If you go back to my introductory YoSaL post, you’ll see that I intended my book to have chapters beyond my year of journal entries. The thing is, when I was preparing Chapter 23 for posting to my blog a couple of weeks ago, I realized that there really WAS a clear “ending” to my year of shadow and light.

Of course, this is life, so I have continued to change and grow. But I really did have only one year of shadow and light. I have more to say about everything that has happened since my year of shadow and light, but I think that’s going to come in another book.

This conclusion of sharing YoSaL on my blog flows perfectly with the timing of my life, as I’ll be taking quite a bit of time off in the next few weeks to spend with my family. During that time, beta readers will be looking over my manuscript and providing me their thoughts so I can better prepare it to be published as a book. (A couple of weeks ago, I was even interviewed about my year of shadow and light for a podcast! My interview is not live yet, but I will let you know when it’s ready.)

Below is the current afterword from my manuscript, but that’s the last you’ll see about my YoSaL for a while. For the next few weeks, you’ll see posts here, but nothing about YoSaL. We’re going back to the “regularly scheduled programming,” which will be me writing about whatever strikes my fancy, or whatever you, my readers, have questions about.

So, please ask me questions, share your thoughts, or just enjoy the ride.

 

Afterword

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. —Ernest Hemingway

Though the past may have been full of suffering and strife, it is actually a wise teacher, one whose role is to provide us with lessons we need to learn in order to live the life we are meant to live. And living the life we are meant to live requires becoming inwardly free … and embracing the accompanying sense of loss, be it related to a person, possession or even our own self-image. … [L]iving the life we are meant to live requires complete acceptance of our past experiences. —Blair Borders, Double Vision

 

I went into this journey of healing from my eye surgery and of writing a book thinking it would take only a year. I was naïve. I’ve never considered myself a naïve person, but I do admit that I have naïve beliefs sometimes. I was optimistic.

From the distance of a few years, a lot becomes clearer. It took me until 2016 to finally work on this book regularly, rather than only a handful of times per year. It took me until 2017 to even begin to know how to craft this final section of the book. As I was finishing the first draft of the book in early 2017, I had no idea how to resolve the book, as my life, clearly, is ongoing and my eyes were not been restored as I had so hoped they would, at the end of my year of shadow and light. The years 2015–2017 were monumental in my understanding of what happened—and why—in 2009 and beyond. Since 2017, my family has gone through what feels like constant change, at least part of the change based on the lessons my husband and I have learned. To say we understand all that has happened and the reasons for it, however, would be a lie—and also likely very premature.

Things truly have turned out well, I must say, but definitely not the way I expected them to. My vision is nowhere near as good as it was before the IIH damaged my eyes. I don’t expect it ever will recover. I am still legally blind, with almost no peripheral vision and with “holes” in my central vision, yet the acuity in my central vision is 20/20 and 20/30. It’s not at all what I was expecting when I heard my grandmother’s voice tell me not to panic and that my vision would be restored, but it is enough. My vision was restored—just not all of my sight. I’m aging, so my eyes will likely decline as most people’s do, but beginning at an already advanced level of damage. Still, I’m keeping an eye on (pun intended) research into stem cell retinal regeneration; there’s a lot of promise.

Since my year of shadow and light, I have experienced another miscarriage and have given birth to two absolutely amazing children. Thanks to Dr. H, Dr. L, and the neurologist who immediately sent me to the hospital on that day in 2009, however, enough of my sight has been restored that I can see and revel in my children’s breathtaking beauty. I thank God for them, every day.

My journey, though it has been long, challenging, and difficult, has also been rewarding. I have become less reserved about expressing my love. I have become a better wife in several ways. I have, I believe, become a better friend. I certainly feel that I have improved as a human being, becoming more open, more compassionate, more loving and giving even to strangers. I dislike fewer people now, and I get less drawn into other people’s drama, though I still try to support them as necessary. But I also now recognize better, I like to think, when someone is beyond my ability to help.

