Welcome to "Becoming Undeniable"

A manifesto for a Substack begun one month after knee surgery that could evolve into something completely different in one year's time

May 19, 2024

For anyone who has asked me about how I've been doing in the wake of injury and knee surgery, I've decided that this is how I am going to write about it for now: on its own Substack! On "Becoming Undeniable," you'll find a rougher, diary-style dive into the the process of recovery: the kind of stuff you'd hear me talk about if you were sitting next to me, on the couch, icing my knee and trying to reclaim strength and self-sufficiency I so took for granted until recently. On the whole, "The Submission Artist" will become of a home for more "semi-pro" endeavors in writing related to longform articles and interviews, but when the writing I do on "Becoming Undeniable" makes sense to cross-post to "The Submission Artist," you'll see it here, too. Thanks, enjoy, and subscribe if you like! EZ -

Erica Zendell

There are three types of people I anticipate coming to this Subtstack.

People who know me and have asked me—either after injury or after surgery—“How’s the knee?”
People who don’t know me but are going through some major period of recovery: from surgery, from burnout, from anything else that sets you back and requires you to start again.
My mother.

Whether you fall into these categories doesn’t matter much. If you’re here, I hope you find something worthwhile.

Reflections on Strength: One Month Post-Op from ACL Surgery

I care—a lot—about being strong.

Many people in my life tell me that I’m strong. I take that as a compliment.

I strive to be a pillar of strength on the teams I lead at work.

I strive to be physically strong and mentally strong in the athletic endeavors I’ve pursued over the last few years—combat sports demand nothing less than both kinds of strength.

If you’ve ever heard the famed Steve Jobs quotation on quality…

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

…I strive to be a “yardstick of strength.”

I don’t have any extraordinary athletic gifts or mental fortitude.

I don’t have David Goggins-level grit —and certainly have no intentions on running on broken legs.

I care about being strong because I believe that strength is a baseline requirement for living a good life, now more than ever.

Because nothing has made me reconsider my own strength like being at my weakest.

For the last few months, I’ve been at my absolute weakest.

Recently, I was set back—hard—by a sports injury that forced me to take a step back and contemplate how strong I actually am and what strength actually means to me.

To be specific: I tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus in a jiu-jitsu competition in February. I had surgery to repair the damage in April. Today, May 19, 2024, is the milestone of “one month post-op.”

When people ask me about my knee, I get a lot of questions like this:

Are you in a lot of pain?
Are you able to walk yet?
You’ll be back" in a few months, right?

Rehab for ACL surgery with a focus on “return to sport” is, at minimum, a nine-month process, but it can take up to two years before the risks of re-tearing your ACL goes down substantially.

With the help of ibuprofen, athletic tape, and smart training partners, I was—very luckily—able to avoid sidelining injuries in the sport I love for the better part of the last seven years.

Reading the literature that I’m two years away from really feeling like myself again, from being able to train fearlessly and as if the whole thing never happened—well, it’s devastating.

But devastation brings its own form of opportunity.

That’s what you’ll read about here.

I believe that my healing process will benefit from writing things down.

Knee surgery has upended my life. There’s no sugar-coating it. Basic tasks of living have become Sisyphus-worthy boulders.

Maneuvering myself into and out of a car seat has become a form of Tetris, a game of limb configuration while avoiding pain.

Re-learning how to walk around the house—without a limp and without ever-present fear of trips and falls—has been harder than any form of competitive jiu-jitsu training I’ve ever done.

Winning back self-sufficiency has been a slow process, forcing dependence on others in ways and humbling me in a particularly intimate way:

I’ve needed to lean on my husband in order to get into the shower and—in the early days post-op—to help me sit on the toilet.
I’ve needed friends to physically guard my left side while out in public so no one—distracted, hurried, unaware, or inconsiderate—runs into me.

I’m the kind of writer who usually waits for the moment to pass to make sense of an experience. In the case of negative experiences, it takes me a while to work up the courage to write about it, however long it takes until I have something intelligent to say about it.

In this case, I want to do something different: I want to write “from the trenches” of the whole experience, foregoing my compulsiveness toward cleanliness, polish, and structure in my writing for the something a little rougher.

I said something to the effect of the following in my writing group last week:

Right now, I’m going through hell. Years later, when I have made peace with this experience and made sense of this experience, I don’t want to forget what it was like to walk through the fire.

One day, I want to write a more extensive piece about my road to recovery, using the raw, unvarnished "field notes" I’ve kept. When that time comes, I don't want to guess how I felt at each milestone. I want these notes to capture both the moments of torment and the moments of triumph.

In the meantime, I aim to do something meaningful during this forced "fallow time" caused by my injury.

For me, purpose comes from creating. This Substack is a promise to myself, shared publicly, to create something beautiful from a painful experience.

Here, you’ll find a “bleeding heart”-style record of my thoughts and feelings in real time, as I strive to find grace in adversity.

Here, you’ll see me reluctantly learning what this injury teaches me about life and about myself.

Here, you’ll find horror, humor, and, most of all, hope as I work to “come back,” to be “better than before,” and to move forward with a renewed appreciation for both strength and its close relative, resilience.

What you’ll find here: a continued pursuit of strength on my road to recovery from injury.

Strength is forged through challenge. In the gym, it’s built through progressively overloading muscles and working until failure. In the professional world, it’s built by tackling harder projects, dealing with difficult people, and navigating unexpected circumstances with grace.

It’s easy to appear strong during good times—all you have to do is look and act strong. It’s much harder to be strong during difficult times.

Even now, at my weakest, I’m still striving to be a "yardstick of strength."

By the end of this process, I hope to have a clearer and more articulate understanding of what strength means to me. Until then, I’ll use this Substack as my recovery journal, sharing notes, insights, and experiences on my journey back to full health.

An AI-generated image of ocean sunrise, which is uplifting

Subscribe if you wish.

Hope to see you next time,