I’ve really been debating whether or not to share this, as it’s emotional and to be honest terrifying for me to peel the curtain back THIS much.
However, you’ve probably noticed that the last while I’ve been sending out “re-run” episodes of Living Forward TV, and other than a webinar a few weeks ago, have not put out much new content.
And….
In an “Insta-Perfect” world, I have always been committed to behind the scenes honesty, because I think it’s important for you, and for my community as a whole to know the truth about what it’s like on a daily basis as an entrepreneur..
…and more importantly as a human being.
And yes, while my husband and I have both built business that allow us to have a kick ass life and to be in control of our schedule and money – it’s NOT always unicorns and rainbows.
We, just like you, have ups and downs, good days, bad days, struggles, fears, along with the wins, celebrations, and awesomeness. It’s called life. So I share.
But this sharing is extra hard.
Because it’s not just about ups and downs, it hit at the very core of ME and at my deepest fears.
2 months ago, in early June, I had an accident and a head injury…
We had just come off of 2 incredibly intense months – as we’d made the decision to sell our home of 12 years and take the leap to buy an acreage where I could bring my horses home.
It was a HUGE real estate transaction, a lot of emotions, and lots of unknowns always having bought new places, I was now moving to a fixer upper. A beautiful fixer upper, but a big commitment in time and money for sure. (So many lessons there, but we’ll keep that for another day) – and now we had successfully completed both the sale of our existing home and the purchase of the new one.
All we had to do was to celebrate and wait for moving day! – but life had other plans
It was a Friday night, and my nephew was coming out from the city to join us to celebrate on for a full weekend of relaxing boating.
I finished up an intense ride on Chip, and went to the mall to pick up some treats, snacks and “adult beverages” for the weekend ahead.
I had my “goodies” and was really excited. And as I left the mall with several bags of groceries on one hand, and a case of Corona in the other, I had a brief thought:
“I think I’m carrying too much, maybe I should get a cart…”
I dismissed thought as fast as I had it. After all I had parked SO close!
Big mistake. When the little voice speaks – ALWAYS listen.
I was barely 10 feet from my car. My legs physically exhausted from my ride, my mind running the events of the last few months over and over in my head, and my ankle just gave out.
It happens from time to time. I have an old injury that will flare up. And with my mind not present, it came so fast and I felt I had no control on it.
The way I was going down, I could feel my ankle twisting and snapping and I knew if I kept going it would SNAP.
Fearing a broken ankle, I did what I could to correct myself, and with the velocity of the fall, correcting myself only threw me the other way, and I continued to fall.
I didn’t have a free hand to catch myself.
I was going down on the right side, and my right hand was holding the Corona case and stayed locked in.
It’s not that I tried to hold on to it. It was that I COULDN’T drop it. It turns out those little cardboard cut outs to make carrying easy, also lock your fingers in it (something I will NEVER forget or do again – I’ll always use a grocery cart, or use both hands to carry from the bottom so that it can drop if needed).
It happened in an instant. And in complete slow motion.
The terror as I was going down, the helplessness as I couldn’t catch myself.
Feeling like “how could this happen NOW”.
Screaming “Oh god, not my face!”
And then hitting the concrete FULL force – first with my nose, then with my forehead.
I thought I’d completely destroyed my nose, as I felt it smush inward.
Before I felt pain, I felt fear. I was terrified of what I’d done to myself.
A kind stranger came RUNNING “Ma’am – are you OK, are you OK. Ma’am don’t move, don’t move”
I was so confused.
(the irony isn’t lost on me that I’d just completed a ride on my horse, but tripping over my own two feet is what took me out)
With gravel in my mouth, I tried to push up and wanted to say “Yeah yeah, i’m fine, just a little embarrassed” I wanted to just get in my car and disappear as fast as I could, it was only a few feet away after all.
Well in that moment as I pushed up off the ground…
I saw the blood. It was everywhere and it was coming out of me fast and hard, and it took every last bit of strength I had to sit up.
And I leaned back into the car behind me (not mine) and leaned on it with every bit of life I had to stay up.
By the look on the face of the kind man who was now on the ground with me I knew my injury was serious, and I knew it was going to start to hurt any second now.
And then it hit. And as much as I wanted so desperately to be OK, so say “I’m OK”, the pain hit like a freight train, the fear hit with all the blood, I started shaking violently and heaving, and turned to that man and said “No sir, I’m not OK, can you help me”
As a crowd quickly gathered, and an off duty nurse came running to take over, mall security was called, and so was an ambulance.
