Coming up for More than Just Air

Just a few photos that were taken over the past month and a brief explanation as to where I have been hiding.  Even in the midst of mostly joy, life can be very messy and sometimes we must spend some time trying to clean it up.  More about that later...

Angel Daughter Number Three turned 20 on the first day of spring.  She is becoming such a beautiful and mature young woman with such a great head on her shoulders.  I am prouder of this child than I can even express.  She has been through some rough times but instead of becoming jaded and delving inward, she reached out and in doing so, has shown a level of maturity beyond her two decades.  I can only see her life getting better and better as she continues to grow into the lovely woman that she is.

My oldest and my youngest.  There are six years between these two(with two other sisters in between) and sometimes, it is as if they grew up in different worlds.  We often talk about the differences in the things that AD1 was allowed to do when she was AD4s age at various points in time, and there are some huge differences!  That being said, they are both wonderful girls with so much to offer the world.

I am such a lucky momma.

And Mark is such a lucky dad...

Okay, so my 20 year old is a little bit taller than I am.  She is also wearing heels that double the difference!

Angel Daughter Number Two congratulating her little sister after her dance competition in Long Beach.  It has been a great season!

So here it all is in a nutshell:

On March 26th a very unexpected crap-storm came flying at me from what seemed to me to be out of nowhere.  Actually, it did come out of nowhere for me because I had not been privy to the conversations which were taking place over the course of a couple of months.  It blew in from the mouths of those I love and trust most in this world, forcing me to stand mostly on my own, confused, frightened and in immense pain.  I felt like a cornered animal who was being forced to explain fangs and claws and venom while trying to protect myself.  Chronic illness, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue are symptoms that I am forced to live with because of an illness that will more than likely be a part of me until the final day of my life,  but they are also enemies of the people who I love.  Aside from the life that this illness has attempted to take away from me, it has also robbed my husband and my daughters of the very vibrant person I was before the focus of my days became staving off the constant pain and lethargy, trying desperately to conserve the minimal reserve of energy that I am left with after fighting a daily, hourly, momentary battle with something that even I, myself, do not fully understand.  I understand their frustration.  I am sensitive to it and do my best to remain cheerful and positive in the face of the physicality of feeling like hell much of the time.  But having lived with this mysterious illness throughout some of my younger twenties and then again, after a long remission, for the past decade during my forties, my acceptance of what is apparently appears to be complacency to my husband and daughters.  I readily admit that it is often easier to give in to the physical pull to remain inactive physically so that I can be emotionally present for the people who are so important to me, yet it is difficult for them to comprehend what it is like to live with constant, chronic, nagging, sometimes severe physical pain.  I get that.  I do not dwell on it too much which sometimes creates a false veneer over the truth of what I go through.  Maybe this makes it harder to comprehend?  I forgive them for their chosen approach.  I know that it came from a place of worry and concern.  I do, however, wish that things had been handled very differently.  Feeling ambushed is an extremely lonely and helpless feeling, especially when the individuals who were helping to fuel the charge knew nothing about me personally and had a huge financial gain as their main interest.  This is the one part that I am having trouble not resenting.  Strangers should never, ever have been involved.  I think that we have reached a point of understanding.  I am making some changes in my medications which might enable me to feel less sleepy during the day(under my doctor's care).  I am also increasing my activity levels so that I can better keep up with these five, very energetic, very healthy people who I love so much.  I may or may not choose to write more about this in the future.  It has been extremely painful for me.  If I do, it will be to inform and assist others who might be in the same sort of position that my family and I are in.  Having a family member who is chronically ill is not an easy thing to cope with, but being that family member is always worse.  Please be gentle with those you love, but also be gentle with yourself.

Come Walk With Me

Each day, I am treated to several ever changing views of the San Clemente Pier but mostly from a couple of nautical miles away from my front yard.  The view is spectacular.  Yesterday, I had the sudden urge to change perspectives(a possible sign of things to come?) so I called Mark and invited him to take a stroll with me down on the pier.  The sun was still fairly high in the sky when we arrived and the well worn, sea-beaten wooden slats below our feet were pulsating with the vibrations of life being lived.  It felt so good to be out in the open air.

