Hello, dear glorious global family! Schuyler continues to progress and thrive! Life is delicious! Wow!

I began writing this as I soared thousands of feet above this wonderful planet that we all call our home. I was returning from a glorious few days in Las Vegas where I was able to weave business into some definite pleasure! Yet, oh how I missed my sweet Schuyler and Saya as they held down the fort in Tampa!

Schuyler continues to forge forward. She works and works and works and works… We start each morning with definite hints of progress…. she presses her way up to a sitting position on the bed now almost always completely by herself. The standing position as I steady her in my embrace before she pivots and sits on the wheelchair — it’s definitely less precarious than it was just a few months ago. After a quick trip to the rest room, she now returns to the bed where she faithfully executes Maggie and Dan’s physical therapy exercises. Her smile is ever brilliant. Her courage remains strong! We’ve got this!

She knows that even though the road is long, it is still THE road. We can see a road filled simply with obstacles and challenge or we can see the flowers that still do bloom along our path. While inside, we now try to do as much walking with the walker as we do scooting with the wheelchair. The walker is now set-up with only one arm platform instead of two. Progress! Every time we want to walk, we put two 2-pound weights around her ankles and the yellow canvas gait belt around her waist.

It’s still a bit nerve wracking. She starts sitting in a chair with the walker in front of her aimed in the direction that we want to go. She slips her one hand under the velcro restraint of the arm platform. With me standing to her side holding the gait belt, she stands up. Quite honestly, this used to be scary—VERY SCARY. Without her ability to find her own balance, it felt almost like a Cirque du Soleil feat where I would try to steady her while unlocking both sides of the wheelchair wheels, pushing the wheelchair back out of the way, stepping behind her, repositioning my arms so that I was now behind her and helping her to find her balance before we could even think about walking.

Before I left for Vegas, there were actually times when she stood up firmly, balanced on the walker, a few wobbles and yet I didn’t need to hold my breath. I could reach down and unlock the brakes without feeling that she might suddenly tumble forward onto he tile. Celebrate! Celebrate!

Now that we’re no longer going to formal therapy, we have a physical therapist that she absolutely LOVES come to the house once a week. It’s funny how our minds work. Through this traumatic brain injury, (TBI) some of the habits/strategies of the mind have become even more apparent. Perception is so big. With Schuy’s TBI, the way that we rebuild new roads of information is by creating cues that lead to the desired results. This is similar to the anchors that are used in neuro linguistic programming. Our minds respond to specific equations. If x then y then z. These become practices then habits then results. In Schuy’s case, the injury that she sustained to her brain from the boulder seems to have most emphatically impacted her coordination and balance.

As smart as she is, when standing or walking, her mind’s ability to accurately convey the intricacies of which moving part should go where has been challenged. In spite of the hard work, her legs tended to step too far. Her hips tended to shift too far to the right or too far forward or too far back. Her knees tended to buckle. And yet still, we practice and practice. Repetition is our friend.

On his first session with Schuy, her home therapist Dan started cuing her differently. “Foot down now… down now… down now…” As if by magic, Schuy’s little feet landed just that much closer to her center of balance. The weaving of the hips became less. It actually looked like she was walking. I could see her as Schuyler the young woman who now walks again. In that fleeting moment was the physicalization of so much faith and hope. He turned the gait belt over to me. I tried the same cuing “foot down…foot down… foot down…” OH MY GOODNESS! My heart soared!

That feeling of using all of my strength to prevent us both from falling cautiously diminished. I felt myself relax my biceps a wee bit… then a bit more…

Dream building is an amazing albeit curious thing. We all have dreams. Sometimes we keep them hidden like the secret treasure under a mattress. Sometimes we trim them down— way down — like locks of hair that have to be discarded so that the wound can be addressed.

Angelie Mayou said that if our dreams don’t scare us, they are not big enough. So why are we afraid to dream big? Why do we insist that we must not only be able to rationalize the feasibility of this dream, we must be able to “realistically” map out exactly how this dream will come to fruition.

All too often, if these big dreams don’t come with a “how to” manual, we toss them out with the bath water. We convince ourselves that mere faith and optimism about these dreams is not enough — it’s even scorned upon and viewed as a sign of unrealistic weakness. The curse of the naive fool who will simply not ever grow up enough to take off those rose colored glasses….

In Vegas, I saw the dream being lived by one of the groups on my ACTS Inc roster, THE BRONX WANDERERS. “A father, two sons, living the rock n’ roll dream…” There was the spark, the passion that one always sees when watching someone living their purpose. It was vibrant and magical! Not the typical family business, for sure — and you could see everyone in the audience caught blissfully in their dream…!

This week has been a whirlwind but exceptionally rewarding. I can FEEL Schuy’s progress. I can BREATHE Schuy’s progress. As I shared in one of this week’s podcasts, faith isn’t something that is communicated in words. Faith is communicated in pure emotion. It’s the feeling that you trust totally and utterly in the process… in life… in God Universe… you are grateful that it is done… and you know that it IS done, even if you don’t yet see it. You don’t have to pray and pray and pray. You have faith that God Universe KNOWS your desire, your clear vision of that which is to become part of your story. You don’t have to nag and nag and nag like a child who wants candy and who is hoping that her persistence will finally wear down the parent who might say no. And faith is the warmth of Gratitude for that which cannot yet be seen but that exists nevertheless.

As we move closer to another weekend, I urge you to dip your toe into the waterfall of Faith. What is it that you have been afraid to dare to dream … to wish for? Where does your heart race and make you feel that you must jump behind the wheel when your Faith tells you to simply flow? Where is the part of you that you feel that you must certainly hide? When will you dance beyond the illusion of success in order to find the empowerment of true IMPACT?

Let the next days going forward be a day when you explore the idea of “letting go” of your resistance. Fear is the ultimate resistance and we can only powerfully create when we are allowing the Source within us to flow. Find out what it is that REALLY makes you dance — even when no one else can hear the music…. !

If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope that you will check out my From Impossible to I’m Possible podcast. www.ilovemyimpossible.com/mypodcasts Wishing you a weekend filled with your own special dreams and miracles! #TheSchuyIsTheLimit

In Joy,

Meridith