The older sister of Paul, my beloved, disabled brother, at an early age I’d absorbed that touting my own strength or athleticism would be cruel. That I’d been born before Title IX and therefore never a member of any sports team had also been an inadvertent kindness. No post-game crowing at the dinner table!
How vividly I remember, a handful of weeks after Paul’s death, how I’d gone for a long swim and, already tired, managed to still pull myself up a dock’s ladder; that sunlit and painful moment when my delight to still be strong enough to hoist myself up had been instantly quashed by a well-known, nagging Inner Voice: “Don’t make Paul feel bad.”
So, two years later, as I have progressed through a series of brilliant PT exercises post-surgery, as I note, day by day, my incremental progress, I am learning how to crow—though I fear, like many Late To The Party developments, I’m boring friends and family with my latest achievement. “I walked two miles without my rollator!”
And another life-long-time nag nags: “Don’t brag.”
Yet, ironically, I find myself at a moment, professionally, when I must self-promote. What are the brilliant, incremental exercises I need to do in order to strengthen another set of muscles woefully weak at the moment?