

When I first started blogging back in 2012, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, or if anyone would want to read anything I wrote.

One of the things that really helped me was to search through Flickr and find Creative Commons-licensed photos to use.  (If you aren’t familiar with Creative Commons, it is a way for people to make their artistic work available for others to use under certain permissions).

Somehow, when I was writing my first fledgling posts, it would give me a little dose of courage to find that someone had just happened to make the perfect photo available to go with what I was trying to say.

These days, I take more of my own photos.  I find that nature, especially, inspires me to write so I’ve gotten in the habit of snapping shots of wherever I am that makes me want to write.  But there are definitely still times where I don’t personally have any photos that would be useful for a specific post, so I still sometimes go on Flickr to find the perfect image.

So, as a way of paying it forward, I’ve put many of my own photos up on Flickr under a Creative Commons license as well.

I definitely can’t claim to be the world’s most amazing photographer, but I do have a lot of photos that I put thought into, and that mean something to me.

So, if you see anything on there that is helpful for you, or might go well with something you are working on, you are welcome to use it (as long as it’s one of the ones I’ve posted with permission!  There are a select few that are too personal, like of friends’ pets and such.  So please check).

I hope some of these photos might be useful to you (or, at the very least, I’ve now given you a new idea about how to look for photos on Flickr!).

Happy blogging!

 

 

 

Crystallized

Christy Collins7 Comments

What I love about winter is how everyday scenes can become beautiful, under different conditions.

Here are some photos I took off of my porch after last week’s storm.  It snowed all day, and then stopped right before sunset.  I have lived here for almost a year, and I had never seen these colors.

I love these photos, because they remind me to stay open to the beauty all around me.

Beauty can be everyday– but you have to be receptive to it.  Stay in the moment; keep your eyes open.

It’s there– you just have to remember to look.

Even the ordinary can be beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Sense of Place

Christy CollinsLeave a comment

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Ironically, I have a feeling this is going to be somewhat of a meandering post… because I have a lot of thoughts I want to share on the topic of staying in place.

I moved somewhat recently (last spring) after living with family for several years. I didn’t move far (still in the suburbs of Boston, only closer to the city now).

However, it’s been a time of big change for me, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to do a lot more things for myself rather than relying on my family. This is true of things that everyone has to learn to deal with at some point (for example, putting my own furniture together; installing my own curtain rod). Just those boring, annoying adult things.

For me, there is an added layer of difficulty, because of my sacroiliac joint issues. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am doing better than I was a few years ago, but I know from past experience that times of change are when I’m more likely to inadvertently push myself too far, and have a setback. It takes time to adapt to a new place, to a new routine; to figure out what works for me, and what I should avoid.

It’s been my grand experiment. It hasn’t always been pretty.

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One of the questions I’ve asked myself is, what is family? For so long, I relied on my family members for help, assuming they were the only ones who would be willing to help me with the kinds of favors most people don’t have to ask for.

My friends knew about my struggles, but I mostly tried to avoid asking for help, except for the times when it couldn’t be avoided.

However, I am not a scared and confused 20-year-old anymore. I am 30. (And no, 30 is not old. I feel amazing, and so excited about the future!). But it’s time to start branching out– to find new ways to do things, and new ways to relate to the people in my life.

Can friends be family? Or, in other words, can I redefine my relationships with my friends, and come to count on them the way I have counted on my family?

I definitely have not done it perfectly. It’s been a learning experience.

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Something I’ve learned is how far people will go out of their way to avoid hurting your feelings. They’ll do things that ultimately hurt you more– they’ll talk behind your back, they’ll plan a trip that involves a lot of walking, and won’t invite you– anything other than tell you to your face.

I’ve had to get better at reading between the lines. I’ve found it to be helpful if I can just take a guess at what might be wrong and offer an apology, even if the person insists everything is fine. I’ve had to get better at clearing the air; at addressing the problem as promptly as I can rather than letting it fester.

Things get awkward sometimes, because I can’t always repay a favor the way people would normally expect. For example, if one of my friends comes over and helps me carry my new mattress inside, I can’t go over the next week and help her move her couch. I have to find another way to contribute to the relationship.

Obviously, people do things out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s not as though, the very first time someone does me a favor, they expect something in return.

But over time, it’s important to show that you are also willing to help, and how much you care. There have been times where I thought I was doing a good job of this, only to realize that in some cases, my efforts weren’t really noticed.

It’s been frustrating for me, because the truth is that I put a lot of time and dedication into my friendships– to be there for people, to listen to them. I’ve come to find out the hard way that this effort isn’t always recognized.

I think it’s partly because listening comes so naturally to me. I actually love sitting down with people and sorting out their problems (it’s why, when I was in college, I wanted to be a psychotherapist). Because I enjoy it so much, and (let’s face it) I’m good at it, people don’t always realize that it can be excruciatingly hard work at the same time.

So, I’ve had to learn how to communicate better. To let people know how and when I am putting in effort, because they don’t always see it on their own. It’s all about being open, honest, and direct, while maintaining a non-confrontational stance.

What I’ve learned is that you can redefine your relationships with people. You can become closer to people, and ask more of them. But you have to be willing to put in more effort yourself– and to be prepared for people not to notice it, especially if it’s not in a form they’d expect. When that happens, you’ll need to find a graceful way to point it out.

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Although this post is about people more than it is than geographic location, “Sense of Place” is the only title that makes sense to me. After all, it’s other people that form so much of our sense of place– the feeling that we belong, the knowledge that we will be okay.

But I do love the area I moved to– I am somehow still surrounded by conservation land, trails, and parks, am yet much closer to the city than I used to be. I love it– the hustle and bustle of life around me, yet against a backdrop of so much natural beauty.

As I’ve mentioned previously, over the course of the past few years that I haven’t been able to run, I’ve learned to find peace in standing still. So, over the past few months, when I’ve felt overwhelmed, I’ve turned to the natural beauty around me, and drunk it in.

When things haven’t gone my way, when I’ve felt that my “sense of place” in the personal sense was still under construction, I’ve always had my internal connection to the natural world, and that has been my anchor.

It took a while– to learn the area, to feel at home, to re-evaluate my connections with the other people in my life. It’s a work in progress, but it’s working out.