Clearing the Fog by James C. Jackson

Author:James C. Jackson [JACKSON, JAMES C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2023-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

REFRAMING YOUR NEW NORMAL: The Role of Acceptance as a Pathway to Healing

Ronnie is a Covid survivor and one of the more remarkable people I know. Having spent forty-nine days desperately ill on a ventilator, he’s a little shocked and surprised at times that he’s alive, and while grateful, sometimes he’s deeply sad as he contemplates the ways both large and small that his illness has upended his life.

A middle-aged teacher from a Southern town, he is on a leave of absence from work and passes his time at home, his anxiety never far away and his symptoms of PTSD often nipping at his heels. But perhaps the most constant feature of his new existence is a portable oxygen tank, a tip of the cap, sadly, to lungs that were badly damaged by Covid pneumonia and that, two years later, have not fully recovered, leaving him easily fatigued. Oxygen tanks can be a lot like Rorschach ink blots—they trigger reactions in people—and, for a long time, Ronnie’s tank symbolized for him everything that had gone wrong in his life, a dream-filled future permanently stunted, adventures cut short, and family memories never realized. But, over the past few months, he started to have a change of heart.

Bolstered by insights from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, he began to understand that he could accomplish hard things even with damaged lungs and while struggling with his mental health. The idea of taking his first vacation since leaving the hospital started to form in his mind and he hatched a plan for a family visit to a Minor League Baseball park one state away. I enthusiastically endorsed the trip—it wouldn’t be easy nor absurdly hard but perhaps just right. At first, when Ronnie filled me in on details, his voice was wistful as he talked about the many excursions he and his family had once taken, describing far-flung cities visited and items on bucket lists checked off. A trip to a tiny Double-A stadium on the edge of a cornfield next to a Walmart would never have been his idea of an adventure and yet, here we were, pushing the envelope of what he believed was possible and wrestling with the idea that he could make space for a new normal in his life.

As the day of the baseball pilgrimage drew close, his excitement grew. During our sessions, he worried whether his oxygen tank could run out, what would happen if he fell ill while driving through one of dozens of small rural towns, whether he would have the stamina to walk to his seat in the outfield. But he didn’t think of canceling. He was determined to make the expedition work. He had come to see that driving a few hundred miles to watch the Biloxi Shuckers play the Montgomery Biscuits might not be the same as flying to Los Angeles to watch the Dodgers against the Padres—but it could be part of a new and satisfying life.

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