Another Time, Another Life

It’s been nearly 10 years since a tree fell on my house, and nearly 6 years since I posted anything on my blog. So much life happened in between, and life finally moved on in it’s own way. My son grew up and is now studying to be an engineer. My wife and I still live in the same house. My business is still growing. A pandemic turned the rest of the world upside down. Life goes on.

It took 5 years to recover legally and financially. It took another 4 years for the anger and outrage to subside, and another year for me to realize I was no longer thinking about it every day. One fifth of my life was wrapped around that one event, which is hard to fathom.

Relatively speaking, it was a trivial tragedy. Compared to illness, war, poverty, oppression—things people routinely experience every day—I suffered nothing. But the impact on my mental health, my outlook, my consciousness, was significant. I spent a little bit of time drowning my feelings, a little bit of time anesthetizing myself to everything, walling myself off to get by. But in the end it was getting back on my bike that did the most for my mental health.

When my son started high school, he came home one day announcing he’d joined the mountain biking team. A few days later he told me they needed adult riders to help out with the team. I’m now on my seventh season as a NICA-certified mountain biking coach. That turned out to be the lifeline that helped me the most toward moving on with my life. I’ll be writing more about that in the days to come.

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