Am I Lost After My Stroke?

There were a few days this week when I just cried my eyes out. I felt completely lost, like I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I kept thinking about where I thought I would be by now and how different my life looks from the one I had planned. Sometimes I feel like I should have everything figured out already, and when I don't, it can be really overwhelming.

Before my stroke, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to law school. That was the plan, and everything was set up for me to follow that path. I had this picture in my head of what my future was going to look like, and I never really questioned it. Then I had a stroke, and suddenly everything changed. The future I had planned for myself didn't feel like my future anymore.

I think one of the things people don't always understand about having a stroke so young is that you're not only recovering physically. You're also trying to figure out what your life looks like after something completely changes it. For so long, my focus was on recovery. Therapy, appointments, procedures, getting stronger, and learning how to do things again became such a huge part of my life. But eventually, you get to a point where you start thinking about more than recovery. You start thinking about your future.

And that's where I've been struggling lately. The weird thing is, I actually do know where I want to be. I want to run Living With An AVM retreats. I want to be an inspirational speaker. I want to travel and speak to stroke survivors, people living with AVMs, families, doctors, nurses, therapists, and anyone else who could learn something from my story. I want to take everything that happened to me and turn it into something that helps other people.

So maybe what I'm feeling isn't that I don't know what I want. I know exactly what I want. I just don't always know how to get there.

There isn't exactly a clear path for becoming an inspirational speaker or building retreats for young stroke survivors and people affected by AVMs. There isn't a degree I can get where someone hands me a roadmap and says, "Here are the ten steps you need to take". I have this huge vision for what I want my life to become, but figuring out how to turn that vision into my actual life can feel scary.

I want the Living With An AVM retreats to become something real and lasting. I want to create a place where young people who have been through strokes or are living with AVMs can come together and be around people who truly understand. I want them to have experiences that remind them that their lives didn't end when their diagnosis happened. I want people to leave feeling connected, hopeful, and excited about what their lives can still become.

And I want to speak. I want to stand on stages and tell my story. I want to talk about what happened to me, what recovery has actually looked like, and everything I've learned along the way. I want someone sitting in the audience who is going through the hardest part of their life to hear my story and think, "Maybe my life can still be good too".

When I think about those things, I don't feel lost at all. I actually feel more sure about what I want than I ever have. What I'm struggling with is the space between where I am now and where I know I want to be.

Before my stroke, the path felt simple. Go to college. Go to law school. Become a lawyer. There were steps to follow. Now I'm creating my own path, and there isn't a roadmap for it. Some days that feels exciting, and other days it makes me cry my eyes out because I wonder if I'm doing enough or if I'll actually get there.

But I think I'm starting to understand something. Feeling lost and being lost aren't necessarily the same thing.

I know where I'm going. I want to run retreats. I want to be an inspirational speaker. I want to help people who have been affected by strokes and AVMs. I want to build a life around something that means something to me.

I may still be figuring out exactly how I'm going to get there, but for the first time in my life, I'm not following a path that was already laid out for me.

I'm creating my own.