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I Bought Myself A Hug

(written May 2023)

 I have had a crazy few weeks, every aspect of life has been on overload, and I am just tired! I care how others are doing. It is part of my nature and that isn’t a bad thing. Everyone assumes I’m good, but no one asks me. Maybe others think that strong people are just always strong. How can they be anything else? I have fought my entire life for other people to see I am human. I make it a priority to treat others that way so they won’t feel this way.  I am the oldest and have always been the one that keeps everything together for everyone else…. BUT….I am allowed to be sad. I am allowed to have days I don’t want to get out of bed. I am allowed to be human and fall apart!  More importantly I am allowed to be scared too. So yesterday I ordered a hug necklace. I miss those a lot! Everyone needs one of those wrap their arms around you make you feel safe hugs every now and again when life gets crazy.  I desperately needed to remember that feeling.

 A memory from my journal August 8th, 2022last year…

Thank you for coming to visit me again. I needed that more than I knew I did. I could feel your comfort and know where he learned how to give amazing hugs. Antonio taught me that I can find peace with a person, and you taught me not to be afraid of my gift.

Both are gifts I will cherish forever, and both are things I was missing in this moment of feeling helpless.

My mom had surgery to remove her cancer today. She didn’t want anyone to know so I worried here alone, not telling anyone. My brothers were back in Iowa taking care of her but I was here knowing there was nothing I could do but wait. I tried going to work but my mind wasn’t on numbers. They found more than planned. That was not the news I wanted to hear. She is not a fighter and now we need her to be one. I don’t think she wants to face the hard road ahead of her, really ahead of all of us as we help her fight this together.

Two weeks earlier I spent a very long, emotional day in the waiting room of Mercy Gilbert hospital worrying about my daughter in-law. Yesterday, she asked me if I wanted to come over and spend time with her and Trevor. I know that she is feeling the loss of a child I will never understand. I know that we almost lost her in the process and that her chances of having another child greatly decreased from this. It’s only been a couple weeks; she is healing on the outside but has things to work through on the inside. Her emergency surgery to save her life added another layer of perspective to the saying, make every moment count! I am so grateful she is still here with us!

I feel the “fragileness of life” has been reminding me to not take life for granted right now. Life is way too short and you never know what it is going to throw at you next. Hold on to the good things, make sure the people in your life know they matter to you. Cliches, I know, but so true!

I need even just one part of life to go smoothly right now.  I just keep going. I am afraid to stop because then I just slide back down the hill I feel like I am trying to climb. And sliding backwards means I have to fight my way through things over again and it was hard enough the first time.

Yes, a strong person learns how to get through things by themselves, but that doesn’t mean they want to. Asking them how they are doing and letting them know you want the real answer, not the generic answer, and giving them lots of hugs means more than they will ever admit.

When life doesn’t give me what I need, faith that life will get better and hope that things will work out is how I choose to look at life. But in the meantime, I bought myself a hug to remind me.  

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Learning to find peace in quiet moments

For me my life is split into two parts. Who I was before my divorce and who I became after. My life before was always going a hundred miles an hour and full of multitasking. How could it not be with four kids who were just as active as I was.

Divorce tore apart all the things I thought I knew about my life. It made me question myself. I knew I had to pick up the pieces but after 25 years who I started as no longer existed. I had become a mother and a wife. I had become   part of a family. There was no me and I had to find me again. When you feel like you are starting at the bottom, finding anything that feels beautiful is hard. I went from feeling like I could accomplish anything to having nothing and knowing I had to find a way to start over. How was I going to figure out who I was?

When I say I had nothing, I mean I had nothing. I felt like I was splurging when I bought myself another journal. This one was different than the journals I have been keeping since I was eight years old. This small orange, plain looking, blank book would help me in ways I wouldn’t have imagined. I called it my gratitude book. I used it to find the good when I felt like there wasn’t much good in my life. I made a rule for myself. I must write in it everyday and no two days could I be thankful for the same thing. The first week or so was easy because you can go through all of the generic things, like your kids and home and the food in the house. But after that it gets harder. I had to actually look for the good so I would have something to write down. I focused on finding the good. Sometimes when I would have a really rough day, and I couldn’t find the words, I would take my camera and go for a walk. It was easier to see beauty through my camera than with my eyes sometimes. I grew to love my adventures and would go looking for beauty even without having a rough day.

