Post Brain Surgery: Five Things I Learned During My Summer of Healing.

Many of you already know I had an unexpected and emergency brain surgery in May. If you aren’t in the know, I can say with confidence that I’m feeling 100% these days and as of my last scan, my tumor is completely gone. We’ll check in on it every year for a large chunk of my life to make sure it doesn’t come back, but for now, the road forward is well-paved and scenic. After the twilight-zone of a May we had, this is simply quite amazing/astonishing/miraculous/unbelievable.

One thing I heard over and over while I was healing is that “the brain doesn’t like to be bothered”. This results, especially after a tumor as sizable as the one I had removed from my brain (enjoy the photo reference above), in a whole lot of necessary healing. The initial healing was physical (outwardly noticeable things like my walk, my balance, my scar, sections of my shaved head, swelling, etc.) AND invisible (feeling unlike myself, feeling like my head was disconnected from my body, memory issues, difficultly concentrating, numb/tingly skin, exhaustion, overwhelm). The latter, and largest part of my healing, however, was 100% invisible.

Once I had made leaps and bounds in the physical department, you’d never know I had undergone brain surgery just prior. This was a relief in many ways as I could present as completely “normal” when grocery shopping, on a walk, chatting with strangers, etc. However, this was also very frustrating because it made it hard for others to understand what I was going through. While I didn’t appear to have had brain surgery, I certainly felt like I had. I wasn’t back to my full capabilities for quite some time, and to top that off, my Minnesotan and/or mom guilt kicked in and I often felt like I had to make excuses for taking time to rest and removing things from my to-do list. The mom in me knows there are always a million things waiting to be done because full-blown house disaster is just around the corner, and sometimes finding space to just do nothing was difficult. All in all I had an amazing summer while the slowest healing parts of me came back together (I’m looking at you, neural synapses), but here are several things I learned along the way:

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One: There will always be something to stress about.

I had so envisioned this dreamy summer of complete detachment from the world, floating through my days with smoothies while I created art piece after art piece and sewed all the things missing from my wardrobe. And while my summer was amazing, our brains are wired to find stress, and that stress didn’t escape me. Evenings filled with sports practices were still slightly chaotic, getting dinner on the table often felt like a last minute annoyance (even with my weekly, careful meal planning in tact), my husband and I still found things to argue about, I still lost it with my kids on a regular basis, and my anxiety crept in about the silliest things. Meditation didn’t become unnecessary as I perhaps thought it might, and in fact, it almost became more necessary as I temporarily lived in a world with only self-created deadlines and boundaries. I am simultaneously completely annoyed by this realization that stress will follow me wherever I venture as a human trapped in my own brain, but also completely relieved by it. It means that the next perfect version of your life isn’t really just around the corner, getting a different job won’t solve all your problems, and that a week off to do whatever you want won’t make all your problems disappear. While this sounds completely depressing at face value, it relieves me of having to fix everything for my future self. I’m not going to stop aiming for progress, new things, better versions of me or my life, but if I recognize that I will be a happy, yet probably always slightly stressed out human, naturally, as I move through life, it takes off the unrealistic pressure that the next “thing” will solve ALL the things. We are flawed. We are products of our own evolution. We haven’t escaped hunter/gather stress mindset. And I’ve learned that I’m ok with that.

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Two: Unfortunately, there’s still nothing quite like a deadline for getting things done.

This reminder pains me, even though I already knew it to be true. I want there to be some idyllic place where I float out of the bedroom in the morning with tea in hand and I sit down for 3 hour chunks before needing a break to just messily project my brain creativity upon the paper/canvas/internet. During this fantasy a bird occasionally flies in to deliver me a bit of lavender to appreciate and my husband swoops in every so often with a fresh pot of tea and a warm snack. Think Cinderella’s dress-making scene a-la-art-making instead. Awesome, right? However, as I look back on what I accomplished in the art department this summer, it’s pretty lacking. Compared to the year prior when I was checking things off my list left and right (even with just small chunks of time dedicated to these items on a regular basis), this felt pretty menial. I mean, I needed rest, for SURE, but I also would have benefited from more art in my life. With the removal of all of my self-imposed art deadlines and targets, I was a happy, yet underachieving blob. Those deadlines man. We hate them, but they really are an artist’s (or really any human’s) best friend for getting things done.

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Three: With a structured schedule, I can plod along like the artist turtle I am.

Most days I’m able to devote an hour or two to creating. At the core of myself, I despise this. This is not enough time! It makes me too slow! However, I realize that because I’ve implemented rules for how I spend this time, I’m actually quite productive within this limited time commitment. I have set aside very specific hours in my day when I create, I get up at a specific time every day to do so, I remove my phone from my waking routine, I prep myself with a meditation, and I often have a rotating weekly schedule to keep me working on my targets while also building in intentional playtime. The only reason I’m sitting down to work on this post is because Sundays are for all things online, social media and documenting my art. This schedule gets refreshed often and sometimes it’s abandoned to focus hard on something every day (think of our speeding buddy the hare), but if I keep a schedule in general, I’m always pleasantly surprised by how much I accomplish over the course of time.

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Four: Your overall purpose must be defined.

I lost my end goal this summer. After surgery, all future targets outside of healing were thrown up in the air. I had to focus on getting my physical and mental selves back. Within this healing, I lost sight of the end goal, why I’m here doing this in the first place. And then, on top of that, my priorities changed. I’m still not quite sure if it’s because my brain is a little physically rewired, or because my worldview has shifted after moving through the trauma of this experience (I’m guessing it’s bit of both…), but I’m a different person now. I mean, I should be, right?

I was always good at prioritizing my wellbeing and health, but now I’m even more sensitive to course correcting when I’m not getting enough sleep, when I feel like I have too much on my plate, or when I’m simply putting energy into things that just don’t matter at the end of the day. While none of us know what the future holds and my last day could be any given day for any given reason, there was a string of days in May when I had to look at my mortality straight in the face and try to get a little bit more comfortable with it. I wrote letters to my husband and kids. I thought through what my husband would have to do after my death to be able to close accounts and claim life insurance and sent him critical passwords (thankfully our wills and health care directives are up to snuff and if yours aren’t, put it on your list). While we had really positive hopes about surgery and a great prognosis, I didn’t want to be unrealistic and I had to do some of this really depressing, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing thinking.

So, here I am on the other side of this experience, and I’ve shifted. I’m still Ingrid, but Ingrid 2.0 perhaps. Through all of this upgrading to 2.0, I find myself less riled up about things, more willing to down-shift into the moment, less in a rush in general, less willing to engage in combat, less willing to pursue perfection, more willing to protect my boundaries. I see this as a gift, but I’ve had to be careful to not become complacent. My goals are still important, and I am relearning how to balance my higher priorities of self with the uncomfortableness that is required for growth and achievement. I’m being patient as I move through this, but recognize that I’m in a moment of wintering, and ok with not knowing what version of me is on the other side of this. Ingrid 3.0 perhaps? This leads me to the next learning…

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Five: Ultimately, we are always changing.

Embrace it. Be willing to reinvent things to accommodate. If you get stuck, maybe you’ve just grown and need to reassess your setup. You are a moving target, and that’s beautiful.

May your journey at least be interesting.

xoxo, Ingrid.