In 2011, I suffered a traumatic accident that landed me in and out of the hospital for the winter. Two years and 11 surgeries later, I ended up losing my leg below the knee.
At the time, I wondered: How will I do this? My kids were ages six and four. I knew they needed their mom, but surgically healing pelvic, back, and leg fractures kept me confined to a bed in our living room for three months—scrambling for hope and answers for how our family might keep it together.
I couldn’t go upstairs to help my kids pick out their clothes. I couldn’t do their laundry. I couldn’t cook, make their lunches or get them on the bus for school. I felt robbed of all the things that I thought defined my role as a mother, at least for a while. It wasn’t until many years later that I was able to look back not at all that we had lost, but at all the things we had gained.
