Since my stroke 20 years ago, I’ve achieved more than my 24-year-old self ever imagined.
I’ve written a book. Bought a house. Returned to work. Presented, travelled, spoken up, spoken out, and built a life that I’m genuinely proud of. I feel that so far I have worked hard at making my disability something that can hopefully make a big difference to so many lives.
But I know that I couldn’t have achieved any of these things without the people around me who supported, encouraged, and believed in me every step of the way.
Lately, though, something has shifted.
A fear I didn’t recognise at first has started creeping in.
My support network—the one that has carried me through two decades of goals and milestones—is changing shape. And with that shift comes a quiet, unsettling worry and fear. I wonder – Will I still have the same opportunities without the same support?
I’m content in my life. I really am. I love my new home. My routines. My projects. My work. My new community.But I’ve also noticed something I didn’t want to admit:
I’m not growing in the same way I used to. And it’s not because I’ve lost motivation.
It’s because the support or scaffolding around me (the people who physically and emotionally helped me reach for more) are ageing, moving on, or taking on new chapters of their own.
My parents are getting older. My boss will retire one day.My siblings have their own families and lives. My closest friends are also getting on with their lives,
For ages since my stroke, my achievements have been so reliant and intertwined with the support of others. And now that their capacity is changing, I worry that my ability to achieve will change with it.
Part of me feels like I should practice what I preach. Try and take more initiative, pursue new opportunities on my own, somehow become entirely self-sufficient. But I also know how reliant I am on others and that disability doesn’t work like that.
I can imagine the things I still want to achieve, perhaps another book, more travel, more presentations. But the picture I visualise always includes the people who help make those things possible. Without them, the goal or achievement seems impossible, the image looks blurry, maybe even out of reach.
And that’s the grief I didn’t see coming.
Not grief for the past, but for the future I always assumed would be possible with the same level of support. It’s a kinda new level of plateau.
In the early years of my stroke recovery, professionals warned me about “the plateau” basically describing it as when your physical recovery slows and progress becomes more gradual. But I didn’t realise there would be another kind of plateau later in my life.
Not a physical one, but a practical and emotional one. A plateau that happens when your support network around you change. I guess Ive had to accept this plateau and try and find achievements in new places.
Accepting again what I can’t change and changing hat I can. Accepting that although my achievements look different now, that doesn’t mean they’re less meaningful. Realising that I’m still achieving, just differently. I might not be writing a new book or travelling or presenting as much but I am stilll achieving. I’m navigating home modifications. I’m working on important projects. I’m lecturing.I’m influencing future practice and still able to juggle part-time work, all that is entailed as an NDIS participant and manage my daily physical and emotional wellbeing by doing yoga, riding my trike, walking my dog and seeing friends.
Achievements don’t always have to be massive. I think realising that sometimes an achievement is being able to hold still and calm when everything around you changes.
It’s not easy acknowledging that my support is changing and that my performance will change too. But I know it’s necessary. The importance of just being content with where we are at – to sit with that. To accept that wherever we are at, even if it isn’t on a path that we envisaged, for right now, it’s enough.
Because achievements don’t end when support changes around us, they just transform. But remember that, so do we.