Even before I fell and broke my hand this week, ideas about healing had been top of mind.

My way of dealing with anxiety -- both pandemic and political -- involves frequent long walks in state and local parks. On one such walk, with my pup Frankie and a friend, I had been thinking about President-elect Joe Biden’s call to heal the nation after the most divisive election I’ve ever seen in this country.

We were a mile into a scenic and gravelly trail in Castlewood State Park when I lost my footing and fell onto the rocky path.

Rocks make an unforgiving landing pad.

My friend panicked when she saw me on the ground, head bleeding. I had put my hands out to catch myself, and figured something had snapped when I felt the sharp radiating pain in my right hand and wrist.

Two kindly women stopped when they saw me lying on the path and heard my friend asking if she should call 911.

“Do you know where you are?” one of them asked. “Do you know what day it is?”

She said she was relying on her knowledge from having watched many medical dramas on television. As someone who claims my medical license from WebMD, I appreciated her expertise.

I managed to convince these helpers that I likely did not have a serious head injury. An older gentleman walked up to the scene, and the medical drama lady asked him if he had any snacks to give me. He offered trail mix and a band-aid for my head. I accepted both.

The last Good Samaritan to arrive turned out to be a nurse (no disrespect to the medical drama watchers, but I was relieved to have someone with nonfictional training chime in). She advised me to get to an orthopedic injury center instead of a regular emergency room, most of which are overrun with COVID cases now.

But before that, I had a daunting, immediate challenge to face: how to get down from the hilly trail. Going back the way we’d come up would be tricky because of steep inclines, but the slightly easier way down would add another two miles to our hike.

We opted to fashion a sling out of my friend’s jacket and take the longer path down. My hand, knees and nose started to swell along the way. My husband, who is still using oxygen while he recovers from a severe COVID infection two months ago, picked me up at the exit and drove me to an injury center.

We had some time to kill while I waited to get X-rays, so I switched from thinking about my personal physical healing to all the other types of healing needed in our country -- emotional, relational, economic and racial.

Doctors can put my fractured hand in a cast and the bone will eventually knit together. But how do we knit together a fractured nation? How do we begin to heal when opposing sides have two completely different versions of reality?

I’ve told my children that repairing bruised relationships requires taking responsibility for mistakes, hurtful words or actions, and then offering sincere apologies.

I am not expecting apologies from the readers who have sent nasty and insulting messages over the past several years. Nor do I expect to have the same kind of relationships with a few friends who revealed starkly different values than mine.

When I’ve asked others what needs to happen to heal the seemingly unbridgeable gaps in our society, I’ve heard suggestions like bringing back the Fairness Doctrine (a bygone FCC policy), better regulation of social media platforms that spread destructive misinformation, or a truth and reconciliation commission to put to rest conspiracies designed to destabilize our democracy.

Doctors told me that I might need surgery if the small broken bone behind my thumb gets displaced. I’m praying that a period of quiet and rest after the fall -- and a long, painful hike back -- will be enough to recover what was broken.

Wishing the same for our country.

Some parenting firsts are etched into memory.

Our daughter’s first word was “duck” because we went to a park with a duck pond so often. She loved her first day of preschool so much that she wanted to stay when it was time for pickup. I can vividly recall small details from her first birthday party, first airplane trip and first ride on her pink-and-purple Big Wheel tricycle.

A few of these memories crossed my mind as I drove her to the St. Louis County Board of Elections last month. She wore the “Vote” necklace I’d given her for her 18th birthday the week before.

I took a picture of her in line outside the building, and another while she waited inside for her ballot. The election officials clapped when I told them she was a first-timer. When I pulled out my phone to take a picture of her at the ballot box, she rolled her eyes. A poll worker told me to stop and put my phone away.

I waited until she was done to take another picture outside with her “I voted” sticker. I forced her to take a selfie with me in the car. Before we drove home, I told her that no matter what happens going forward, I wanted her to promise to never miss an opportunity to vote in her life.

I wonder if being the child of immigrants makes this responsibility feel so sacred to me. Maybe because I grew up knowing that my parents left behind everything familiar and beloved to them, I have taken each election as a chance to validate that sacrifice. In a country that doesn’t always feel accepting, each time I vote, I am reminded that I belong.

That my voice matters.

I’ll never forget the one time I was denied a ballot. It was more than 20 years ago in an off-cycle election in Missouri. I decided to go to my polling station after work. For whatever reason, I wasn’t on the rolls when they checked for my name, even though I had voted in previous elections. The woman working at that location suggested that I could drive to the county Board of Elections to try to sort it out. But the polls were about to close, and I knew I wouldn’t make it there in time.

I was devastated, walking out without having cast a ballot. It felt like I had been robbed.

