any less beautiful

The hospital where I did my rehab after my crash recently interviewed me for a promotional video. It was super fun and also amazingly awkward, especially when they were videotaping me powerwalking like a muppet around my neighborhood. I felt like people staring at me, wondering why in the world people were videotaping someone powerwalking – running, maybe – powerwalking? Weird.

When I watched the video I was struck by two things: 1. There was one hair in my bangs that was stuck to my forehead that after I saw it, I couldn’t stop wondering why no one had told me to adjust it 2. I said something at the end of the video that I was afraid I didn’t totally believe.

“My win isn’t going to look like someone else’s win, but that doesn’t make it any less sweet, any less important and definitely any less beautiful.”

Real talk, that’s a badass quote, and I truly loved it. But I felt like this statement wasn’t true in every facet of my life. I felt like it was true about my physical fitness – I had accepted that my ability to exercise, run, walk, and compete is going to be different from others  in light of my injuries and my accident. It has taken me over 10 years to get there, but it is my truth now – being different is my reality.

What I have been struggling with is accepting that my life, my work, my wins are different, not only from my contemporaries, but also from my past self. What does a win for me even look like? How do I know that I am successful If I didn’t get a raise, or a title change, or a bonus or just an old fashioned “Attagirl” from my boss?  How do I feel successful in the world without a clearly defined path to a gold star?

This gold star search had been consuming me. I scrounged for confirmations of my success anywhere I could: from the likes on the articles I wrote, from my boyfriend acknowledging the smallest bit of good news, from the amount of money I would make on speaking engagements. I needed someone on the outside to tell me that these wins were enough. Mind you, they had no idea that their validation was the only thing that was keeping me afloat on this turbulent sea of self-doubt about whether not I was a good person, if I was worthy of love, if I was living my life correctly. Which is an ungodly amount of pressure on a person who thought that they were just receiving a call about the fact that a hospital might have me come in to speak in the summer. I would hang up the phone wondering where my fireworks and backflips were.

Then, I got this photo:

My smiling face, with the words that I needed to hear right next to my head. And I thought to myself – “Who says that this isn’t a win Katie McKenna? How says someone taking your words and taking a fancy photo of you, and putting those two things together, isn’t a goddamned win? Will it increase you salary, no – it absolutely won’t. But, is it awesome? It really really is! It is different than other peoples win’s because these things aren’t happening to people that you know – they are happening to you! And that is worth its weight in Atta Girl’s.

It’s a new year, and it’s the same me – but I am hoping that 2018 is full of a shift in perspective, and an easing of what our lives “should be” and a celebration of all of the sweet, important and beautiful wins that we are experiencing right now. They deserve their own gold stars, and you do too!