March 2022

Finally it starts to look like there’s some signs of summer! I have to still admit that there was one week snowing with a slightly colder weather, but most of the time it has been really good and the sun has been showing up as well. The worst allergic season is finally gone and many of us don’t have to be stressed from sneezing in public all the time. 

During March I have been taking big steps forward with my rehab and it starts finally to see that there is some light in the end of the tunnel. I am extremely excited to start play again, especially when I haven’t got a chance to play with my new teammates yet, so I am looking forward to it.

My mood has been very stable and I have been feeling very good, where I think the Chakra yoga has had an impact and I have been practicing my mind regularly. I have also been enjoying some time with my teammates and friends, so I feel I have been very versatile with what I have been doing in my free time.

Of course I wish that I could have been playing in our league premier and when we took us to the cup final. But, chances will come and go and I will definitely be enjoying the fullest when I am back on the pitch. 

I finally met my baby dog and he was extremely cute. I will get him in less than two weeks and I am so excited! 

Happy news from the rehab

First two weeks of March my training and what I was allowed to do was pretty same as in February. I was during the first weeks allowed to do some easy jumps to different directions. First it felt pretty impossible to do it, but after every time it got better, which I felt petty hopeful of that it is going forward.

After our semifinal game in the cup, I was allowed in the following week to jog for the first time. Starting to run felt like I was closer than ever to do my comeback, even though it wasn’t the smoothest I was really happy to do that again after 10 weeks.

In my sessions I have tried to reach my limits, even how tired I am (of course not in every single one). My motivational songs have been Unstoppable from Sia and Äärirajoille from a Finnish rap artist Cheek. Hearing those songs has somehow made me think of my dad and my old teammate from futsal, who also died in cancer few months ago. I have been thinking about both of them while I practice, and how much they would have given to life and sports if they were here. I am healthy (or almost if we don’t count my ankle) and alive, so I have the chance to affect my life here and now. Not forgetting that I can dream and work for them so I can someday achieve them. I am so grateful for doing it and I know both of them will be with me on my journey. I simply decided that some ankle injury won’t stop me.

My comeback is closer than ever and I am so excited to be playing with my team. I missed the chance to play with the new players so I am looking forward to it. Most of the time, I have been positive about my comeback and how I will be doing on the field, but of course there have been some thoughts, where I have doubted myself about how I will be on the field. Am I fit enough? Can I score some goals or even assist one? Will I be a total waste? 

After clearing my mind and analyzing my thoughts, they are really unnecessary and it wont bring me anywhere. I am focusing on being grateful that I can play again and remembering how much work I have been doing for that. I know my strengths as a player and I can do it when I focus on the right things and I keep up the good mood.

Grief takes time and strenght

It’ has already been 9 months since dad passed away and since then it has been a really demanding time for our family in many ways. A lot of bureaucracies things has been finished and finally it looks like we are as well finished with the estate inventory and we can start to focus on going forward. It has been pretty stressful for me, even though my uncle has been in charge of all the bureaucracies things, but I didn’t understand any of those things and felt bad about it. Both me and my mum are so grateful for all my uncle’s help, because without him I don’t know how we could have handled all of that stuff for ourselves. Of course I have learned a lot and I feel I know sort of how it works now. 

I have been feeling really good for a little longer now and I feel like I am building myself up again. But to be honest, I have been a little bit worried about my mum, because she still lives there where our whole family has spent our whole life together and where all our memories are. Of course it is hard for her to be there, but luckily she has Ackeboy. Being here in Åland has helped me a lot and if I would have been the whole time at home, it would have definitely been a lot harder. Mum has been planning to come here and do some work here, so she could get some distance from all those things back home, which I think could be really good for her. She just has to see her doctor and how she has to do with her job.

Football and sports in general were me and my dad’s passion together and that is why playing football has been feeling slightly different the last few months.I was playing more passionately than ever after he died, because  I knew how much he would have enjoyed those games, so I was using that as my strength on the field. But at the end of the season I started to feel how exhausted I was and just wished that the season would end. I don’t say I wasn’t motivated, but I was surely emotionally tired and I couldn’t perform on the level I wanted. My sleep was not at a good level and I noticed how my fitness suffered from it. But I could be hindsight, that maybe it wasn’t the best decision to continue playing right away, but in that time it felt right and that’s okay. Dad said to me on that same week, that I have to be on Åland and prepare for the game and play, so I promised him that I will be at the game.

After being injured and not playing, I realized that this was what I needed and now I am ready to play again. I feel a lot more stable than back then and now I can just imagine how great I will do on the field.

Soon I will get my baby dog and I can’t wait how much joy and action it will bring into my life.Our Ackeboy will get a friend also and I feel it is going to be really good also for him, because he was like us, very sad after died passed. He could probably sense our grief and he knew what had happened, because he didn’t eat the first two weeks.

I know that Toivo will have an extremely good impact on our family and we will build our family up stronger than ever.

My gratitude story

I have been so grateful and excited about many things lately and it makes me so happy, because if I go back a few months, I couldn’t have believed that I could feel like this now. 

Realizing how many happy things I have ahead, just makes me so incredibly excited for the future, which makes me live every day so passionately and I know that every day is a chance of learning something, so I feel every day in some level of excitement. I am so grateful for feeling this because it has been some time since I felt like this. Life is full of chances which are worth exploring. 

I have been doing Sami Minkkinen´s NLP  exercise and being part of his online courses. I have been in a course called EMT and it is about how you should focus your mind on those things that make you feel good instead of limiting yourself and reacting to unnecessary things. I have experienced this course very useful and it has opened my eyes completely. 

The Chakra yoga has also been a good combination to this EMT course, because in the yoga we repeated a lot of the same things and that tells a lot how this universe works. On those things what we are focusing our mind to and how we talk to ourselves, the universe reflects back to us the same things, and that’s called karma. Many people forget or just don’t internalize their Karma and that we are part of everything. Every time we do something, we cause something and without us, some things wouldn’t happen or even exist. We are usually too much inside our own box and that’s our worst enemy. We get too much stuck in our thoughts and in our body, and it makes us believe that is our reality, but isn’t. Our subconscious mind is only 5 % of our reality and the rest are unconscious. What does that mean? It means that we have been practicing our whole life to live in a specific way. Everyone has its own perspectives, on what we can do and what is possible and that has been built already between 1-7 years old age. When we start to think of some new thing that we want or do in our life, our imagination is already formed by our limits, so there is always some restriction behind. You are not the same as your feelings, and it takes a lot of character to stand on the same level with reality. 

So what if this would be the time to stop putting some weird and unnecessary restrictions and instead explore the chances which really are there for us? For me thinking this way feels like the world is limitless and it’s there for me. I just have to allow myself to spread my wings and fly. Everything what I need is there and there are so many things for me to choose what I want to dream and as long as I am healthy, I have the chance to work for them and achieve them. 

I am so grateful that I will be playing again and I will get my lovely dog. I am so grateful for what I already have and of all the amazing people I have around me. And realizing, that the future is there for me with its all amazing things, so I can’t just wait for it!