Sometimes life unravels quietly, one thread at a time. You think you’re holding it all together — until the next thread slips through your fingers.
In the early spring of 2024, I injured my back while working at a stable yard. Horses had always been a kind of comfort to me — strong, grounding creatures that seemed to carry away the noise of the world. But one morning, while mucking out, something went wrong. A sharp twist, a sudden pain that took my breath away.
Two herniated discs, they told me. Rest. No lifting. No long hours on my feet. Words that sound simple until they become your reality. Overnight, I went from being capable and independent to barely able to get out of bed. It was humbling, and frightening, and left me questioning what my life would look like if I couldn’t return to the work I loved.
Just as I was starting to adjust to that new limitation, my father passed away in May. Grief arrived like a second injury — deeper, invisible, impossible to rest from. The two pains blurred together: the physical ache in my spine and the hollow ache in my chest.
I tried to stay strong, to keep moving forward, but my body had other plans. It grew heavier, slower, more unpredictable. Some days I could manage a walk, others I could barely lift a kettle. The fatigue crept in like fog. After more tests and hospital visits, the answer came: fibromyalgia.
It was both a relief and a heartbreak. Finally, there was a name for the pain that had been spreading through my body. But names don’t make it easier to bear. The diagnosis came with no cure, only management — a reminder that life, as I once knew it, was changing again.
Grief and chronic pain share a language. They both strip away the parts of you that you took for granted. They both force you to slow down, to live moment by moment, to measure life in smaller steps.
There are days I still feel angry — at my body, at fate, at the unfairness of losing so much so close together. And then there are quieter days, when I sit with a cup of tea, listen to the wind outside, and realise that this too is a kind of living. Softer, maybe. Slower. But still life.
Fibromyalgia has taught me to move gently, to listen more closely to what my body is trying to say. My father’s death has taught me that love doesn’t disappear with loss; it lingers in the small things — the smell of hay, the sound of rain, the steadiness of a horse’s breath.
Grief, pain, and healing aren’t separate things. They intertwine, shaping us in ways we never expect.
And somehow, even when it all feels too heavy, we keep going. Not because we’re unbreakable — but because even broken things can still move forward.
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