Member-only story
When Arthritis Took Away My Passion of 17 Years
And what it taught me about grief , healing, and moving forward
A few days ago, my Dad found an old CD buried in our home and sent me a series of files with music I hadn’t heard in 13 years.
Despite all that time, the glassy notes, arpeggios, and dynamics were still fresh in my mind. I breathed along with the musician and anticipated her pauses. After all, the musician was me at age 17, recording three songs for a college audition.
Here is one of my favorite songs from that recording.
The recording captures a special moment in my life when I could play notes as delicate as lace with unbelievable speed. When I dreamed of being a harpist and seeing how much further and deeper I could go in my playing.
It was before I knew that my bouts of tendonitis would keep coming back or that they were warning signs of chronic inflammation. I didn’t know that at 18, my wrists would get stiffer and I would have to give up playing tennis; at 22 the symptoms would creep into my fingers; and at 25, I would wake up with severe pain from arthritis and have to come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t play harp at all.
The moment I woke up with arthritis still marks the hardest transition of my life.
