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Nina Geyer

Dear me...

Nina’s life changed forever when she fell down a lift shaft at work. She broke her pelvis and back, resulting in multiple surgeries over three years. She has nerve damage from both the accident and subsequent surgery. The impact on her mental health has been huge. After years of hard work, Nina has since found Day One and is volunteering for the charity to ensure others don’t have to go through their recovery alone.

Dear Nina,

You don’t know it yet, but you’ve just been caught in a rip tide. The life you know is over. You will try very hard to get it back, but you will fail. You will fight to not see that, and that struggle will cause you great emotional turmoil. And when you do realise you have failed, you will lose your mind.

But fear not, you will leave the scalpel in the drawer, and in time your perspective will shift.

When you fell, you prayed not to die. But you have to let yourself die in that lift shaft if you want to live. You will feel as though your skin has been ripped off and you can’t bear it. But you can.

That skin is your idea of yourself, and it has become too small. Everything has been bombed to rubble, but if you lift your eyes, you can see for miles. You will come to understand that acceptance is the opposite of giving up.

That sense of calm and clarity you have right now in your hospital bed? You will lose it completely. It was just a glimpse, and the darkness you will be going through, that’s how you will come to see it fully. When you look back, don’t feel bad about how long it took you and how many wrong turns you made. You will understand that there is really nothing to lose and nothing to gain.

People will abandon you and people will hurt you. But people will also be incredibly kind, and they will help you even though you have nothing to give them. Accept help. Remember, it feels good to help a person who is down. And to enable someone to have this good feeling, somebody has to be the one who needs help. Don’t be afraid to show your weakness and give somebody else the chance to be strong. Your friendships will become deeper for it.

Learn to stop using your mind to think about how things should be. Don’t waste time contemplating the many ways in which things are not as they could be. Instead, learn to just see what is, and you will find that beauty is everywhere.


More advice? Learn to be kind to yourself. You don’t have to be excellent. Don’t try so hard to be a good patient. It is not in your interest. Don’t be so afraid of fear. When it overwhelms you, it creates an opening. Trust your instincts and take risks. You’ll want to isolate yourself, but don’t. It’ll make you feel worse. So don’t sink into yourself and keep reaching out. And please, don’t eat all the chocolate.

So, bon voyage, my dear. It’ll be a rough ride, and you don’t have a seat belt. You won’t find answers, but you’ll realise that sitting with the questions is enough.

Take heart, be bold, and I’ll be waiting for you on the other side.

Much love,

Nina

Read Nina's Story of recovery

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