I SO didn’t want to go in an ambulance.
I didn’t want to be hurt that badly. “Please don’t let it be bad enough for an ambulance” I prayed.
It was.
In that moment I also realized that not only was I not physically able to go home, I wasn’t emotionally or mentally able to make decisions for myself.
And so I surrendered 100% to the kindness of strangers and did everything they told me to do. (Lots of learning there….that’s for another day)
I still couldn’t stand up.
I was however starting to feel a bit embarrassed as I was aware of the scene. Obviously I looked a mess covered in blood, but I kind of smelled like one too. I had JUST come from the barn after all, sweaty and covered in hay and horse poop…annnnnnnddddddd….
…the beer case broke open and I was surrounded in beer bottles, junk food, and a bottle of wine laying beside me.
Classy. Just Classy. – I really can’t make this stuff up….
That was a relief. I knew I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but the fact that I was I knew my brain was working.
The paramedics showed up and I again started answering the same questions I’d been asked a few times before – by the man who saw me fall, the nurse, store security, and now them. – What’s my name, what day of the week is it, where do I live.
With assistance from the paramedic, I was able to stand up, and to walk into the ambulance. And I said a silent “Thank YOU”.
My husband came to the hospital, and I spent most of the night in emergency. I was SO hungry when I left hours later, I’m telling you that 3:00 am McDonald’s drive through has never tasted so good.
When I saw my face a few hours later I was devastated.
I didn’t recognize myself.
And the pain, OMG the pain of the next few days.
I didn’t break my ankle but it sprained, and swoll up huge, and it turns out my left knee did break some of the fall, even though at the time it didn’t feel like it because my face took all the attention….but my knee also swoll up
So those first few days I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t think.
I slept, and slept, and I slept. If I slept I didn’t feel the pain. I stayed in bed almost a full 48 hours – only getting up to use the restroom and eat.
My trip to Atlanta that I was supposed to take a couple of days later was cancelled, there was no way I could fly, let alone sit at a conference for 3 days.
My clients, were all so amazing, and understanding when I needed to reschedule and really reduce the days I was working. It wasn’t easy for them, but I had to limit my availability and I’ll always appreciate their willingness to work with me.
I needed to heal, and my body told me what to do.
In addition to the sleep, I found myself craving salads and Happy Planet juices – I only wanted fruit and vegetables (I can safely say, that even though I enjoy eating spinach, this was the first time in my life I CRAVED it)
When I fell, we were RIGHT in the middle of promoting a free call/webinar “5 Ways Guilt is Controlling Your Bank Account” – and I just couldn’t bring myself to cancel it. Most of the tech was done, the marketing well under way – and I felt that I needed to do it for ME , so that I knew I was going to be OK, and it was off camera – so less than a week after I fell, I delivered it.
It wasn’t easy. And I know it’s not my best training delivery. In fact there were times during the prep that I would completely blank out and not even know what I was working on. And there were times in the delivery where I would forget what I was saying. But I continued through.
A concussion is NO joke.
After we finished the webinar, I took a LOT of days off.
I still had a move to prepare for as well! However I did have a lot of support, and had hired packers, organizers, and movers, THANK GOD, as I would not have been able to do it.
About 3 weeks after I fell, the headaches started to subside, my concentration started to come back, and now I’m feeling almost 100% back to normal.
Though I now pay careful attention to when I need a break – especially from the screen.
Thankfully it wasn’t a serious concussion, but it still requires attention none the less.
But my face…
It’s taken A LOT longer to heal…
You can see some of the progression here over the last couple of months.
The black eyes are taking forever to fade, and it looks like my nose will have a permanent scar.
The fall certainly shook my confidence. And a lot of other fears came up (hence why I have been so hesitant to send this email). I found myself wondering a lot of “what if’s”
- What if that car I fell beside was moving?
- What if i broke my ankle?
- What if I fell the other way and hit the back of my head?
- What if my concentration doesn’t come back?
I also found myself facing irrational fears – like worrying about anything and everything that could happen. Telling my husband and those around me to “be careful”. Worrying if he was even 5 minutes late coming home that something happened.
Realizing just how fast things can change, and how lucky I am that my injuries weren’t permanent , and how it could have gone – was humbling to the very core of me to say the least.
