Returning after a bad injury takes more nerve than your first season did, because now you know exactly how it can hurt.

Before the injury, your body had no idea what could happen. Now it does, and the caution you feel is genuine protection rather than cowardice. Going back means managing a known risk, which is heavier to carry and also more honest than the ignorance you started out with. Learning to trust a body that has already failed you once is slow work, and it is the real work of coming back.

Build the return in small steps you can measure, and tell whoever is guiding you exactly what you feel at each one. On a day your body says no, treat that as data.