It takes longer than you think to recover from injury, surgery, illness and grief.

And you never fully recover, scarring and weakness can be physical, emotional and mental.

And sometimes you never get better, only worse until you die. If you’ve always been healthy, often your mind and emotions think you’re healed even when your body hasn’t.

Get back to normality as soon as possible, but it needs to be a new normal. Damaged and replacement joints are not like the original ones, illnesses like cancer and sepsis take a deep toll and grief has only eased, it never fully goes away.

At 75 years old and a full and eventful life I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes. I’ve pushed the boundaries and limits after injury and surgery and suffered the consequences. I can’t turn the clocks back and have to accept the results of both my and others negligence that has damaged me, but I can at least pass on a bit of my ‘hard earned’ wisdom.

Don’t let impatience and arrogance rule. You’re not special or a hero by trying to rush or cover up the process.

Don’t listen to idiots. Take advice from the real experts and listen to them, they’ve studied the subject and seen many people go through the healing process. Your mates and idiots on social media are the worst.

Learn the language of your body and how to be in the right calm and still state to listen to it. This is a very rare skill. It doesn’t use words, it uses the language of nature like your dog, cat, other animals and the woodlands.

Grief and depression don’t go away, we only learn to cope and live with them and they fill any gaps left by any other bad events in our life, it’s always lurking deep down so we have to be vigilant.

We can’t go backwards, we will never be what we were. Every physical, emotional and mental scar is a part of who we are now and needs acceptance before we start working on our ‘new normal’.

Understanding this gives us the insight and wisdom we need to fully engage with and enjoy the person we are now rather than trying to be what we were and will never be again.