It felt good to be among a random group of people in which everyone seemed calm.  No set agenda, no pressure to maneuver beyond the ultimate speed of light and sound, only some moments spent doing nothing more than taking in a day that was much too beautiful to miss.  Lord knows how much I have craved this pace.  December took its toll on me.  It always does.  Repetitive music everywhere makes it very difficult to focus on anything other than jumpy rhythms and musical arrangements on speed.  For me, it is all overstimulation to the max.  To a body that is chronically riddled with pain, it is far too much to metabolize.  I spent a good portion of the month hibernating and staving off situational depression.  There are times when it is all too much and the very best thing that I can do is to be honest with myself and hide...

But yesterday was about reconnecting with the world in a more peaceful and tolerable way.  It was about taking on a reasonable pace.  It was about absorbing a different kind of energy.  It was about quieting the hermit-crab inside of my body(I am a Cancer baby, born in July when the world seems to be at its most relaxed) while sticking my head out of my shell to peek around and signal that it is really okay to come out.

And what better place to free myself from my self-imposed hibernation than the place that has become more home to me than anyplace else I have ever known in my entire life.  A place in which animal, fish, bird, and human can coexist most peacefully in unison with one another because we are all living by the rhythm of the sea.  A place that has beckoned to me from as far back as I can remember, only I could not make out the exact name of it until recently.  A place that will soon become our permanent home because I never want to be far away from here.  Yes, I am New York city born and raised and if you listen carefully and are very good with picking up dialects, you will quickly realize that I am a transplant.

But sometimes, the soul can lead you on a long and somewhat winding journey to your home.  And when you finally arrive there, you just know it.  You just know it.


May the coming year bring you closer to home and if you are already there, may it bring you even closer to your home.

All is Well

Have I told you all how much I appreciate your friendship and your kindness and all of the love that you share with me?  Sitting here with a cat on my lap(fighting for the attention of my hands as I try to type sentences that make sense!) and a dog at my feet, I am inundated with a feeling of gratitude not only for those who physically surround me, but also for those who surround me from faraway places.  I cannot tell you how many difficult days you have helped me to tackle.  I am a very, very lucky girl.

We spent the week up in the gorgeous mountains of Lake Arrowhead.  When our Angel Daughters were little, Mark and I decided to purchase a second home up there because we had grown up with snowy winters and wanted our girls to experience a bit of the white stuff.  This home has been a part of our family for fourteen years(so many wonderful memories) yet for the past two years, Mark and I had not been up there at all.  Dance competitions, work schedules and just life in general dominated our weekends and driving the almost two hours made it very difficult.  We used to go up for every Thanksgiving.  My best friend since junior high school who now lives in Las Vegas would meet us up there with her three children and we would share the holiday as one big family.  Well, as the children got older, other obligations disrupted our tradition.  Two of her children got married and went on to have babies.(whom I absolutely adore!)  They needed to remain closer to home so that they could split the holidays with in-laws, etc.  Last year I felt like I needed to be out of town for the holiday so we took the girls up to San Francisco for the week.  We had a lovely time, but some of the girls(you know who you are) complained that I was not making the traditional turkey dinner on Thanksgiving and that preparing it on another day was not the same thing!  So up the mountain we went with two new boyfriends, one very old boyfriend(Is seven years a long time for a twenty one year old to be in a relationship?) and a sweet girlfriend whose family was going to be tied up with her brother's hockey tournaments all weekend.  Mark took everyone skiing/snowboarding, we ate, we shopped, we laughed, but most of all, we had a really wonderful time.  The higher altitude did take its toll on my body but that was a small price to pay to spend Thanksgiving in the mountains with my husband and our girls.  I have stories to share but those will come later.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with love, good food and lots of laughter.  I just wanted everyone to know that I am still here, fighting the good fight, living contently in spite of.    Battling the pain while soaking in every single joyful moment possible, trying my best not to give in to the focus that the aches can sometimes overshadow.  I am here.  Once again, thank you for visiting, for checking in on me, for your kind words and your sweet emails, for caring.  I only hope that you know that I feel the same way about you that you do about me.  It truly is my pleasure.  I plan on visiting, catching up and saying hello in the next couple of days.  Until then, just know that you are on my mind and in my heart, always.

