Color the World Orange: 16 Years of Choosing Joy When the Pain Never Let's Go

I’m wearing orange today because November is Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Awareness Month. It’s a small thing, this color, but it feels like the least I can do for a condition that has colored every part of my life for the last sixteen years.

Sixteen years ago an SUV hit me while I was on my motorcycle. My leg was crushed. In the long, hard months that followed, the doctors finally gave it a name: CRPS. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Some people call it the suicide disease. It sits at the very top of the pain scale, it never fully leaves, and there is still no cure. For me it feels like a vise grip is clamped around my foot every single second of every single day. It has been that way since the accident. It is that way right now, as I write these words.

I smile. I laugh. I work out. I walk onto stages and speak about grit and grace and joy. And I am still in pain. Both of those things are true at the same time. I used to think I had to hide the second one so people would believe the first. I don’t do that anymore. A smile is not proof that someone is pain-free. Positivity is not a denial of how severe the pain is. An old injury does not always mean a healed nervous system.

People still ask why I’m limping when the surgeries were so long ago. The truth is, I try not to limp. Most days I work hard to walk straight, to stand tall, to look like I’m fine. But some days the pain is simply too much to hide, and my body refuses to pretend. If someone tells you they are hurting, believe them. Offer patience instead of advice. Compassion instead of comparison. You do not have to understand their pain to honor it.

I share this not because I want pity. I share it because awareness still matters. If CRPS is caught early enough and treated aggressively, the chance of putting it into remission is much higher. That window is precious. So is the knowledge that you are not alone, that you are not broken, and that you are still healing even when the healing feels impossibly slow.

Over the years I have tried two spinal cord stimulators, ketamine infusions, opioids, spinal blocks, radiofrequency procedures, and stem cell treatment. I have spent thousands of dollars and taken out a loan searching for relief. Some things helped a little. Some things didn’t. The search continues. So does the hope.

Because here is what I have learned in these sixteen years: you can find joy even when the pain never stops. You can more than survive—you can thrive. You do not always have to suck it up and push through. You can be kinder and more compassionate to the body that is carrying you. You are not broken. You are healing.

Hope still shows up in the smallest places if you keep holding on when everything in you wants to let go. Gratitude is often the spark that lights the flame again. And that flame is fed by the light other people pour into us, and by those quiet moments when we remember that God’s strength is with us and we are never truly alone.

Maybe today someone you love has a flame that is flickering because the weight of their pain feels too heavy. Whether it is CRPS or some other kind of struggle, we have the power to lift one another. We can offer love, patience, and a spark of hope that reignites faith. Together we find strength in community, resilience in connection, and courage in every heart that refuses to quit.

I love you. I believe in you. And it is because of you that I keep choosing to show up, keep choosing joy, and keep telling the truth about what this road actually looks like.

If this meets you where you are, share it with someone who needs the reminder that they do not have to carry it alone. Awareness makes the invisible seen. And seeing each other is how we keep going.

You’ve got this.

With grit, grace, and a whole lot of orange,

Amberly