Come sit with me.
 

Twelve years ago I had surgery for thumb arthritis. I'm glad I did — but I was the rare one in a hundred thousand whose surgery nicked a nerve, and it left me with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: pain that runs its own weather, a hand that won't keep its temperature, tremors, a body that takes longer to come back than it used to.
 

So when I tell you I understand a body that hurts and won't simply go back to how it was — I mean it from the inside. I know the fear after surgery, the grief of hands that won't do what they did, the quiet exhaustion of being strong about it for everyone else.
 

This page is the gentleness I wish someone had handed me back then. Take what you need.

Begin where you are.