Powering Through...
- eschaden
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
It is totally something you do, sometimes because you have to, sometimes because you want to, sometimes because there is nothing else you can do.
But today, the powering through I am talking about is a podcast. #Itswheelyjess is the instagram handle of a woman named Jessie Owen who was paralyzed when a tree crashed into her car, killing both of her parents and making her a quadriplegic. Tragic story which she used to transform her entire experience to create a fucking amazing, awe inspiring life for herself and her family. She is married, has twin boys, has a podcast and is just generally fucking hilarious.  She is just fucking winning at life. A life that is way harder than most of us run of the mill people can even imagine...
So please go to her page #itswheelyjess and give her a like and a follow. I don’t know about you, but her content is why I love social media. My life is truly better because I am tangentially associated with her. Â
So why do some people walk through horrific tragedy and power through when other people just shatter into a million pieces? I am sure Jess had her moments. I am sure there were years of hard living every single day, just months of shit sandwiches over and over again. But how did she rise? What is it about her that caused her become the woman she is today? I mean becoming a quadriplegic would be enough for anyone to kind of throw in the proverbial towel. But in that same accident, both of her parents were killed. It is hard to fathom that kind of loss and exactly where the fuck did she get the love and support to not give up along the way?
I had an aunt who had, I think, seven siblings. So they were a family of ten. This was back in the 1930s where most midwestern families were large. Her family was supposed to go to some event together, I think a holiday event, maybe church, maybe a performance, I can’t recall. My aunt was one of the younger kids and she was sick. So she couldn’t go, and she was too young to stay home alone, so one of her older sisters stayed home with her. That night, the families' car was hit by a tractor trailer and everyone in the car was killed. In one evening she lost her entire family save her older sister.
If anyone had a reason to give up on life, it was Mary. So much loss and hardship dealt to her in one horrible tragedy but she was one of the most happy, joyously fun and loving people I have ever known. She never let anything get her down and was always the life of the party. She didn’t just survived, she thrived.
And so it appears, Jess has found that same wellspring which turns tragedy into motivation. It is like everyone has a choice, and it isn’t kind of a one and done kind of choice. You have a choice to allow the things that happen to you in this life shrink your life and living into a hard, bitter existence, or you can make the alternative choice to allow this tragedy and heartbreak to open and lift you up. And then you have to make that same choice over and over again every day. Then you also get to choose to help other people open to their circumstances, just as you did. You become the inadvertent hero in your own story and then go on to support others in their journeys. That seems to be a key factor to living a loving and inspired life...you survive, you heal then you help others!
I am so interested in what it is in our make up that bends us in one direction or another. Why do people like Mary and Jess embrace their circumstances and then change the negatives into positives and then use what they learned to help others? Why does life seem to uplift some and crush others? Do we all have a set point for resiliency? Is this something we can change? Do all of us have the ability to turn tragedy into an awe inspiring life or are there just some people who have the skill and others just don’t?
I don’t know and I am sure this is being studied somewhere. I am just grateful for the examples of people like Mary and Jess. They lift me up, inspire me to do better and to continue to walk through my own hardships and difficulties with an inability to keep things in perspective. I am not confined to a wheelchair, I did not lose my family in a tragic accident. So my bad days need always be put in perspective. It can always be worse, but even if it ends up being worse, there are still so many others that have a far worse worse time than me. Which doesn’t make my life any easier, hard is hard after all. But seeing my hard up against other people’s hard, can serve as a reminder that no matter how hard it might be, I have a choice. And in order to thrive, I have to make the choice to power through. I have to do the things I don’t want to do when I don’t want to do them. And that is not easy for any of us.
I am not sure there is a secret sauce. But I am pretty sure a sense of humor has something to do with it...both Jess and Mary are/were hilarious. Jess hit on her doctor in the ICU. Mary laughed so hard that she often almost peed her pants. Powering through may not ever be what we would call a good time, but if we can laugh at life and all its lifeyness and also ourselves, it seems like powering through just becomes another vehicle for living. And we apparently get a deciding vote whether it is all crying time or time to laugh, enjoy, relish and savor.
Again, still...
