HARDWICK – In a few days, I will be out of the office for a month to have my hip replaced.
I’ve been waiting nearly ten years for this. Long enough to adjust my life around pain. Long enough to forget what normal movement feels like. Long enough that even necessary change can feel unsettling.
This kind of repair is not sudden. It comes after years of small accommodations, workarounds and moments when I realized I am compensating more than I should. At some point, I had to decide whether to keep managing the problem or interrupt it entirely.
That decision carries weight.
Anyone who has faced a major repair, physical, structural or otherwise, knows the paradox. You choose it because the current condition is not sustainable, but the process itself brings uncertainty. As with any careful repair, timing, preparation and what you do while waiting matter as much as the fix itself.
Waiting ten years has changed how I’ve thought about repair. It’s taught me patience, but also created familiarity with the brokenness.
Even when something is not working well, it becomes known. Change, by contrast, requires trust.
In my work, I see this same tension often. Whether it is infrastructure, land or systems stressed over time, repair rarely happens all at once. Damage accumulates. Temporary fixes become routine. People adapt. And then, eventually, a threshold is reached where adaptation is no longer enough.
At that point, repair is not just about fixing what is broken. It is about choosing disruption in service of something better.
That choice hasn’t been easy. It’s come with grief for what I’ve lost, anxiety about what comes next and frustration with how long it may take. Recovery is not linear. There will be setbacks. There will be days when progress will feel invisible.
But repair, when done with care, is an act of optimism.
It says the future is worth the effort; that function can be restored, that pain does not have to be permanent simply because it has been present for a long time.
As I step away for surgery and recovery, I am holding that perspective close. Change can be frightening, even when it is chosen. Repair requires patience, support and humility.
It requires allowing yourself to be in the in-between; not what you were, not yet what you will be.
That space is uncomfortable. It is where healing begins.
When I return, things will not be the same. That is the point.
Repair is not about returning to the past. It is about creating the conditions for a more functional future, even when the process is slow and uncertain.
After ten years of waiting, I am ready for that kind of change.
Kristen Leahy is the zoning and floodplain administrator and the resilience and adaptation coordinator for the Town of Hardwick.
