The office in my house in one room that is entirely mine. Our home houses an over-abundance of testosterone-fueled males. To emphasize my ownership of the little office, I decorated it in pink. It isn’t as bad as it sounds, but it definitely does not have a masculine feel.

One day, my husband, I were running errands and made a quick stop to grab a few things from the store. He put a bright pink desk plaque in the cart that said: “This Girl Can.” I thought he was making a joke about my possessiveness over the office expressed through color choice. Weirdly, he insisted we buy it.

Our errands that day were to stock up and get prepared for the latest in a long string of back surgeries I have had done over the last few years. This one was supposed to be brutal, but I also had hoped that it would finally fix the non-union in my neck that had caused so much pain. The “This Girl Can” sign ended up buried under toilet paper, toothpaste other toiletries we were stockpiling.

My daughter was helping put stuff away and, not knowing where the sign belonged, put it on my bedside table. I honestly never thought about it again in the chaos of preparing for surgery. I came home in tremendous pain, but hopeful that this had been the last surgery and that once recovered, I could resume my life. The first day at home was brutal. IV pain meds at the hospital had kept the pain somewhat under control. The pain meds I was given for home use didn’t touch the pain.

In trying to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, I couldn’t manage to raise my neck from the pillow. So, I am in a bizarrely awkward position, with legs off the bed and head still firmly glued to the pillow. I felt like a turtle turned over in the shell. As I struggled to go into an upright position, the plaque caught my attention, and I laughed.

The recovery didn’t go as hoped, and I developed a pseudomeningocele. I can save you a stop by google and briefly explained that the dura sac that holds cerebrospinal fluid around the spinal cord had been knicked during surgery, causing a large pocket of CSF fluid to build up where it shouldn’t be. That meant another open surgery to fix. There were many more days of delayed recovery and trying to turtle out of bed. Although he bought it for the office, I left the little “This Girl Can” plaque beside the bed. It gave me a little boost on those days when I was pretty damned sure this girl couldn’t anymore.

Time moved on, and ever so slowly, I did start to recover. We took our RV to the beach for the summer as we try to do every year. While at the beach, I began to write. I also started to research the possibility of freelance writing. My goals were laughably small, but I did get my first ever paid writing job. When I came back home, the little sign had new meaning.

My business grew faster than I had ever planned on. Suddenly, I went from “wow, someone paid me $20 to write an article,” to having to turn down work because I had more contracts than I could cover.

Recovery is never a straight line, and many days saw me back in bed after overdoing it the day before. My little sign kept serving as a reminder to get back up. Today, I decided it was time to move the sign. It finally belongs to the office where I do my writing. I seldom need the motivational push to force myself out of bed anymore.

Now, I want it in my office where I do my writing. The other day I told someone I was a writer. That was the first time I dared to proclaim that this is my new life. Today, I am moving the sign to my office, where it was initially meant to go. Some days it will remind me that I can, but what I really value it for is the memory of what I did. I kept turtling out of bed. I kept moving, healing, growing, and, most of all, I took a leap of faith and tried something I never before had the courage to do.

“This Girl Can” deserves a sister sign that says “This Woman Did.”