Here For Now

Angel Daughter Number One as Peter Pan at Disneyland on Halloween

A little fun because sometimes my mind gets so busy working overtime that I need to find some peace amongst the chaos just to quiet it down.  Nothing in particular other than life continuing on whether I feel well physically, or not, and for the past month the status quo has been well into the or not category.  I hate to focus on my physical pain and most of the time, I am able to push through it to a place in which it becomes nothing more than a dull ache, a nuisance lingering remotely in the recesses of my mind, a gremlin in my brain.  But sometimes, it is very, very hard to live a life in constant physical pain.  And no matter how much I rest, how much strong(almost frighteningly strong) pain medication that I have on board, or how hard I try to push my mind back into a positive place, I begin to feel beat down, beat up, beat period.  I have been here before, and I accept that I will be here again.  The weather has been funky with heat and then rain and then cold and then heat, again.  This is Southern California after all, and although we do not have the changes in seasons that other parts of the country experience, we do get weather.  This time of year is notorious for some pretty extreme changes.  So here I exist.  Until something nudges my physical body into a better place and suddenly I stop to realize that an hour has gone by without any mind distracting, mind numbing pain.  And then another, and then if I am lucky enough, a decent reprieve so that I can take a decent full-body breath.

Tonight, as I was scrolling through photos, some that I took, some that I (a-hem) borrowed from my daughter's Facebook pages and some that they texted to me, I began feeling the joy that can only come from loving so hard that the smiles make your face hurt and that is the kind of pain that I know that we can all use more of.  Please indulge me as I remind myself that these are the most important reasons that I keep on truckin' along when I might feel as if I am running on empty.

For Halloween, Angel Daughter Number Four and her darling friend, Daisy, dressed up as Harjuku girls.  They were absolutely adorable.  The blow-up pirate ship in the background was on our front lawn at our main home on the ranch.(as opposed to our smaller homes on the beach and in the mountains)  The girls are seventeen years old but they wanted to go out trick-or-treating anyway.  Heck, I wanted to go out trick-or-treating!  When they dressed up, they kind of looked like they were around fourteen which is fine with me:)  I only wish that I could keep them that way for a while.

I love this picture of Angel Daughter Number One and Angel Daughter Number Three.  They got up very early in the morning because they wanted to visit the Tim Burton Nightmare Before Halloween exhibit at the LACMA in Los Angeles on the very last day that it was going to be there.  I love it when my daughters make plans to just get together in different combinations.  It reminds me that they do feel connected even when outside of the whole family as a unit.  I have been feeling very disconnected from that type of bond lately because my only brother is gone and I am no longer a part of his children's lives.(for now)  I truly am very blessed to have the family that Mark and I have created together but aside from them, I am pretty alone in the world now.  Yesterday my doctor reminded me that this is the time of the year when people tend to focus on losses and that it really is not quite as jolly as all of the retailers would like for us to believe that it is.  That resonated deeply with me.

I love this picture, too.  I borrowed it from one of my daughter's Facebook pages.  Angel Daughter Number Two and Angel Daughter Number Four found out that a very popular band that they love(Mumford and Sons) was playing at a local store without publicity and for free.  They were not sure if it was a rumor so they decided to meet there anyway along with around fifty other lucky people. The band showed up.  My girls were in the front row only a head-shake away from the lead singers sweat.(very cool and big yuck at them same time)  Sometimes life can really shine upon us when we take a chance to follow a lead that others might not bother to.

Angel Daughter Number Two and Luis, her new marmalade cat, a self-portrait.  She rescued him and now he rescues her from loneliness and a cold lap.

AD3 arrived home from work, one evening, looking content and happy.  The glow was back.  There is nothing more in the world that I could wish for her.  I love the way the shadow from her eyelashes gently kisses her cheek.  She spent around three weeks shaking the mud out of her wings, but she is learning to take flight once again.  I suppose that is what being nineteen is all about.

