Open skies

A few weeks ago, I ruptured my Achilles tendon. One moment, life was normal. The next, everything slowed to a halt. What surprised me most wasn’t even the pain, it was the stillness that came afterward. Suddenly, something as simple as walking became difficult. Getting up, moving around, exercising, taking the dogs for long walks… all of it stopped overnight.

And when you’re forced to stop, you realize how much movement means to you. Not just physically, but mentally. There’s something freeing about being able to go outside whenever you want. To walk without thinking about it. To exercise. To feel independent. Most of us never really think about those things until they’re temporarily taken away.

Lately, I’ve found myself watching the world move while I stay still: Cars passing by, people jogging by my window as birds soar overhead.

And maybe that’s why I wrote about the sparrow.

Not because I see myself as broken, but because I understand the feeling of wanting to move while being unable to. Wanting to stretch your wings and return to normal life while your body quietly reminds you that healing takes time. That’s the difficult part. Not the injury itself, but the waiting.

The helplessness of knowing what you want to do, while also knowing you simply can’t yet.

Still, I think there’s something important hidden in moments like this.

We spend so much of life moving from one responsibility to another that we rarely stop long enough to appreciate movement itself. The freedom of a walk. The feeling of fresh air. The ability to simply get up and go.

I miss that freedom deeply right now.

But maybe that longing is also a reminder not to take it for granted once it returns.

For now, I heal. And like the sparrow perched on its broken branch, I find myself looking upward, dreaming of open skies.