My friend Donna listened to my tale of woe, and said, “you’ve been through the wringer, like one of those old-fashioned kinds with two hard rollers that squeeze the living juices out of clothes and leave them flat as pancakes.  I’m sure you’ve felt quite flattened yourself!”

We had just that kind of wringer when I was growing up. One year my mother made me a corduroy jacket with delicate horse-shaped buttons. The buttons kept turning up broken, and we finally figured out it was that wringer. She encouraged me to come down to the basement when she was doing a load of laundry with that jacket in it, so that I could wring it out by hand. Problem solved, before the entire box of horse buttons was gone.

The wringers are out there, real and metaphorical. Clothes that have been flattened in that particular way need to be vigorously shaken out and placed out into the sunshine to regain their original shape. Works every time, but you have to time it when a thunderstorm comes along. I recall many times running for the clothesline to bring the dry clothes in before another drenching. Maybe there’s a sub-metaphor in there somewhere.

Anyway, I suppose two back-to-back surgeries of the major kind count as a trip through that wringer. Some of my more delicate aspects have been damaged, such as my self-concept, my hopeful mood, my energy level, my physical strength. . . and my twelve incision scars aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

There’s always a wringer of one kind or another waiting. When you wake up and find that you’ve been through one, give yourself a little grace (or a lot). Then give yourself a vigorous shake, turn some extra care on the bits that got broken, and spend some time in the sun. The rest will follow. And you’ve got what it takes to ride out a few measly thunderstorms.