AD1 is my woman-child at twenty four years old.  Listening to her talk about her own plans, ideals and goals for the future really makes this momma proud.  I do not really spend too much time worrying about this one anymore.  She has proven that her wings work really well.  I am proud of her beyond compare and I just know that life holds wonderful stuff for her.  Watch for her Ask.com commercial coming out soon!  This one will be on national television so I will let you all know when it comes out.  This way we will all be able to be proud of her at once;)

My baby and her baby, Micah.  This child was born under a cheerful star.  She is filled with warmth and joy and compassion.  She came into this world with a twinkle in her eye and a dance in her step.

When people talk to me about nurture vs. nature, I must admit that I used to believe that the emphasis was on nurture but when I look at my own children, I can see that who they were as babies and as children is a lot like who they are now as young women.  Mark and I are the very same parents with the same values and ideals who are raising four female children in mostly the same way.(I say "mostly" because each child has different needs, strengths and weaknesses.)  Yet our girls are all unique, all special and all different. Some things just are as they are, inherently.

I will try my very best not to draw back into my cocoon of chronic pain.  There are times when I end up here and do not even remember the onset. I try to pinpoint an event or a day when I overdid it, or even something emotionally overloading that burst like an infected cyst into the rest of my body.  I only know that my soul feels broken open and that my body feels beat by the pain, right now, and I want it to stop.  I need for it to stop.  But in the in-between, I will hold myself accountable by doing things as if the pain has subsided.  I will continue to cut myself some slack(fighting with oneself is mostly futile) but I will remind myself that in spite of it all, I have a pretty darn amazing life and that unlike my brother, I am still here to care for the people I care for and to love on the people(and pets) who I love.  When I breathe into that thought, it momentarily soothes my soul enough to get me into the next minute, and then the next one, and then the next one...Until I know that there will be better days ahead. I just have to hang tight for a bit.

With love to all,
Debbie

Because Our Hearts Ache, We Search For the Silly

There is a throbbing sensation propelling itself wildly into all of the nerve endings in my body.  Pain messages firing haphazardly, ricocheting off of my every cell and I tell myself to disregard them, there is no inherent danger.  Some of it is chronic illness rearing its painful head, and some of it is the psychic pain that I have not been able to shake since Friday.  All is not right with the world.  It never is.  Which is why it is so incredibly human to search for that "rightness" within ourselves.

I was told, many years ago on a trip to Sedona, Arizona with my family, that I absorb pain.  If there is someone standing across the street from me and they are in physical or emotional distress, I will somehow zero in on them.  When this happens, I try to take a moment to access the situation, but this has never been my first instinct.  My first instinct is to react.  To respond.  To rescue.  I do this often and sometimes to my own detriment.  God did not provide me with the necessary body-type to carry people out of burning buildings, but he did give me the spirit to react as if I could.  One of the many examples of "We make plans.  God laughs."  And yet, I have to believe that somehow, I am as I am meant to be.

So, my body is resonating with the pain of those who live over five thousand miles and an ocean away.  I am looking for ways in which to escape from the pain.  Their pain, my own pain.  My body's pain.  And so I began randomly scrolling through recent photos that I have taken with my cellphone.  Merely a distraction, I know, but a necessary one, at that.

I came across these photos of my youngest Angel Daughter, AD4, with our Parolette, Cody, and I was struck by the old "people and their pets often resemble each other" theory.  Momentarily, I was lifted out of the striking pain and transported to a place of tender amusement.  How I love my children.

And how they try to ignore me when I am doting upon them.

Because if there is one way to find your way out of yourself, spend some time observing a teenager equipped with a cell phone and a laptop computer trying to ignore their parents admiration.

Or a six inch bird,

which shares the same feather-color and lack of enthusiasm for the parents amusement as said teenager.

And see who gives in first.

June Gloom, Pain, Prisms and Perspective

I sit here surrounded by the soft sounds of restful slumber and the milky haze of what is known here in Southern California as "June Gloom".  On the floor beside me, our two dogs Becca and Micah, snore peacefully blanketed in blissful sleep.  To the left of me, my husband sits with his head against the headboard, mouth slightly open rhythmic breaths giving away his almost silent stolen bit of respite.  Our cat, Callie, is nestled snuggly beneath the covers on his lap.  Every now and again her little head pops up at the sound of a birdsong coming from our feeder outside the door.  The ocean recesses and retreats against the shoreline below our bluff and the words enter my mind in almost the same rhythmic pattern.  This is my Saturday.