The experience did teach me a lesson. Since that day, I’ve always voted first thing in the morning, or in-person absentee if I know I’ll be out of my jurisdiction on Election Day. This year, I double-checked my registration, and that of the two new voters in my household, multiple times.

My husband, who became an American citizen three years ago, has now also voted in his first presidential election. I drove him to the Board of Elections two weeks after he was discharged from the hospital after battling a severe COVID-19 infection. He took his oxygen tank with him, and I took just as many pictures of him in line as I had of my daughter.

I knew more first-time voters in this election than ever before. As I write this, I still don’t know the final outcome from the record-breaking turnout. The only thing we know for sure is that nearly half the country will be bitterly disappointed with however it ends up.

It’s been remarkable to see so many people determined to have their voice heard. But the long lines should also remind us that people should not have to wait for hours to exercise a basic, fundamental right.

I hope that each of those first-time voters felt the same addictive thrill that I did casting my first ballot.

Regardless of outcome, the message endures: You belong. Your voice matters.

Jane was born and raised in a conservative Catholic family in a conservative Midwestern suburb.

Growing up, her working-class parents scrimped to put her and her siblings through private Catholic schools. Jane attended Masses for the unborn, prayed at vigils to end abortion and raised money for pro-life groups. She believed fervently in the messages she was taught.

She was working part-time at a pizza place as a senior in high school when she discovered she was pregnant. Her then-boyfriend disappeared; her mother told her to have the baby, then let a wealthy relative raise the child.

Instead, Jane chose to raise her daughter -- now 17 -- herself.

Jane, now 35, recently wrote about her pregnancy and childbirth experience in a private Facebook group, saying that it had converted her from a “pro-life” Catholic Republican to a pro-choice Democrat. She gave me permission to share a version of that post, along with some clarification she offered during an interview, using her middle name for privacy.

“When I was 17 and pregnant with my daughter, my dad’s insurance did not cover maternity care for a dependent. The state of Missouri considered me legally emancipated because I was pregnant, so I could not get state coverage. I didn’t qualify for Medicaid because my parents ‘made too much’ as a beautician and a union laborer.

“We could not find a single facility to take me in (Missouri’s) St. Charles County. I even walked into Catholic Charities in my school uniform, with my pregnant belly hanging over my plaid skirt, and said to the receptionist, ‘I am pregnant. I don’t have insurance and my parents’ insurance won’t cover me, and I need help.’

“The receptionist looked at me and said: ‘We don’t do that type of charity here.’

“Then, a family friend who was a nun and worked in a hospital system was able to help us get a cash deal for care at St. Joseph Hospital in St. Charles. Thank God for that nun; I don’t know what we would have done otherwise.

“My parents had to pay in cash before every checkup, screening, ultrasound, etc. When it came time for delivery, there wasn’t much cash left.

“The cheapest option was forced on me: vaginal birth, no pain medication, no epidural. I went into labor the day before my 18th birthday.

“Needless to say, childbirth was far too much for me to handle. I was hyperventilating, panicking, begging for it to be over. And that was my first hour. Although I was legally emancipated, the hospital would not let me make my own medical decisions until midnight when I turned 18. When my mom left the room for a few minutes, a nurse rushed me epidural consent forms to sign before she came back.

“It was another 15 hours before I started pushing, and the epidural had worn off. I tore in four places (third-degree lacerations, I was told). Because I didn’t have the money for any more medication, I was sutured without any numbing. Can you imagine? Eighteen years and 16 hours old, pushing out a baby -- tearing and stitching, with full feeling and no medication, in the most sensitive area of your body?

“After I went home from the hospital, I was still uninsured since I was now 18 and not enrolled in full-time school anymore. (I had graduated four months earlier.) I could not see a doctor for follow-up care. A week after giving birth, I returned to working full-time. I got mastitis two weeks postpartum that stopped my milk production and caused excruciating pain. My stitches got so infected, I used a mirror and tweezers to take them out myself and treated it with alcohol.

“Was I in a developing country? Was this the time when America was great? Nope.

“This was all in Missouri in 2003 before the Affordable Care Act.

“If the ACA is repealed, your daughter could suffer the same way.

“This is barbaric.

“To be pro-life is to demand universal healthcare coverage for all.

“To be pro-life is to demand maternity coverage.

“To be pro-life is to demand coverage for dependents to age 26.

“To be pro-life is to demand coverage for preexisting conditions.

“To be pro-life is to demand unrestricted access to birth control.

“All the above is covered by law in the ACA, passed in 2010.

“Guess who wants to repeal it with no real plan in place?”

I’ll answer Jane’s question: the people who call themselves “pro-life.”