While there are a lot of lessons and aha’s and inner work I’ve done around this fall the last few weeks, I’ll share those another day. This email is long enough!
I wanted to take today to at least reach out and let you know WHY we are in re-run lately.
We had packed up our studio during the 60 days our house was on the market, and my intention was film a bunch of episodes after we closed on the sale..
… as we had 45 days in the old house before moving.
It was all “perfectly planned” . Sigh…
But with my injury I was in no shape to do write content, let alone film.
And even when I felt better, I’ve also been feeling very self conscious about my face and putting it like that on YouTube for the whole world to see without context, nor on Facebook lives (hence “The Morning Meeting” also went on hiatus).
Two weeks ago, a client of mine flew in from Boston for a 2 day VIP retreat and part of his retreat included an interview on Living Forward TV, so I did brave the camera (and I did my own makeup yikes – so it’s going to be obvious! I probably made it worse, LOLOL) and we’ll be releasing that episode later this fall.
We do still have some new episodes that were filmed in March that have not yet been released, (we were aiming to do release one every two weeks during the move so that with what we had and what we were planning to film during the 45 days, we’d have enough content to keep it fresh) including some awesome interviews,
…but everything including post production, came to a grinding halt after I fell.
Again, in total transparency, and vulnerability we’ve worked really hard to get traction on our channel and it terrified me to not be putting out new episodes and losing all our gains.
- What if my channel dies?
- What if people don’t want to hear from me when I’m better?
- What if I’m laughed at?
- What if I lose subscribers?
- What if my community gets sick of re-runs or thinks I’m copping out or being lazy?
- And so many more doubts……
However, health comes first. Always.
And I knew I just had to trust…..
So in the interim, we’re still sending out some “oldie but goodies” – because quite frankly, the content ROCKS and if you download our free handouts, you’ve got some great tools there – and soon we’ll get those new episodes out as well.
The GOOD news in all of this, is that this unexpected hiatus has given us lots of time to pause and think about how we can make Living Forward TV even better..
…and to share the content in a more meaningful way – as I like to say “on the backdrop of life”, instead of JUST a talking head. I’ll be sharing more, and you’ll see behind the curtain a bit more.
Because as entrepreneurs we ARE our business. Life is part of business, and business is part of life.
Sometimes it’s glamorous, most often it’s not. (For me it’s usually hair piled on my head and working outdoors, sometimes I have dirt under my fingernails …and now it’s with a bruised nose and eyes)
There are ups and downs, there are wins, there are celebrations, there are good times and bad times, and sometimes…
Life smacks you right in the face
What I know for sure, that a “Kick-ass life” and success is not about pretending it’s perfect, or capturing the perfect selfie in the right light with the right filter.
While that stuff is fun, don’t get me wrong…..I love Instagram! Not just putting stuff out, but following those awesome feeds…
True success, abundance and fulfillment is about what goes on behind the scenes.
…It’s bad hair days…it’s broken nails, and less than perfect light,
…it’s about launches that flop while learning to get it right,
…it’s about tears, and fears, and eventually joy
…it’s about team members and clients who make you pull your hair out
…it’s wondering if you just killed your YouTube channel because you fell
…it’s about knowing who you are and not caring what anyone else thinks
…it’s about taking risks that no one else understands but you
…it’s about temporary debt, and stretching yourself
…it’s about seeing past what’s in your bank account, to what’s truly in your potential.
…it’s about some days being so tired, you can’t remember hitting the pillow
…it’s about learning
…it’s about falling down and getting back up again.
…it’s messy, imperfect and completely wonderful
It’s about the decisions you make, and the actions you take on a daily basis – no matter what life throws at you.
And it WILL throw things at you. It’s not about those things.
It’s about what you do with them.
It’s not about being fearless or having nothing to fear – trust me there is SO much that I get scared of.
It’s about taking action anyway.
And THAT is what Living Forward is all about.
Thank you for being part of my community and letting me share with you today.
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Angela Ashurst-McGee
Welcome back! I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that. Here’s to your next chapter!
Michele
So glad your okay, you will come through this stronger and better, thanks for sharing this. I was just speaking about this on my social media channel about being vulnerable and allowing our followers to see another side of us. I love your channel!
Nafissa Shireen
Thanks Michelle! It definitely wasn’t easy to open up about this but the support I’ve received from everyone has been really great.