It's Okay to Grieve the Life You Planned

Life Adapts.

We all have some version of the life we think we're going to live.

For some, it's school, a career, marriage, children, a house with the picket fence, and maybe a dog or a cat running around the yard. For someone else, it's traveling the world, climbing the corporate ladder, building a business, or finally reaching that dream job. And for others, the dream might be staying home to raise a family, living independently, retiring somewhere warm, or simply having the freedom to decide what comes next.

The details are different, but most of us carry some picture of our future.

Then life happens. A medical diagnosis. An accident. An illness. A loss. Something big enough to divide your life into before and after.

Some changes are easier to adapt to than others. Losing a finger isn't the same as losing an arm. A temporary injury isn't the same as a permanent disability. Every person's circumstances are different, and so is the amount of adjustment their new reality requires.

But when your life changes in a way you didn't choose, there can be grief. Real grief.

We usually associate grief with losing someone we love. But sometimes, the person you're grieving is you. The person you were. The things your body used to do. The future you pictured. The plans you made without ever considering that one day they might no longer be possible—or might have to look completely different.

That kind of loss deserves to be acknowledged.

Grief can bring denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually some form of acceptance. But those feelings don't necessarily arrive neatly or in order. You can accept your life one day and be angry about it again the next.

You can be grateful for how far you've come and still miss who you used to be. Those things can exist at the same time.

Acceptance doesn't require pretending you're happy about what happened. And adapting doesn't mean the loss didn't matter.

For me, that's an important distinction.

There's a lot of pressure around disability to be inspirational—to show everyone that you've overcome adversity and emerged stronger on the other side.

But sometimes you don't need to overcome anything. Sometimes you need to grieve.

You need to acknowledge that something was taken from you. You need to be angry. You need to be sad. You need time to figure out who you are now.

And eventually, little by little, you begin building again.

Maybe the life you planned isn't the life you're going to have. That hurts. But it doesn't mean the life ahead of you can't still be meaningful, joyful, interesting, complicated, funny, frustrating, beautiful—and completely yours.

You aren't replacing the person you were. You're learning how to make room for the person you're becoming.

And maybe that's part of what adapting really means.

Until next time... keep adapting, keep livin