Well, this one feels personal.
I’ve been fascinated for a while now about what it’s like to get a serious injury, and for the one thing you’ve found that brings you joy, to suddenly be removed from your life. Injury in itself is difficult, recovery can be a long and lonely road, but when it’s a sport you’ve embraced because it helps your mental health (as is the case for many people coming to board sports later in life), it multiplies the difficulty.
And then, as luck (questionable) would have it, I was about to experience this journey firsthand. On a (much fought and saved for) snowboarding holiday with my family, and only on day 2, I caught an edge on my board while trying to get out of the way of a beginner ski-er, and landed the wrong way on my wrist.
My husband, Ben, snowboarded over, asking if I thought I’d need ice. I knew immediately that I’d dislocated and broken it, even though I’d never broken anything before (the angle of my wrist was a give away). Kudos to the Italian mountain rescue teams, after a hike back up to a restaurant and a call, 15 minutes later they arrived on an odd scrambler bike affair, and took me down to the mountain to a waiting ambulance. Within an hour I was hooked up to what looked like a hanging torture device with weights to put my wrist back in place, and within two I was in a cast.
I’m a doer. I need a plan. And I have a (probably unhealthy in some ways) desperate need to be active. My mood and overall mental health depends on it. I sat googling ‘workouts you can do with a broken wrist’ whilst I waited for my x-ray results. It was only when I got back to the hotel with my family that I sat and cried my eyes out, realising the long road I had ahead.
An hour of you tubing ‘techniques to remove your contact lenses with one hand’ (and the wrong one at that) made me want to bash my head against the wall (I have actually mastered this). Realising I couldn’t do up my own bra was a shocker (again, there’s a technique). But still, I got up the next morning, did my first wrist friendly workout and took myself off for a hike in the sunshine while my family went up the mountain. I’m making this sound like I was just brilliantly positive, but I was swearing my head off inside. My holiday felt ruined. My next few months of life felt ruined, but I managed to put it aside initially.
Then we got home. Reality hit with the thud of a thousand elephants. I’ve got two young kids. I work for myself and am the main income earner in our family. No-one was making us dinners anymore, the normal mundanity of house tidying, and getting kids to school resumed, but everything just took so long. I’m someone who normally lives by the life ritual of having the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce, but this just wasn’t feasible when I couldn’t use a knife, open a bottle, carry a plate. You get the picture.
Things are much improved now, but it’s still a journey with undulating waves of positivity and black holes. I had a cast for six weeks, and am now in a splint for another six. The cast coming off felt like a huge milestone (half of my wardrobe got opened up to me again as my arm finally fits through), but actually it was an unexpected emotional hurdle as I realised my mobility still had a long way to go.
So, it was unbelievably refreshing to bring together a phenomenal group of women who have had similar (some more harrowing) journeys. We had:
Emily from @moceanfit : Emily has had her fair share of injuries, but she is also an online training and wellness specialist, helping women in their 30’s and beyond train specifically for board sports
Danni aka @surfconfidencecoach : helping people feel more confidence and joy in surfing & come back from trauma through her coaching, therapy and workshops, in and out of the sea
Shannon aka @skaterlifeisrad : mum, massage therapist, nurse on a mission to practice and promote safety while learning to skateboard, especially while ageing. Shannon broke her ankle within weeks of starting to skateboard, but came back to it and is now a well known figure in this space
Amber aka @ambereggleden : skate coach who has been open about skating and being bipolar and how skating helps with neurodiversity and is currently recovering from her second broken foot
Annika aka @annikarudolph: team rider for Crown Boards, ambassador for the German Long Board Girls Crew, Annika has had numerous injuries but is currently on a long journey back from damaging her PCL
Lizzie aka @lizziebirdmoves: osteopath, author of MOVES, surfer and paddleboarder. Lizzie’s book covers the phenomenal journey of her self healing (with some co-professionals) her own broken knee during lock down.
I LOVED this discussion. You might think we created a panel that is almost a warning against the perils of taking up board sports at all, and obviously aspects of putting injury front and centre in this way play into a fear we all hold. In actuality, this is a panel of women who are passionate about the sports, fiercely honest about the journey they have gone through, but are keen to get back to what they love.
We talk about:
the guilt and self blame we face after injury
feeling that we ‘shouldn’t have been doing the sport anyway
our need to have a plan, but learning to just go with it
the stages of recovery, almost like grief
finding our own way through the journey, going at our own pace
It’s a journey that can be lonely, but it was clear that by coming together, we all felt better for simply having the opportunity to talk to others who would understand what we were experiencing.
A big thanks to everyone who was involved, and I hope you find the content useful, whether you’re injured or not! Let me know below x
____________________________________
We’ll be hosting The Confidence Sessions monthly, ticketed for non-subscribers, but free as part of the membership for subscribers. Check out our other benefits of subscription below.
Future sessions include:
Board Sports x Neurodiversity
Board Sports x Blowing Up Your Life
Board Sports x Menopause
We’ll also be hosting more hands on virtual workshops on specific skating moves, yoga sequences, and bringing confidence techniques to your board sports. DM us to get on the wait list!