 I met people that helped me along the way. They would offer ideas of places I should explore or the best vantage point for a picture. One person in particular change my whole perspective. He didn’t take me to magical places or amazing views. He told me to just stand on the pier and wait. “Just be quiet and keep watching” “what I am looking for?” I didn’t understand. I saw the everyday people walking by with their faces intently focused on their phones, and the kids playing in the sand. I had no idea what he could think was here that I would need to take a picture of. And then, along came a seagull. The beach is full of seagulls. The come in all sizes and shades of grey and brown but this one was different, this seagull only had one leg.  I watched him hopping along the shore and only rarely interacting with the other seagulls. He did things in his own way but was thriving just like the other seagulls. No one was watching or even noticed him. I only saw him because I slowed down and waited. In that moment I saw a beauty that I had never seen before.

 I went home and wrote how grateful I was for that one legged seagull and that we can all do things in our own way. That it was ok for me to do things my own way. If he could thrive, so could I.

I am horrible at slowing down and yet I had to sit quietly looking for my beautiful or I never would have experienced that glimpse into his world. There was a beach full of busy people all going about their life who didn’t see him. And yet when I needed it most, I had a person come into my life just long enough to help me learn how to stop, slow my hundred mile an hour life down and really look for beautiful things.  I have taken pictures of beautiful sunsets and traveled all over to take pictures but who would have guessed that my favorite would be of a not so common, very plain looking, one legged brown seagull.

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I may be the writer, but you will always be the words….

These words are painted in bold letters on my bathroom wall. Do you have any idea all the hundreds of pages of nonsense I write in my journal? Or the word written in blue dry erase marker all over my bathroom mirrors and shower door. Some people are all about numbers. I fill my life with quotes and words.

Not everything I write is for people to read. I want to be understood but I know I write pages and pages. If my life depended on me explaining things in the fewest words possible, I would fail every time. I was told once that my mind is a labyrinth, a place someone could get lost without a map. My journal is filled with random bits and pieces but even that is incomplete. The fractured thoughts that play on repeat in my head are enough for anyone to get lost in.

Everything needs to come out of me. Some days it flows out like a gusher you can’t stop. Words and tears all mixing together. It’s like pandora’s box. I can’t open it just a little. It’s all or nothing. Other days I feel it building but not close enough to the surface to make enough sense to write down. I love logic and there is no logic to feelings so that is what I write about most. I have learned I have no say, I can only acknowledge my feelings exist. I write to find my own reason when logic tells me there is none.

My favorite place to write is on the beach. It seems to make the hard things a little easier. The roar of the waves crashing, the birds circling, in the middle of that chaos I can find calm. I must watch for it or I will miss it. It comes in those small moments. It comes in whispers. It’s that one thing that goes right that you weren’t expecting. I look for those moments, make them be louder than the chaos.

The ocean is such a large thing when I stand on the edge of it. I love the feel of the waves barely kissing my toes but it makes me feel so small. It gives me perspective and makes it easier to accept the truths I don’t want to admit to myself.

Being vulnerable is not my favorite place to be. I don’t think anyone wants the world to know their secrets. We live in a world that judges. My life is so far from perfect but its my life and even though it’s been hard, I don’t think I would change any of it. I live with the philosophy that all of the things we have been through, make us the person that we are today. I couldn’t have become this person if it wasn’t for the people I cross on my journey. They inspire the words and the feelings. I grow just by knowing them.

It’s taken a while and thousands of journal entries, but I like the person I am today.

My words are the story of my tears and my crazy adventures, my journey to find that feeling alive moment we all want to feel. I may be the writer, but the adventure and the people i meet along the way are the foundation that becomes my words. I don’t need to be famous or have the entire world to know about my adventures. I just need to have the courage to write them down.

 

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