Appreciate the miracles all around
We’ve considered giving up. Several times, my wife and I. After my open heart surgery and stroke at age 56, when I was forced to retire from my pediatric critical care practice because I could no longer handle the physical demands, then again at 59, when my thirty year marriage crumbled and my grown children stopped speaking to me. My wife Lisa persevered in her work as a pediatric professor of hospital medicine after complicated, potentially disabling back surgery that left her partially paralyzed. She did not give up when that job, which she loved, ended. Nor did she surrender to negativity after escaping an abusive husband with her children, losing everything, including for a time, her beloved kids.
It was a miracle that we found each other, in the midst of our trials, and the miracle should have really stopped there. But no. Ever hopeful and faithful, we got married, held a big wedding so our friends and family could celebrate with us. Celebrate what, you might ask? We’ve experienced depression, battled addictions, faced financial ruin, and live constantly under the spector of acute illness, made exponentially more worrisome by the Covid pandemic.
And if that wasn’t hopeful enough, even after leaving behind the medical practices for which we were trained, we gained additional training, she in aesthetic medicine, and I in Health Coaching, both achieving the requisite certifications. It took time, money, dedication, discipline and at times unrealistic optimism to achieve this dream, but we did. Why? How? Because hope forces the arc of the universe to bend toward doing good.
Now, at 53 and 66, we’ve taken it a step further, and opened our own practice, MONACO Wellness, in downtown Tampa, where Lisa helps folks achieve their aesthetic dreams, and I help them achieve their best health. And we are grateful, not just for our good fortune, but more for the hope, optimism, love and support we’ve experienced which, despite all our challenges, never faltered.
We share this to inspire other seniors, that as long as you are breathing, there is hope, and that combined with love can bring you anything and even lead you to realizing your dreams. We welcome your questions and comments.
John Monaco
Drs. John and Lisa Monaco
www.monacowellness.org