(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Acceptance: Part Two – The Mirror [1] ['Douglas Schonenberg', 'Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood', 'Bill In Portland Maine'] Date: 2026-07-09 On meeting the person you’ve become. I walk up to my tree carrying the two photographs from the last time I was here. One from before my accident. One from after. I’m still trying to decide if I recognize the person I am now. I’m still trying to decide if I want to know the person I am now. I find Mylo staring into an old mirror. Not fixing his hair. Not making faces. Just looking. “What are you doing?” I ask. “Waiting.” “For what?” “For you to stop looking at the old picture and start accepting the new you.” Then he turns the mirror toward you. At first, you don’t look. You already know what you’ll see. Gray hair. More wrinkles. The physical reminders of time. But that’s not what bothers you. You aren’t afraid of looking older. You’re afraid of looking different. You’re afraid of being different. Of being the person you are today instead of the one you were twenty years ago. The man in the old photograph existed before my traumatic brain injury. He’s the person I still think about. The man I grieve. The man I used to be. The man I still wish I could be. For years, I introduced myself by the things I used to do. I was a technical writer. I worked for IBM. Verizon. UPS. The Air Force. Those weren’t just jobs. They were proof that I knew who I was. Proof that I was good at something. Whenever someone asked, “So…what do you do?” I never had to think. “I’m a technical writer.” Someone who wrote things people didn’t really want to read. After my accident, people still asked me the same question. “So…what do you do?” I couldn’t answer. Because I no longer had one. I was no longer a technical writer. No longer the father who could spend an afternoon chasing his three-year-old daughter through the backyard. No longer the husband who believed he could always protect his wife. Every answer I had ever given about who I was… no longer fit. Eventually, I stopped introducing myself altogether. I wasn’t sure there was anyone left to introduce. The man I had spent thirty-six years becoming was gone. And for a long time, I grieved for him. I grieved the life that had been taken from me. I grieved the future I thought I was going to have. I wasn’t just mourning my career. I was mourning certainty. The certainty of knowing who I thought I was. The certainty of being someone who mattered. The certainty of believing my future would look something like the life I had imagined. Eventually, I realized that all of us lose that certainty. Retirement. Divorce. Losing a spouse. Children moving away. Illness. Dreams that never happened. At some point, we all become strangers to ourselves. We catch our reflection in the mirror and quietly wonder, “Who are you?” Maybe life understands us better than we understand ourselves. Maybe it keeps introducing us to ourselves until we’re finally willing to look. Life has a way of introducing us to the strangers who turn out to be ourselves. Then Mylo asks another impossible question. “If you had never been a technical writer…” “…who would you be?” I laugh. “I don’t know.” “I know.” He smiles. “That’s why I’m asking.” Then he reaches toward the photograph of who I am today. He peels away the first label. Technical Writer. Then another. Actor. Father. Husband. Liberal. Jewish. Brain Injury Survivor. Writer. One by one the labels fall away until only the photograph remains. Not because those things aren’t true. Because they aren’t the whole truth. Finally he asks, “When all the labels fall away… who’s left sitting under the tree?” “I don’t know,” I whisper. That’s my problem. I don’t know who I am anymore. And for the first time… I admit it without trying to fix it. I simply don’t know. I look at the photograph again. As I do, I wonder if I’ve spent too much of my life trying to become someone. Too much time trying to succeed. Too much time trying to matter. To everyone… except myself. Maybe Being S.A.F.E. isn’t teaching me to become someone. Maybe it’s teaching me to become… myself. Not the self I was before the accident. Not the self I imagined I would become. The self that’s quietly emerging every time I surrender… accept… forgive… and evolve. Simply… me. Then Mylo says something only a kender would say. “You know…” “I liked you better after the accident.” I stare at him. “What?” I wanted to be angry with him. Didn’t he remember what the accident had cost me? The career. The years. The memories. The father I wanted to be. The husband I believed I should have been. How could he possibly like this version of me better? Mylo simply smiles. “You ask better questions now.” I look at him, trying to understand what he means. “I’m still confused.” “I’d still undo it if I could,” I tell him. “I still wish I could be who I was.” Mylo nods. “Of course you would.” He pauses. “But since you can’t… don’t waste the person that it helped create.” I sit quietly under the tree. He’s not telling me the accident was a gift. He’s not saying it was meant to happen. He’s simply reminding me that it happened. And once something irreversible becomes part of your story… the question slowly changes. It is no longer… “Why did this happen to me?” It becomes… “Who am I becoming because of it?” I pick up the mirror again. The wrinkles are still there. The gray hair hasn’t disappeared. Neither has the grief. But something has changed. I’m not looking for the man I once was anymore. I’m beginning to accept the man I am… and the man I’m still becoming. A simple man. Asking simple questions. Trying to understand who he is becoming. And as you realize that… you smile. Not because everything is okay. But because, for the first time… you recognize him. Thank you for sitting under the tree with me and listening to my musings. If you enjoyed this musing, please consider joining my Substack, Musings Under My Tree. I write about empathy, personal growth, Being S.A.F.E., some politics, and basically anything else that wanders through my mind while sitting beneath the branches. https://musingsunderthetree.substack.com/p/welcome-to-my-tree?r=1s6ofh [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/9/800067268/community/acceptance-part-two-the-mirror/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/