I was alone the day I decided to shovel the sidewalk.
Hold that thought — because “alone” isn’t just a detail here. It’s the whole story.
My parents were out of town when the storm hit, and the same snow piling up outside my door was keeping them from getting back. So it was just me. Five years after the stroke, with a body that didn’t move the way it used to, and no one there to do it for me or talk me out of trying. I went outside anyway, and I shoveled. Not the whole walk. Not fast. Just a narrow path, inch by inch, however much my body could manage that day.
I didn’t finish the job the way I would have before. But I finished what I could do — and that was the whole miracle of it. A cleared strip through the snow, just wide enough to walk through, made by a body that people weren’t sure would cooperate at all. Nobody was watching. Nobody was timing me. It was just me, the shovel, and proof that I could still do something, even if it wasn’t everything.
This isn’t really about the sidewalk. It’s about you.
Where are you waiting to do the whole job before you’ll let yourself count the part you actually did?
Tell me: what’s one narrow path you could clear today — not the whole yard, just enough to walk through?
Much joy,
Tawnja