I must confess that I am not usually a gloomy person. But the June Gloom rests heavier on my soul during days when I can do very little more than move my fingers steadily across the keyboard.  There is something about living in the constant throws of chronic pain that is both exhausting and encompassing.  My family understands this.  They know what I go through and how much I must battle the darkness that can sometimes eclipse the wonderful lightness of living.  They know that there are times when I must give into the overwhelming pull of living with Fibromyalgia.  And I know that they deserve a wife, mother, daughter, friend who lives in the light of life.  A very good life.  I try to live in the balance by focusing on the things that I can do.  By using the gloom as a time to reflect upon the subtle sights and sounds of living.  The things that often pass by unnoticed because we are often busy making too much noise to hear them.  Pain magnifies everything.  It emulsifies the negative.  This is why it can take patience and practice to live in the light when dealing with a chronic illness.  It is important to understand the gloom, but also to notice the glimmers which can sometimes take on the colors of a rainbow.

The details can become muddled when viewed through the prism of pain.  The colors muted, the shapes and textures clouded and sharp and the sounds downright abrasive.  But then, something finally helps to ease the distress.  A decent night of sleep, the benefit of laughter, the right pain pill at the right time, an enjoyable meal, an engrossing novel, or a break in the thick layer of gloom.  And suddenly, a brilliant prism of light appears before us.  Was it there all along?  Is it possible that we might have been so fixated on the pain(albeit, physical or mental) that we could not see past the obvious?  Did the benefit of viewing things from a different angle allow us to see something that could have been there all along?

These pictures, taken on a sunny day last week, exemplify the way in which a prism can alter our perceptions.  I was trying to take some interesting pictures of this lovely glass vessel filled with sea treasures which was given to me by my Angel Daughter Number Two for Mother's Day.  And then I noticed the rainbows.  It would have been enough just to view the reflection of a sunny day through the beauty of this terrarium, but I was given so much more.  I was given another perspective and rather than ignoring something that I was not originally looking for, I took the time to notice it.  Really, really notice it.  And today, as I was working through the pain that was pulsating throughout my entire body, I took time to notice the sounds and sights of what was going on around me and the gloom, both physically and mentally, began to lift.  The pain, my pain, reflected through the prism of the light of my own life, became more manageable and less daunting.  The gloom lifted and I soaked in the colors of my own environment.  The very same environment which I had been in all along, but which now seemed much more serene and comforting.

May the prism through which you view your own life, be one that is filled with many colors.  May you find a way to notice your way past the pain.  And may you always be reminded that there is color in everything, whether we are aware of it or not.

Fallen Rose Petals

I do not often write about my illness, as I am usually trying to distract myself from experiencing the constant pain that my body is forced to combat each day.  It is a daily battle for me.  I try to view it as something from which I am supposed to be learning.  Only there are truly days when I just want to cut school!

During the past several years, I have learned to live life at a much slower pace.  I was one of those Moms who was always running her children around from here to there.  I volunteered as a Room Mom in all of their classrooms and organized activities along with their teachers.  I went on every field trip, attended every assembly and assisted their teachers in any way that I could, usually with a baby or two on my hip.  I was the consummate Super Mom.  There was no stopping me from saying "Yes" to everything that I was asked to do.  

After all of my angels were in school, I felt "called" to our local hospital to volunteer as a Spiritual Care Counselor.  I was able to put my Psychology degree to work in a setting which allowed me the freedom to tend to people on not only an emotional level, but on a soul level, as well.  I felt like I was in the right place at the right time.  I suppose that is why I felt that my work at the hospital was a "calling" and not just another way to be of service.  Motherhood was my first calling and the direction that spiritual care was taking me in felt like a natural extension of that.

When I became ill, I had to learn to say no rather quickly.  I had to say no so that I could say yes to doctor's appointments, blood-work, having a core-biopsy taken from the bone-marrow inside of my hip and having MRI's which told the story of a sadly congenitally damaged spine.  Fused vertebrae, scoliosis, cervical stenosis, and a couple of herniated discs.  The main support system of my body was crumbling right before my eyes.  The fibromyalgia only aggravated my spinal conditions to the point that my entire body throbbed with pain.  I had to make some very quick and drastic changes.  I had to learn to say yes to myself.

