Beyond the break: Life lessons from my snapped collar bone

Life has a way of throwing us curveballs at the exact moment when our priorities are most in need of a reshuffle... as my broken collarbone recently taught me.

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The clue is in the title really. I broke my collarbone.?

Queue the classic follow up question: How did you do that??

I did it sandboarding in Morocco. Sounds cool, but trust me it wasn't.?

I’m now 10 weeks into healing the break, and I realised I can share a few relatable truths about this bone healing journey.

1. Breathe. Surprisingly, Yoga breathing when in immense pain really does work. It helped me to get from a sand dune in Morocco to hospital, and from a Moroccan hospital on a plane back to the UK. The power of your breath is incredible to regulate your mind, thoughts, pain, emotions etc. We all need to breathe better. I'm now looking into breathwork to get a better mind-body connection.?
2. Patience. If I'm completely honest with you, I'm not a patient person. I tend to err on the side of ‘get s*** done’. But a bone is going to heal as fast as a bone is going to heal. Which means it will take 6-8 weeks to begin with the bone fracture, and then another 6-8 weeks until you get to rehabilitation to regain your mobility. I’ve been taught patience in a very physical way. I have a visceral experience of how some things cannot be rushed, you wouldn't want to anyway, and there is a wisdom to things taking the time that they take. What was valuable at this time was going onto YouTube and learning more about broken collarbones, how to help myself heal and the expected time it would take. It really has taken as long as they said, even though I wanted to heal faster.?
3. Emotions. I cried like a very young child one evening as I was feeling so incredibly frustrated with the pain, with the fact that I couldn't really move my arm or go for the walks I love, and as a consequence, with my lack of patience. I got so angry at not being able to do something simple, and so I cried. I’m all for releasing the emotions, but even I was surprised by how much came out of me, and how emotional a journey healing my collarbone has been. This aspect wasn't ever covered by the medical help I received and it made me realise that in terms of healing the body, emotions aren’t really acknowledged - but they’re a massive component. If you've had a shock/trauma in a physical sense, it has an emotional resonance that impacts your behaviour. I became much more cautious going out with a broken bone, and have had to start rebuilding my confidence in my movements. Emotions count, even when dealing with physical injuries.?
4. Healing. It takes time (that patience thing again), and it comes in waves. It's not a linear path. Sometimes I was so surprised to be in the same place for several days or a week, and then I would seem to accelerate to the next level of healing like I had taken a rocket pack. Each stage required something slightly different from me, and a different intervention. At the beginning, sling, NHS, no movement, and rest. Then slowly I built in more movement, added in an Osteopath and a physio and more rest. Managing my energy levels whilst repairing a bone has been a challenge as well, but a huge win is that I value my health in a more profound way.?

This slow, intense healing journey has given me time to consider how important it is that we recognise our organic nature as humans. Human growth is not linear or logical, but organic and incremental.?

Much of the work I do with clients involves helping them to navigate periods of intense growth and transformation. I have a particular passion for early stage scale-ups as they face the evolution from Series B to C - the teenage phase I like to think of it - which means accelerated growth, and rapid-fire change as they leap from small to significant almost overnight.

When a company is facing this kind of change, leaders absolutely need to understand emotions and how to regulate themselves. They need to develop the key skill of patience, and they need to incorporate these human elements into their transformation plans from the outset.

Emotions are high during times of change, so often the work I do involves helping leaders to navigate the intensity of facing a whole lot of change at once, both for themselves, and for their teams. Frustrations will come up and team dynamics can fray, but when we build systems that support this change, it helps to release the pressure at times, and to give people a sense of certainty that comes with knowing where they’re going.

Change and transformation is not linear and exact - it’s messy and uncertain. By making space for the human emotions that will naturally come up, and by providing an element of certainty for teams by supporting leadership with structure and the opportunity to develop the skills they need, there’s no reason why any ‘teenage’ business won’t thrive through this time of intense growth.