When I started writing this blog in November of 2012, just five months after I suffered a traumatic spinal cord injury, my intention was only to have an honest and unobtrusive way to keep my family and friends updated on the process of my recovery: the struggles, challenges, objectives, achievements, breakthroughs and thought processes behind this insane journey. I didn’t want to crowd everyone’s inbox with emails or spew out random thoughts or take to social media for these updates, so I figured I would write a blog and have it out there for whomever was interested in staying in the loop.
Little did I know where this would lead…
Thanks to all of you and your continued interest, support, encouragement and readership, the blog continued to grow and reach more people than I could ever imagine. Within a few months of me launching this website and sharing my story, I was getting readers and messages from all over the world. People were asking questions, seeking advice (for which I had very little to provide…), searching for perspective, and often times, relating some of the experiences I was sharing to their own respective experiences. I also learned that there were many people out there — with spinal cord injuries or other medical conditions or just life challenges — who could identify with some of the larger issues that I would sometimes raise.
I was flattered to have anyone outside of my personal social community care or read about my story and it wasn’t until many of you commented and told me that you wanted to know more about a specific story, that you were curious about something I had shared and asked me to delve more into it, that I got the idea for doing something bigger.
Well, I can now say that that bigger something is coming very soon.
For the better part of the last two years — and with increasing intensity, energy, time and commitment — I have been turning the story of my recovery into a book. And this book is coming to fruition now as I am in the final process of revisions and edits to get it ready to publish.
This blog has been so many positive things for me but I didn’t expect that it would spark the creative effort and undertaking of completing a full-on memoir of my experience. But alas, that’s where we are.
I will be posting more info very soon about the book — including a landing page where you can sign up to get updates and have access to an advance copy, as well as a specific timeline for the final publish (summer reading anyone???) — but for now, I want to thank all of you for the incredible support and commitment you’ve shown me in reading my blog, commenting, sharing your perspectives and launching this crazy little idea within me that will hopefully turn into something real and tangible very soon.
I always have, and still continue to read and respond to every single comment that has ever been posted on this blog and if it weren’t for the conversations that you have all initiated with me, this likely would not have happened. So thank you. I’m grateful to have this opportunity. And I’m excited to share the larger story very soon…
Arash Recovery 