The Door I Didn’t Want to Open
Katie Orman from Katie HR Consulting who focuses on Employee Experience including Wellbeing, Engagement and DEI reflects on the door she didnt want to open in todays #AdventBlog on the theme of “its time to change”.
You can connect with Katie via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katieorman/ , Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiehrconsulting/ and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558615580821
As always, take some time out to read, reflect and share your thoughts on LinkedIn. You can read all the blogs by searching for #AdventBlogs on LinkedIn, or click on Blogs on this website. Over to Katie.
Advent taught me that doors can be tiny and still hold a lot. As a child I’d prise open Advent calendar doors with a fingernail, careful not to rip the cardboard hinge. Some mornings the flap stuck; some mornings the picture inside felt disappointing. Still, one small door each day, patience dressed as tradition, moving time along.
This year, on a grey Tuesday, I opened a door I didn’t want: the physio’s room with its paper-covered bed, a bowl of resistance bands, and the sentence that tilted the air “You’ve torn your quad”.
Running
It’s not a catastrophe on the scale of the world. Inside my world, it’s its own weather system. I had a plan: long runs stacking up, pace turning friendly, a spring marathon like a light in the calendar. Running is where I often meet myself without performance. When the physio said, kindly “This will heal, but it needs patience”, I felt another door open, the old room where I measure worth by what I can push through.
Here are the doors I’m opening now, one a day if I can manage it:
Door 1: Naming
I am gutted. Not a bit disappointed, not stoic. Gutted. Grief isn’t only for big endings; sometimes it’s for the version of a week you’d already fallen in love with.
Door 2: Permission
The plan has changed. The goal can stay; the route is different. I would never advise someone to sprint on an injury. I am offering myself the same decency.
Door 3: Help
I ask for it. I message friends who understand miles and moods. I tell people I won’t be superhuman this month. Oddly, nothing collapses. Honesty is sturdier than pretending.
Door 4: Patience
I don’t open all the doors at once. Rest days that used to feel like lost progress become part of the pattern. The exercises look like nothing and somehow help.
Door 5: Anger
It visits. I try not to evict it for being noisy. Anger wants to turn into blame - of me, my training plan, that day I pushed too hard on a run. I sit with it and move through it.
Door 6: Kindness
Not pastel; structural. I replan my week: earlier nights, food that isn’t an afterthought, and no swapping missed miles for extra emails. I treat my leg like I plan to keep it.
Door 7: Enough
Today’s enough is smaller than last weeks. I practise not calling that failure. If I can’t run, I walk. If I can’t walk, I stretch. If I can’t stretch, I rest.
Door 8: Joy
It’s still here, differently shaped. My dog insists outside still exists; we take short, careful loops. The sky keeps doing what the sky does. A message makes me laugh in an uninjured place.
Door 9: Perspective
Healing isn’t a straight line. A leg can feel miraculous in the morning and sulky by evening. I’m learning to celebrate micro-gains without turning them into mandates.
Door 10: Trust
My body is not an adversary; it’s a partner who finally used a loud enough voice. Rest isn’t something I earn with suffering; it’s a responsibility if I want to keep running for years to come.
I’ve been here before, just in other rooms. Redundancy opened a door I didn’t want, and on the other side was a life I now choose daily. Boundary-setting opened a door I didn’t want, and on the other side was a schedule I recognise myself in. This injury is not a metaphor I’d have picked. It’s a fact, but facts can be teachers.
‘It’s time to change’ sounds, from the outside, like a rallying cry. From the inside it feels more like a hand on a doorknob. Some days I’ll open the Advent calendar flap with a clean edge; some days I’ll tear the cardboard and smooth it down muttering patience. Either way, there’s something on the other side, maybe not chocolate, maybe not even a picture I like, but a small step forward in a month that asks for waiting.
I don’t know when I’ll be back to the miles I miss. I do know I want to arrive with a relationship to myself that isn’t built on bargaining. This Advent, I’m practising opening only the door in front of me. If I do this properly, the biggest door won’t be an ending. It will be a beginning I’m ready for, because I didn’t rush to get there.