03/11/2025
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.” - D.H. Lawrence
The whole situation was unfair. He was only 8 months old when he stepped into an illegal trap that would cost him one of his front legs.
I cried for him.
I cried for the loss of his limb.
I cried for the injustice of it all.
But he did none of that…
When he woke up from his amputation surgery, he immediately tried to stand. It took him a matter of seconds to realize that the limb wasn’t there and to adjust his weight accordingly so he could still move around.
He didn’t sulk.
He simply adjusted.
In the coming weeks, he taught himself how to dig, hunt and run all over again. Even with only three limbs, he passed all necessary tests for release back into the wild. Up until then, it was assumed that foxes in rehab in our state would not survive in the wild after an amputation. I was thankful the state allowed me the opportunity to test that theory.
He was named Phoenix and he taught us far more than we ever taught him.
We will all experience loss in our lives. Some of those losses can make us move forward in life feeling unwhole. Maybe it’s a break up, the loss of a job or a dream that just didn’t turn out how we hoped it would.
Phoenix taught me that healing doesn’t mean what’s missing comes back. It means we have adjusted. We have shifted as needed to push forward - to persevere.
We are not defined by our losses, but by our strength, our endurance and all we are willing to conquer and overcome. We are forged through the fire.