We all have our trials. We all have our paths. We are all here doing the very best that we can—for ourselves, for others. Without experiencing two miscarriages and the physical devastation of my bout with IIH, I would not be who I am today. If I had not had that experience, I would likely still be working for someone else, trying to make ends meet by running the rat race. I would likely have not made the changes necessary for me to get pregnant and stay pregnant twice. I would likely not be as forgiving a person. My imposed lack of freedom and inability to drive taught me to be vulnerable, to ask for help. I thought before that I knew how to ask, how to humble myself to ask for help, but the truth was that I never truly had to humble myself before. These challenges taught me to be kinder to others. (“Be kind to others, for we are, all of us, fighting a great battle.” Isn’t that how it goes?) They taught me humility, and also to truly recognize my own value—what was really good and valuable to humanity—not just what some other people valued in me. Without the hermit-like life imposed on me, I would likely not have learned how to stay (fairly) cool in an emergency, and I would not have properly reflected on my life, my strengths, my weaknesses. I would not have grown spiritually the way I needed to in order to get closer to reaching my potential as a human.

Through the years since my year of shadow and light, I have experienced several shifts in my overall mind-set. After my eyesight was damaged, I finally began to realize that my identity existed beyond my career role as an editor. I learned how to listen to my intuition. When my daughter was born, my life shifted from being self-focused to being other-focused. When our daughter was just a year old, my husband found himself missing too much of her life, so he left his job to stay home. We learned how to stand up and take action that we were certain would be better for our family, even if it seemed scary and people thought we were crazy. Then we focused on joy, on creating and experiencing more joy in our lives, rather than focusing on our difficulties, and we were blessed with unbounded joy, in the form of our son. His birth was challenging and draining, both physically and financially—and, in the months that followed, energetically. We needed more money, and we needed more energy to be able to find and do more work, so we changed the way we approached life, by improving ourselves and our habits even further. This caused my intuition to become even stronger, and I eventually found my power, my “intended” life purpose: being an intuitive and an energy worker professionally, so I am extending my reach, helping others to find the same joy and peace that I have, even while I’m still mucking about in the mess, blessing it the entire time I’m learning my lessons.

I am a mother to an amazing daughter and an uplifting son. Without the challenges I faced before they were born, I would not be as good a mother as I am. This change in my life set off a chain of events that have improved me and my husband in countless ways. I humbly wonder if that, in turn, has improved the other people whose lives we have touched, as well, though I have no way of knowing for sure.

My husband is more confident. He is less reliant on me to function in the numerous ways that many of us take for granted. But we have grown stronger as a couple as we have grown as individuals. Love bound us. Our shared experiences have intertwined us so that we are not two joined as one but are one made greater than the two combined.

Life still stresses us sometimes and makes us worry, but we (rarely) feel like we’re going to break. We join hands, we cry together, we laugh together, and we worry together. We plan together. And then we face life’s challenges together, with a united front, and know that whatever we encounter, even though we may not want to face it or deal with it, will make us stronger. We are, both of us, still learning to trust in the Universe, to trust in the larger plan, the greater love guiding us.

One of my favorite oracle decks is the Spirit of the Wheel Meditation Deck. As I worked on this book one day in 2017, I drew the card for Butterfly Clan. It seems to be telling me that I have arrived “home,” at my “destination.” Of course, I will never stop evolving—or at least I shouldn’t—but I managed to metamorphose from the caterpillar I was in 2009 to the butterfly I am today. The card description has an accompanying prayer:

As I transform from the darkness to the light I can now see the beauty that is around me and within me. I naturally move towards the things that bring my heart great joy and I help others along the way to discover their own inner beauty.

I believe there is no better note on which to end this book.

Stephanie R. S. Stringham

***

Thank you for allowing me to share this part of my journey with you. Please let me know what you think so far and if you want to hear/read more of my story.

If this is the first chapter of my story that you’ve read or listened to, you can catch up by listening to all of the episodes on my YouTube playlist, starting here.

 

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