The Disability Post, or Creating Compassionate Community

Our Managing Editor Reveals How She Transcends Her Life of Chronic Pain from a Devastating Injury to her Shoulder

Before I get into this, it's important for me to acknowledge one thing: I'm very aware that I have led an incredibly blessed life.

I've always been surrounded by family who actively go out of their way to nurture and applaud my gifts. I've had incredible educational opportunities, and all kinds of exciting travel and experiences. And I've always known security, never wanting for anything -  well, never anything reasonable: I know that lusting after a pair of wildly impractical, $500 purple brocade John Fluevog boots, which I couldn't walk in, anyway, doesn't really count.

Oh, sure, I've been through difficulty, too: I'm a survivor of rape and sexual assault. I'm also an alcoholic, although, by the grace of God, I've been sober now for over eleven years. I lost my father in my mid-twenties, without getting a chance to try to put our complicated, often harrowing relationship right. And my first marriage was stressful and often abusive. 

But I'd much rather focus on the positive. So when I suffered an accident in 2015 that ended up causing long-term damage, it didn't take me long, once I realized I'd been left permanently changed, to start wondering what I could learn from the experience. 

What happened was almost silly. I had arrived at work to see snow on the ground, and over the course of the day, the January sun melted much of it. But I didn't know, when I left the office after dusk, that the melted snow had re-frozen all over the pavement in the dark. And so, as I walked down a sloped, paved path, I slipped on ice I didn't know was there.

I somehow turned as I fell and crashed upwards, landing on my shoulder. Long story short, the angle and force of this impact tore several tendons and ligaments, including my rotator cuff and labrum, and cracked bones in several places. I ended up undergoing three increasingly complex corrective surgeries over the course of thirteen months, culminating in a total shoulder replacement. But there were complications there, too, and after the joint replacement, I actually found myself in more pain.

I was incredulous: by that time I was 31, not 81! What did all these doctors and therapists mean, I'd reached "maximum medical improvement" with very little use of my arm? This didn't happen to young people, I thought. Wasn't orthopedic surgery pretty straightforward? Didn't I have a right to walk into a hospital for an operation and expect to be fixed?

I don't know. Ultimately, I stopped holding that grudge. Now, six years post-replacement, I've very slowly improved slightly! Hooray! I can often lift and reach, which is great. Yet I was left with an arm that won't stay in its socket (I'm sure that's the clinical term for the condition!). My shoulder doesn't hurt, since it's artificial, but the arm directly below is painful all day and all night, and it's really hard to try to raise my arm, to bear down on something with force, or to make repetitive motions. Sometimes it's even hard for me to think, when the pain is so loud.

It's also really hard for me to speak frankly about the situation. I don't want you to feel bad for me. It's just that this is what my life is, and I want you to know where I'm coming from. 

And that's part of what brought our Fearless Leader - my fiancé Dave - and I together. He has his own stories to tell, but friends and followers will know that he suffers from PTSD after a series of events, culminating in a terrifying, violent encounter last fall. That, too, should not have happened.

I'm definitely a glass-half-full person. So when I was wondering what I could learn from the baffling, frustrating experience of being rendered partially disabled in an absurd accident before I was thirty, I was on the right track! But I never would've guessed that this situation was preparing me for Dave - teaching me to understand him better, to help him and to comfort him through his PTSD struggles, and to be the partner he needs.

And what we each went through separately prepared us to build together, in God of the Desert Books, the kind of community we want to be part of! 

It's difficult to talk about what's difficult in our lives! But we want to. We think it's important. No one who publishes here is selling a highlight reel of their life. We're showcasing struggle, difficulty, and the beautiful, moving art that comes from bearing one's burdens while still relentlessly seeking out the Divine. Why? Because the gamut from beauty to pain represents the essence of humanity. Since we know we were made in God's image, we know, too, that this wide spectrum of experience is to be celebrated.

So, if you're a little bit broken, you're in the right place.

Be gentle with yourselves,

Sally Shideler
God of the Desert Books, President, Managing Editor, Marketing Director