Brooke Shields is on the road to recovery after being in a scary accident in February.
She explained to Today how she was on a balance board, something she had done often, and then
disaster struck:
“and I stupidly switched my focus and I flew up in the air and just hit perfectly
and snapped my femur, you know, the largest bone in the body."
Shields approached the injury in a matter-of-fact way, saying,
"This is really probably the biggest thing that I have to physically go through, but
what am I going to do about it?
Am I just going to let it undo me or am I going to take proactive steps towards doing
something that is within my capacity?"
Shortly after the accident, Shields posted a video of herself walking on crutches on
Instagram.
She wrote in the caption,
"Broke my femur.
Beginning to mend.
No matter what your challenge is, make a positive choice, for yourself, to move forward.
#BeginningisNow."
Shields appeared positive about the injury on social media, but there were many moments
of doubt.
She admitted to People weeks after the accident,
"I was so afraid I was paralyzed."
The injury itself was incredibly painful, but Shields also required invasive surgery
requiring the insertion of metal rods and a metal plate.
Shields spent weeks in the hospital, but she wasn't out of the woods after returning home.
After her release, Shields found herself facing a staph infection and she had to return to
the hospital where she underwent another surgery.
She said,
"At first they feared it might be [antibiotic-resistant] MRSA.
Thank God it wasn't.
If it had been, my doctor said it would have been a race against time.
That's how you can become septic.
It seemed unthinkable."
The horrifying experience put a lot of things into perspective for Shields, who said,
"I never considered myself Zen but I realized with a certain calm that the rest is up to
me now."
Shields committed wholeheartedly to the healing process.
The actress doubled down on therapy, putting herself through the grueling process twice
a day.
She said,
"[...] for the first time in my entire life, I thought, 'I can't power through this.
'I can't even stand on my leg or go up a step.
I need to relearn how to even walk.
The feeling of helplessness is shocking."
It has been an arduous journey for Shields, and she's not fully healed yet.
She said,
"If anything, I'm a fighter."
Shields is determined to keep going, saying:
"I'm the only one that's going to be able to get through this.
My career has actually been like that as well.
One door gets slammed in my face and I search for another.
It's not unlike how I felt when I wrote about postpartum depression in 2005.
This is my journey, and if it took me breaking the largest bone in my body, then recovery
is something I want to share.
We have to believe in ourselves and encourage one another.
There's no other way to get through life, period."
Facing such a severe injury would be daunting under any circumstances, but dealing with
one in the midst of a pandemic comes with even more challenges.
Broken femur aside, Shields has struggled during the pandemic and with quarantine, opening
up about her experiences in an interview with Glamour, revealing:
"I've gone through a huge trauma with COVID because of life and nerves and age and everything,
that I noticed my hair started thinning.
So right now I'm just trying to keep my scalp as healthy as possible.
I think all of our bodies have reacted differently [to the trauma] of this year."
In spite of all of the difficulties of the past year, Shields is at least finally learning
how to take some time for herself.
She also told the outlet that she has, quote, "never been really good at relaxing, and it
took COVID to really distill everything for me."
She continued,
"So I like being up earlier in the morning, when it's quiet.
I like reading.
I'm getting to a point now where knitting doesn't stress me out because if I make a
mistake, I'm getting better at being able to fix it.
And my girls and I do puzzles...
We're finding joy in rituals and self-care, because God knows nobody else is going to
do it for you, so you better do it yourself."
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