On the Sunday afternoon of our annual Austin freeze, I stepped out of the house for a mindful walk. All bundled up, my hands full of recycling, I took one step, two steps, and down I went. Everything flew into the air, my body did a 180, and as I landed on my left side, my head smashed into my left forearm with a crack.

When my fall came to a halt at the bottom of the house steps, I lay on the icy ground with a throbbing sensation shooting through my left arm and adrenaline rushing to my head. My shoulder was out of place. "Oh no! Not again." Then panic settled in: how is my business going to run if I can't work? how am I going to make a living?

When I started struggling on the ice, when the pain made it impossible to find a position I could move from, I recognized I would tire myself out quickly. My stubbornness could cause hypothermia and the longer my shoulder stayed dislocated, the more damage I was doing.

I found myself like Bambi on ice, slipping and helpless. I waited for someone to walk by, drive by, notice the red blotch wiggling in front of the house, but everyone was hiding out in their own homes. I dug into my pocket, picked up my phone, called my best friend, and then my two roommates. My roommate Maya arrived in a cautious jog a couple of minutes later, and not long after, her husband Thomas was drifting into the driveway.

Until that accident, every time I'd had a serious shoulder injury (nine of them) or surgery (two of them), I had always been close to my family. This was the first time I was incapacitated far from my parents.

Writing this, I remembered when, in my sixth month as a Deloitte consultant, my Senior Manager Adam asked me to detail the testing steps for fifty security monitoring rules we had built. I was shocked when he gave me just two weeks to do this colossal task. He was my boss's boss, and I assumed his deadlines, like the ones I had just left behind in my college days, were hard and fast. I was determined to meet it.

I went to Axel, the Senior Consultant managing me, for initial guidance. The scope of the deliverable seemed to get bigger every day, but I did not communicate my consternation. I hadn't grasped there was room for me to challenge or reassess scope against timelines. I pushed forward and missed the deadline by a long shot, putting my team's reputation at risk. I recall not being able to tell Axel I wasn't going to make it until I had already missed it.

I felt a lot of shame around failing. I was so distraught, I was crying. Axel took me away from the client site to calm down. When I learned that four teammates spent their Friday fixing my work, I felt relieved someone else had picked up the task. I was also reassured: it had taken four of our brightest minds to accomplish it. Clearly, I hadn't been set up to succeed alone.

Back to the freezing days and the accident. My best friend showed up the day of the accident, and the day after, and the day after that. She prepared my meals, did my laundry, and drove me to medical appointments. Maya made my coffee every morning without being asked and my parents flew in for an entire week. They packed every box for my move, set up my room, and repaired things around my new place. 

None of them waited for me to be ready to receive it. They just showed up.

Some friends cooked meals for me, lent me oversized sweaters and made me dinner. One of them walked in one day and said: "Victoria, you asking for help reminded me it's something we have permission to do. I don't do it enough."

I hadn't expected that. I hadn't realized my texts asking for support were opening a door for someone else to walk through too.

In physical therapy, the asking didn't stop.

When I walked into my first session, Nick took one look at me, noticed the Mount Kilimanjaro patch on my sweatshirt and said "Oh, you're an athlete." I puffed my chest proud and thought to myself: we're going to get along just fine.

During the first month of PT, my shoulder kept me up at night with a consistent pain that made me want to rip my left arm clean off. I didn't mention it at first because I was progressing fast in the difficulty of my exercises and the weight I could lift. I told myself the pain was just the cost of recovery. It was Nick who noticed the pattern before I did. He pointed out I had been mentioning it for a while and it kept coming back. Once he said it out loud, I understood this pain couldn't be relieved by more strength and more mobility work; it had to be addressed with targeted release work.

For a while, I was afraid to ask him to shift the session toward soft-tissue work; he would think I was trying to run out the clock to get away from the hard work and the uncomfortable exercises. The hands-on treatment generally went to the older, less mobile patients. I was too young and in shape to be dilly-dallying, so I expected him to brush off my request as laziness or weakness.

He was smart enough to notice otherwise: I was keeping up with every exercise set during sessions and completing the homework he assigned regularly. When he eventually pressed on the points that were most tender and stretched my shoulder joint, the pain was sharp and then released. I was relieved he had heard me.

Nick was exceptional, and the exercises had little to do with it. Every session he'd ask: how's your shoulder doing? He didn't want to hear good, bad, better, or worse. He pushed me to share what I could do now, what I still couldn't, and what was bothering me. He'd patiently watch me mimic putting deodorant on, removing my bra, finding a ligament in my armpit that felt stuck and tender after I returned to pilates class. When I watched him compute all that new information in a matter of seconds and come up with a tailored session on the fly, I felt seen.

One morning I walked in at 8am and told him I didn't have it in me to push hard. My shoulder was still sore from our session two days prior and my body was low on gas. Instead of having me do most of the heavy work, he dedicated more time to soft-tissue mobilization. I lay there, enjoying every minute of having external pressure applied to my shoulder.

When I walked out of my last session a week ago, I felt sad we were parting ways. I also felt proud of how far I had come. The Tuesday-Thursday 8am routine was coming to a sudden halt; I had started looking forward to those early mornings, the conversations with a kindred spirit, the genuinely entertaining exercise routines he put me through. By the end of my treatment I was back to pilates, yoga, and tennis.

Those three moments: the freezing day on the ice, the wall I ran into at Deloitte, and the PT sessions with Nick, all share a similar thread. I arrived convinced I should handle it alone and I held that position until holding it cost me more than letting go. The word for it, I know now, is being met.

There's a version of self-reliance that functions as armor. It works until the ice is literally melting under you.

Take the Lead is where I do exactly what Nick did: I ask where you are that day. I adapt. I meet you there. If that's the space you need, a short call with me is the right next step.

PS — Nick Dengler, PT, DPT, at Orthopaedic Specialists of Austin is exceptional at what he does. If you or someone you know needs a physical therapist in Austin, he is the person I trust and the one I would send anyone I care about to.

P.P.S. — To everyone who has replied to these letters or sent a text: I read every one. Keep them coming and keep showing up to sessions week after week. Knowing you're on the other side, is what makes writing these letters worth it.

See you Saturday.

Victoria Grandury
CEO & Founder, Limitless Rebel
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