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Healing and The Gift I Did Not Ask For
The final segment
This is the final segment of Chapter 7 from our upcoming book, a collaboration between the Healthy Neighborhood Project and Dancing Elephants Press.
The book will be available in November 2026. For pre-orders, please contact me at dancingelephantspress@gmail.com
For context, the first few paragraphs were added from the beginning of chapter seven.
Previous sections can be found here.
There are moments in life when we choose to slow down, and there are moments when life makes the choice for us.
For much of my life, I understood mindfulness as something I could practice. I could intentionally become quiet, notice my surroundings, or bring my attention back to the present moment. I appreciated nature and had always felt a connection with it. Yet I did not understand either mindfulness or nature as deeply as I would come to understand them after an injury changed the pace of my life.
I experienced a mild traumatic brain injury along with injuries to my ankle and other parts of my body, eventually requiring surgery. Suddenly, the…
