July taught me how to be still, and August started teaching me how to move again, and apparently, I take physical therapy very seriously. My physical therapist and Fred agreed my photo should be next to “compliance” because when she gave me exercises to do at home, I did them. I was locked in, and if she told me to do something a certain number of times, I did it.
I wanted my mobility back, my independence back, and me back. But one exercise brought me face-to-face with just how much my body had been through. I was supposed to raise my right leg; that’s it, something I had done without thought thousands of times throughout my life. You decide to lift your leg, and your leg lifts. Except mine didn’t. I remember lying there, mentally telling my right leg to move, lift, nothing. I tried again, come on, lift, and nothing. It was as if I couldn’t find the connection between my brain and my leg. I knew what I wanted it to do. I could see my leg. I could tell it to move, but I could not engage it, and I broke down in tears. Something was frightening and incredibly humbling about not being able to command a part of my own body to do something that had once been automatic.
For weeks, I had been measuring recovery in pain levels, steps, medication, swelling, ice, sleep, and physical therapy. But that moment was different. I wasn’t simply dealing with pain. I was trying to reconnect with my own body. So, I kept trying, again, again, and again. Until eventually, my right leg lifted. I’m not sure I can adequately explain the victory contained in that tiny movement; it wasn’t high, it wasn’t graceful, nobody was handing out medals, but that leg came off the surface, and I was elated.
Recovery has a way of completely changing how you define an accomplishment. Then came another milestone: I was cleared to drive. Oh, freedom! After weeks of relying on Fred to take me to appointments and physical therapy, I could finally get behind the wheel and take myself somewhere. Naturally, my brain interpreted “cleared to drive” as “back to normal.” My knee had other ideas.
The first time I went out to run a few errands, I was doing things that before surgery probably would have taken me about 30 minutes. I came home about two hours later completely exhausted, and I wanted my bed & my beloved ice machine. Apparently, being able to do something again and having the stamina to do it like you used to are not the same thing- another lesson- but I didn’t care, because I had driven myself.
I could take myself to physical therapy. I could run a couple of errands. I could leave the house without coordinating someone else’s schedule. Little pieces of my independence were coming back. Little pieces of me were coming back. And apparently, I started feeling enough like myself that I decided it was time to attend my first writers conference. This month, I attended the Muse Writers Conference in Norfolk, Virginia. There is something wonderful about being 60 years old, retired from a career that lasted decades, having published your first novel, and then walking into a room and realizing: I still have so much to learn.
I had a table representing both Widowhood Real Talk with Tina and Dr. Tina the writer. I brought books, of course, and I sold a few. But looking back, the number of books I sold wasn’t remotely the most valuable thing I carried home; the people were. I met people I genuinely believe will remain part of my journey. I made connections with people who may be able to help with the memorial garden. I met people with editing expertise. I listened. I learned. I asked questions, and I learned how to pitch my book. That was an education all by itself; you would think that after writing The Five Widows Club, talking about it countless times, signing copies, and watching it become an Amazon Bestseller, I would automatically know how to pitch it- nope.
There is an art to being able to communicate what your story is, who it is for, and why someone should care at all without giving them the entire book while you’re standing there. Who knew? I didn’t, but I do now. That may be one of the things I enjoyed most about the conference. I wasn’t there pretending I had everything figured out because I had published a book. I was there as a student of writing. At 60, I get to be new at something; how wonderful is that? And then something happened that made my first writers’ conference even more memorable. I entered the writers’ contest. I submitted a short story called “Two Socks.”
When I wrote The Five Widows Club, I also wrote a prequel for each of the five widows, imagining the night before each woman’s spouse died. “Two Socks” comes from Joyce’s story and gives us a glimpse into her life before the loss that readers encounter in the novel. I submitted it at my first writers conference. My first time entering the contest, and “Two Socks” received an Honorable Mention in Fiction. I was ELATED.
There is something different about having a published book and having another piece of your writing evaluated independently and recognized. Someone read something I created and saw something worthy in the writing itself. That mattered to me. Grief may have pushed me toward storytelling, but I am discovering that I genuinely love the craft of writing. I don’t only want to publish books. I want to become a better writer, and yes, I am already looking forward to attending the Muse Writers Conference next year. But perhaps one of my most meaningful author moments in August didn’t happen at the conference.
A few months ago, I met an amazing woman at one of my book signings. This month, we had lunch together. She is in her 90s; she served in the military; she still drives; and she has stories. We talked about her life, her service, the love she shared with her husband, and what life has been like since his death. Then she talked to me about The Five Widows Club. She told me what the book meant to her and that she is already looking forward to book number two. That alone would have touched me, but then she told me about another friend of hers who is also a widow and is unable to see. She plans to read The Five Widows Club to her chapter by chapter; that stopped me.
When I wrote this book, I had a dream for it and wanted women and men to recognize something of themselves in these characters. I wanted people who had experienced loss to feel less alone. I wanted the friendships in the story to remind people of the power of community. Those were hopes I carried while writing.
But hoping that your words will touch someone and sitting across the table from a reader who tells you they actually did are two completely different experiences. And now one widow is going to sit with another widow and read my words aloud to her, chapter by chapter. I was blown away, and I offered to meet her friend, too. I would be honored to sit with them and read some of the book to her myself. That is the part of becoming an author I could never have fully imagined when The Five Widows Club was still a manuscript. A book leaves your hands. And then it begins having a life you cannot control. It travels into homes. It sits beside someone during a difficult season. It starts conversations. It creates friendships. Sometimes it is passed from one person to another. And sometimes one woman decides that if her friend cannot see the pages herself, she will become her friend’s eyes and read them aloud. That is bigger than a sale. That’s why I wrote it, and somehow, all of these August experiences feel connected.
At the beginning of my recovery, I couldn’t lift my right leg when my brain told it to move. In August, I lifted it, then I drove. Then I started venturing back into the world. I attended my first writers’ conference; I learned, I connected, I received recognition for my fiction. I sat across from a reader and heard how something I wrote was making its way into another person’s life. Then, toward the end of the month, I went for a walk for two and a half miles. Now, let’s not get carried away. I came home and reunited immediately with my ice machine. We are still very much in a committed relationship. But I did it!
The same right leg I once stared at through tears because I couldn’t make it lift carried me for two and a half miles. If that isn’t perspective, I don’t know what is. Healing is a long game. I still have unrealistic expectations of myself sometimes. I still think I should be farther along. I still have moments when my mind remembers what my body used to do and gets impatient with what it can do today.
But August gave me something July couldn’t quite give me yet: evidence that my body is healing, that independence is returning, that there are still new rooms for me to walk into, that at 60 years old I can still learn an entirely new craft, that the stories I write can travel farther than I ever will and that sometimes progress is happening even while we’re frustrated by how long it’s taking.
July taught me to care for the person I was in that moment. August reminded me that the person I recognize is still here. Maybe I’m not trying to get “back to normal” after all. Maybe I’m discovering what this version of normal looks like, a little slower, a little wiser, still occasionally unrealistic and definitely still attached to my ice machine, but moving. As I head into September, I feel hopeful, not because the healing is finished; it isn’t. But because I finally believe I can see what’s waiting on the other side; one month ago, progress looked like a few extra steps. This month, it looked like two and a half miles, a writers’ conference, an Honorable Mention, a reader across a lunch table, and the freedom to drive myself home. I’ll take it.
— Dr. Tina Fornwald