Unhooking From Fear in the Midst of Uncertainty
Eight years ago, I went to bed not knowing what the next day would bring.
I knew our 12 month old baby girl had a pretty big hole in her heart and a leaky valve that would require open heart surgery to fix.
How they’d fix it — was not so straight forward. But, we were headed to Boston Children’s with a surgeon who’d come highly recommended.
We knew the hallways to walk and what time to report and what we could / couldn’t give her to eat / drink before arriving — the rest was completely unknown.
How long. How she’d handle the meds. What the doctors would see once inside.
None of it known.
In the month leading up to her surgery, I was not OK. (Who would be, really?) I had awful nightmares and fear gripped tight. I was dreading the moment I would have to hand her over to the surgical team.
The not-knowing was bring-you-to-your-knees brutal. I wanted to run away from it all, but knew I couldn’t.
I had three kids that needed tending to. The demands of life called. I found moments of refuge in the planning + spreadsheet creating — all things I could control.
I found myself anchoring into the tiniest next best steps — because if I got too far ahead, my mind would torture me with painful, worst case what if’s.
So I endured like never before.
And then the morning came.
The part I was dreading the most was as hard as I could’ve imagined — and, in the way the surgical team held space for us + loved on Mia — it was also beautiful.
I stood frozen, watching the anesthesiologist carry her down the long, sterile hallway — playing peekaboo with her lovie.
The next 41 days brought me to my knees, shattering every ounce of perfectionist armor I had acquired over my lifetime.
I was quite simply cracked wide open;
There was no trying harder to guarantee an outcome.
Her surgery was successful.
And, her heart was stressed to the max - suffering cardiac arrest in the OR as soon as they sewed her chest shut, baffling her care team.
Fourteen-ish hours later, while I attempted to sleep just three feet away, her heart failed again. This time, the defibrillator did not bring her back. Not even after three attempts. Her heart would require 7 days of ECMO to heal — a technology I didn’t know existed.
When the best doctors + nurses in the world have no idea what happened — or why — it’s destabilizing.
The unanswered questions thrust us deeper into the unknown.
We simply had to wait.
And trust.
And surrender.
Seven days of not-knowing. And 864 more hours after that of two steps forward, one back.
Thanksgiving passed. Then Christmas. Then New Year’s Eve.
On New Year’s Day, our baby girl came home. A day we weren’t sure would come.
The hard didn’t / hasn’t ended there. Six months of round-the-clock meds. Debilitating PTSD. Many, many trips to Children’s.
And.
In every brutal moment there was also beauty — in the people who showed up. In the care of all those who literally helped us find our feet again. In the team around me that walked with me, lifting me back to life.
It’s been a journey.
The experience fundamentally changed me. It changed how I see the world — and how we walk through it.
Facing death forced me to rumble with powerful questions about life.
And what matters most.
While my updates are few and far between, her story continues.
The greatest lesson I’ve learned in all of this is how to care for myself in the midst of painful swells of uncertainty.
It doesn’t mean I don’t hurt or worry — I do.
But learning how to sit with the discomfort and pain has allowed me to be present; it no longer hijacks my behavior.
Her heart surgery was on the 20th, near-death experience on the 21st.
There’s something about this year 2021 that feels different for me.
Last week, we were back at Children’s for seven hours of testing. I nourished my body, did yoga outside and even wrote a little. It was such a sign of progress for me that I wasn’t trying to hurt myself (or others) more deeply when I was hurting.
As I sit here on the eve of her 8th heart anniversary, I want to share that healing + recovery from trauma are possible.
If you’re living in the vice grip of fear — in a constant state of hyper-vigilance:
I see you.
It’s exhausting + painful + frustrating + at times, it can feel hopeless.
It can get better. We can heal -when we Turn Toward the things we’re afraid of -with help.
Before my daughter’s heart surgery, I plowed through my days hustling from one to-do to the next. My worthiness was completely tied to my productivity; if I things didn’t get done, I felt undone.
Even with so much emphasis on achievement, when I did hit milestones, I very rarely lifted my head to take in the moment. I was too afraid to be still; too afraid to take it all in. I thought if I paused, I’d fall behind - or worse, things would fall apart.
All that changed when I was forced to face our mortality - and the illusion of control that provided me a false sense of security for so much of my life.
I believed that if I just tried hard enough, I could control the outcome.
It’s a trap we (humans) fall into.
Our actions absolutely impact outcome. And, there are outside factors that play a role too.
Sometimes it’s easier to blame ourselves than it is to accept the fact that there are things outside of our control. Blaming is a way we discharge pain.
What I’ve learned:
Death is an invitation to step into our lives with intention.
As hard as we might try, there is no outrunning or controlling our way out of pain. It’s part of the human experience.
We can try to run + numb + deny + bury + blame + achieve our way out of it. We’ve gotta ask ourselves: At what cost?
What if we put that energy into healing?
What would the world would be like if we collectively learned how to care for ourselves when we were in pain?
How might our lives look if we were able to turn toward what scared us — and offer ourselves + each other comfort — instead of living in such hooked, hijacked, dehumanizing spaces?
I believe in us.
I know we can do hard things.
We’ve got today — this moment — and inside of it, many, many unknowns.
Look at your own life, I’m willing to be you’re living proof.
We can start right now, hand over our hearts — breathing a little more fully — offering ourselves words of kindness.
We’re living in such an interesting time. So much that’s spinning is wildly out of our control. But how we show up for ourselves + our loved ones, that is something we can control.
We’ve got this. One tiny step at a time.
Here are some ways we can practice small acts of self-compassion - created by @spoonie_village and shared by Kristin Neff, PhD.
Samantha Arsenault Livingstone is an Olympic gold medalist, high-performance consultant, speaker and mental health advocate. In 2016, Samantha founded Livingstone High Performance and the Whole Athlete Initiative (the WAI) in response to the mental health crisis impacting adolescents across the globe. LHP provides pillars of support to organizations, teams and individuals to elevate mental health and improve performance.
In 2020, Samantha co-founded WholeHealth Sport to equip coaches and parents with the training, skills and support needed to change the narrative, culture and game regarding mental well-being in sport.
In addition to private and group coaching, Samantha consults with teams and organizations on athlete wellness initiatives, leadership, strategic planning, rising skills and developing high-performance cultures. She is a certified instructor of Mental Health First Aid for adults working with youth and a facilitator of Mindful Sports Performance Enhancement.
Samantha and her husband, Rob, live in New England with their four daughters. To learn more about her offerings, go over to www.samanthalivingstone.com.