Yesterday was one of those perfect Texas spring days. The kind that remind you why you chose this life. The sun was out, the air was soft, and everything on the ranch felt awake and moving in rhythm.
We had moved sheep and goats up behind the restaurant using electric fencing. It had been a full moon, and many of the goats were heavily bred, so I walked up the hill to check for signs of labor. There was also a goat with mastitis I had been watching closely. These are the small, steady responsibilities of ranch life. They are constant, and they matter.
I stood there for a few minutes, just observing. Watching their movement, their stillness, the way they cluster and separate. There is something grounding about it. Something that brings you back into your body if you let it.
But I didn’t stay there.
At some point, without even noticing the shift, I pulled out my phone. A comment on an article. A response I felt that I needed to make. One quick check turned into engagement. Engagement turned into attention. Before I realized it, I was no longer present on that hill.
I began walking back down, still looking at my phone, still mentally somewhere else. Responding, thinking, typing, while my body moved through a physical space that required awareness.
When I reached the electric fence, I made a decision that seemed small in the moment. Instead of putting my phone in my pocket, I tried to climb over with one hand.
My boot caught on the top wire. My other foot had already stepped down onto the slope on the other side. I tried to free myself, shifting my weight, attempting to regain balance, but I couldn’t get my footing back underneath me.
I fell forward.
I felt it break. I heard it break.
There is a strange clarity in moments such as that. No confusion. No delay. Just immediate knowing. I stood up, already aware of what had happened, and calmly walked down the hill to find my husband.
I asked him to help me get my wedding ring off before the swelling made it impossible. We worked quickly. We used plumbing tape to tighten my finger and pull the ring free. He reset my dislocated finger. We splinted my hand as best we could with what we had.
There was no panic. Just action.
And then there was a choice.
It was my daughter’s birthday.
I decided right then that this would not take that away from her. We moved forward with the evening as planned. We sang “Happy Birthday.” We had pie. We sat together in the living room, present with each other in a way that felt even more intentional because of what had just happened.
I drank tea and kept my hand still, letting the moment settle inside me.
Later that night, I propped my hand on a pillow and slept as best I could. Sleep came in pieces. Pain would rise and fall. Discomfort would shift and settle. It was a long night, but it was also a quiet one, filled with reflection.
This morning I am sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room. The X-rays confirmed what I already knew. A spiral fracture in the bone between my ring finger and wrist, along with tissue damage in three of my fingers. Exactly where I felt it break. Exactly where I heard it.
There is something both unsettling and grounding about knowing your body that well.
The pain is not the hardest part. Pain comes and goes. It is sharp, then dull, then distant, then back again. It moves.
The harder part is the loss of function.
When you have four young children, a ranch that depends on daily attention, and a restaurant that requires constant management, your hands are essential. Everything runs through them. Every task, every interaction, every small piece of the day.
And now, for the next couple months, I will be living and working with one hand.
That is no small adjustment.
There is frustration in that. Inconvenience. A constant awareness that something is not working the way it should. But there is also an invitation.
An invitation to slow down. To adapt. To ask for help. To become more intentional in every movement.
And beneath all of that, there is a deeper lesson that feels impossible to ignore.
I was distracted.
Not by something urgent. Not by something that truly mattered in that moment. I was distracted from the work in front of me, from the animals I was responsible for, from the beauty of the day that I had been given.
I traded presence for noise.
And in that trade, I created harm.
It is striking how fragile our physical bodies really are. One small, unconscious moment can change everything. A misstep. A lapse in attention. A choice to divide your focus when the situation requires all of it.
We move through the world as if we are strong and untouchable, as if nothing can really happen to us. We assume a level of control that simply is not real.
At the same time, in the areas in which we actually hold power—our attention, our discipline, our choices—we often act as if we are powerless. We give them away freely, almost without noticing.
We hand over our focus to devices. We allow ourselves to be pulled out of real life and into something distant and abstract. We respond to things that do not require immediate response while ignoring the moment that actually does.
Somewhere along the way, we have it backward.
This experience has forced me to confront that truth in a very physical, very undeniable way. I cannot undo what happened. I cannot speed up healing. I cannot will my hand back into full function overnight.
All I can do is adjust.
I can learn to move differently. I can accept help where I need it. I can pay closer attention to the moments in front of me instead of drifting away from them.
And I can carry the lesson forward.
To be more present.
To be more attentive.
To treat the life right in front of me as worthy of my full awareness.
Because sometimes the cost of forgetting that is not just a moment of distraction.
Sometimes it follows you for months.
