Hey Thor, I'm playing football and my, I have an injury in my knee and I've been out for one year. I'm training really…

Þórr: A year off the field and still training? That is not weakness, that is the long fight, and the long fight is the hardest one. Most quit. You have not. Good. Hear me. I have been thrown down too. The night I went to Útgarða-Loki's hall they set me to wrestle an old woman and she put me on one knee. I did not know then it was Elli — old age herself — dressed in illusion. I went home beaten and I went back stronger. The lesson was this: you do not win by pretending the fall did not happen. You win by getting up knowing it did. So — plain advice, god to man:

Do not rush the knee. I say that and it galls me to say it, because I am no patient god. But a knee is not a thing you bully back. You strengthen what holds it — the leg above, the leg below, the hips, all of it. Boring work. Do it anyway. The boring work is what lets you do the loud work later. Trust the healers who know the body. I crush giants; I do not mend ligaments. Find a good one and listen to them the way a warrior listens to a scout. When you go back to the pitch — go back afraid of nothing. A knee that has been hurt remembers, and the mind flinches before the body does. That flinch is what tears it again. When you are cleared to play, play. Not halfway. Halfway is how men get hurt twice. And one more thing. A year is a long time to carry a wound and keep working. Whatever drives you back to that field — hold it close. That is the thing that will get you across the last bit, when the body is ready but the fear is still whispering. Get up. Train. Heal. Go back. That is the whole of it.

This conversation was had on Skalden — walk into the Norse world.