Yesterday, I hit the slopes again, and it was a bit scary after my fall on Tuesday. I know. I’m a wuss. People take much harder hits and get back up, but this one got me a bit. I felt like a beginner boarder again. As far as the season goes, I feel I was two steps forward and now one step back in regard to skill and loosening up on the board. But that’s still ahead, eh? So yay 🙂

This post is a bit schmaltzy, but it’s how I’m feeling. As I tell people I communicate with in work, my site is my brain dump, and sometimes that brain dump is an outlet for expressing feelings that are otherwise trapped inside me.

Tuesday I fell. In the hard-core grand scheme of things my hit was probably a 2/10. For my un-athletic self, it felt like more of a 7/10. I checked my app and was really only going about 14 mph when I stopped (even though I thought I was going at least 25 by how I felt). Still, imagine you are running at 14 mph and someone grabs your feet, but the rest of your body continues forward.

The back arches, the ribs land first then the head smacks down. As my husband pointed out, thank goodness I landed on snow and wasn’t skateboarding and hitting pavement.

The thing that gets me was the aftermath. Tuesday I joked about it. Wednesday I went shopping on my day off then had to lie down the rest of the day. I have neck arthritis, which the fall didn’t help. Pain ripped through me as my arms and back decided to stiffen and not work. When I get sore and stressed I sleep. Eleven hours Tuesday night. Resting all Wednesday afternoon. Eleven hours Wednesday night. Then I tried to work.

As many of you know, I work in tech support for WordPress.com, and I met quite a few of you readers through my job as I helped you with your sites in live chat or Quick Start sessions. On Wednesday, I could barely think. Someone asked me how to create a static front page, and it took me almost two minutes to realize what they were asking and how I could help them. This is scary stuff, since in my job, I tend to get questions that are usually quite a bit more complex than that.

I commented in my team channel that the job was challenging for me that day, and I was even having a hard time raising my arm to type. To be honest, I was kind of hoping to see some teddy bear hug emojis showing some love from my teammates. It was definitely a poor me moment where I was looking for some love. And I got it 🙂 ‘Cuz my team is awesome.

But even beyond that, my team lead messaged me and asked what I cared about covering for the rest of my day because she was going to clear my schedule so I could rest. What kind of company does that?

This is the same company and team lead who, when I said I needed to readjust my schedule a few hours next week for personal matter (but showed how I would make up the hours) told me they would rather I focus on my out-of-work life and take a half day completely off.

So two half days. What of it? Seems reasonable. You might think. But I’ve already taken a few days off this year. And I plan to take more when our grandchild is born. And starting June 1, I’m getting a THREE MONTH sabbatical.

So yeah, the extra half days are kind of huge. And they make me feel like the company I work for genuinely cares about me as a human.

If I were a crier, I’d be tearing up right now for sure.

On Thursday, when I got the break, I stopped work and took yet another nap. I went back to work for one more Quick Start because I love them and I wouldn’t have to type. Then I rested again, and you know what? All that love and rest worked. By Friday morning I was raring to go (still with a bit of a sore neck, though, so I wasn’t tempted to go back out on the mountain).

By Saturday, I was 100% back to my normal self. But maybe a better normal. I think I might have new-found empathy.

I am part of a large community of bloggers, and bloggers share their life journeys. In support, I often help people who are working through the aftermath of brain injuries or who are recovering from heart attacks or living with diseases like MS. I like to think I’m patient and kind as they struggle to come up with thoughts and words to express how I can help them. But now, I think I might be able to go beyond kind and really empathize. That is a good thing.