Recently, I began looking through hundreds of photographs and slides my father had taken of family gatherings and celebrations. (I should probably mention that Dad died 24 years ago, and these slides had been sitting in their boxes all that time.) A photo book created and shared by a relative inspired me to get them out of the boxes, to see what was still meaningful, and share them with my brother, and my aunts, uncles and cousins.
Many of us with spinal cord injuries often think of our lives as divided into “Before and After” our injuries. We mourn the loss of physical ability, we look back wistfully at activities we no longer perform with ease, and can quickly slip into feeling depressed. That can make us reluctant to take that look back, wanting to avoid the inevitable feeling of loss.
But sometimes, we look back and realize that we have grown and gained emotional strength despite, or even because of, our injuries.
The look back I made as I dove into the photos from my past was different. This trip down memory lane brought me joy as I saw loved ones I remembered but had not seen in decades. The faces of relatives not really forgotten, but pushed to the back of my brain, smiled out from the pages. Flipping through them, it occurred to me just how important these memories are. Every family gathering revealed in these photos helped shape who I am today. The people in my life all influenced my personality and my emotional and intellectual development. They are my history and are cherished and celebrated.
We have many national holidays commemorating our history: Women’s History Month, Juneteenth, Veterans Day, and the Fourth of July. These are marked on our calendars as times to stop our everyday activities and celebrate our past, even if just for a moment. They remind us that we have a collective history and that none of us is created completely new and fully formed. We all come from somewhere, for someone, that makes us the individual we are at this moment.