What You Need to Know About Healing:

By Guest Writer Katina Rankin

What you need to know about #healing:

There is a strange, heavy loneliness in looking completely fine when your entire world has been dismantled.

If you saw me out and about in Magee this past week, you wouldn’t see any casts or visible scars. You’d just see me with weight gain.

From the outside, it looks like I am completely “back to normal” after my strokes and heart surgery.

What people don’t see is the sheer, exhausting mental warfare it takes to perform that version of myself.

They don’t see that it now takes me twice as long just to get dressed in the morning.

They don’t see that even though I look put together, I still rely on my cane and use a motorized shopping cart just to get through a store and to the pharmacy.

When I am out, I often see the flash of surprise on people’s faces. I see that look that says, “Oh, I feel sorry for her.”

I don’t want your #pity. I want your #understanding.

Down here in the Deep South, mental and physical struggles often carry a stigma. We are told to put on a brave face, pray it away, or just push through.

But, a damaged neurological system is not a matter of attitude. It is a matter of anatomy.

You wouldn’t tell someone to remove a cast (orthopedic) before a bone has healed. The #brain is no different.

The hardest part of this recovery hasn’t just been the physical healing. It’s the quiet grief of losing who I used to be.

My mind feels like a house I’ve lived in my whole life, except someone came in overnight and moved all the furniture around in the dark.

I still try to show up for my community. I still do what I can for my literacy nonprofit. Just this past week, I was helping/trying to prepare for book giveaways.

But, moments like that bring a harsh reality check. When you’re recovering from paralysis on your right side, something as simple as moving a box can feel like climbing a mountain. Watching my 76-year-old mother help me with tasks I once handled without a second thought is a reminder that recovery is taking longer than I want it to.

It hasn’t even been a full year yet.

So, I adapt. I pace myself. I do my best to show up. And, when I say I’m not up for talking on the telephone, it isn’t an attitude problem.

Hear me. It’s a capacity problem.

I can laugh in one moment and feel completely overwhelmed in the next. Living with an invisible injury means learning an entirely new rhythm. Healing is not always visible.

Just because I look okay on the outside doesn’t mean the battle is over. It simply means I’m fighting every day to keep moving forward.

WHY THIS POST?

Because disabilities and mental health struggles are real, even when you can’t see them.

Please be kind to your coworkers, your family members, your friends, and even strangers. Maybe they aren’t being standoffish. Maybe they’re carrying a burden you know nothing about.

Recovery is happening, even on the days it doesn’t look like it. I’m still here, still healing, and still moving forward one step at a time.

GOD Bless!