Fibromyalgia can drain the life-force out of you.  It is debilitating in the way that only someone who lives with a chronic illness can understand.  If you do not listen to the "voice" of your illness, it will manage to get your attention in another way.  If you have never heard your body scream, you are a very lucky person.

So why the pictures of beautiful roses on a post where I am discussing the severity of my illness?  
Because I am learning from and listening to my body.  I am not always perfect at it and there are days when I rebel and try to pretend that I can do more than I really should, but for the most part, the pace of my life has slowed down.  I am learning, day by day, to stop and smell the roses.

Grammie Hoffman asked me if I would have been a working Mom had I not gotten ill with Fibromyalgia.  The answer to that question is an absolute no.  When Mark and I decided to become parents, we also decided that I would stay home with them.  There was never a question in my mind about being at home with my children.  I viewed them as my full-time job.  Mark, being the fully devoted husband and father that he is, worked his butt off so that I would be able to work my butt off raising our children.  We created a little cocoon of six in which our children could be nurtured and loved.  My only plans for when our girls got older and were all in school, were to utilize my time volunteering and starting a philanthropic foundation.  If I had not become ill, I still would have remained a professional Momma until all of my angels were out of the nest.  Fortunately, the one thing that my illness can never take away from me is my job at being a mom.  Mark and I have now arranged it so that he takes care of most of the physical stuff(ie. driving, going to all of their competitions, etc.), and I take care of the emotional and spiritual stuff.(ie. PMS, boyfriend problems, "Mom, I have nothing to wear!", etc.)
So, back to the roses and slowing down.  Having been a stay-at-home Mom for all of these years, my illness struck at a time when I was able to slow down.  My girls were all in school, so I was able to get them up in the morning, do all of the mommy things with them, and then come home and collapse until they needed to be picked up.  Over time, Mark arranged his schedule so that he could take over the mornings.  I don't really sleep at night.  I also have Restless Leg Syndrome which is very disruptive to my sleep.  Mark understood that having to get up early in the morning to get the girls ready for school and then having to drive to either two or three schools to drop them off, was not a very good thing for my health.  He jumped right in and picked up all of the slack which my illness created.  His generosity of spirit enables me to get all of the rest that I need while knowing that my girls are being well taken care of in the mornings.  He is such an amazing husband and father.  Without him as my life partner, I honestly do not know what I would have done.  He has given me the space I need to create a life that is both manageable and productive.
And so, although the petals must eventually fall from the roses, there is still absolute beauty which is inherent in each rose.  The same is true of people.  Eventually, the body begins to age and things do not work as well as they used to, but there is still absolute loveliness in the essence of each individual which will never fade.

I am learning not only to stop and smell the roses, but to examine their thorns and blemishes and to find the beauty in those, as well.

My blessing for you is that you are able to find some time, a moment in your day, to slow down and take it all in.  Smell the roses, but observe the beauty in their fallen petals.  Cherish not only the perfect, but the imperfect.  May you slow down enough to appreciate who you are now, and say thank you for all that you are still capable of.

Give it All You've Got!

I spent the weekend in Palm Springs cheering angel daughter number two on throughout her cheer competition. This is a picture of her in all of her cheerleading enthusiasm, egging on the crowd! Go AD2!!! She is certainly a spirited young woman, with a whole lot of team spirit. I adore watching her as she flies through the air performing gravity-defying feats and landing on her feet with a smile and a wave.

It was also angel daughter number four's birthday, so we had a lot to celebrate. Life is good, and even though I may not have perfect health, I am so grateful that I am able to enjoy every moment. There is something about knowing that our health can be fleeting that makes the special moments even that much more valuable. I do not think that I totally understood that before I became chronically ill, but there are lessons in every phase of our lives if we allow ourselves absorb them. I am learning, I am trying, I am surviving, I am thriving. What more could I expect out of this life.

More photos and words to follow. I missed all of my dear friends, and I am trying to catch up on all of my favorite blogs.

Putting Yourself on Your Own List

There is not really a way to describe what it is like to live inside of a body that is never really quite right. Trying to describe what it feels like to know what it was like to be healthy, and to now live life with a chronic illness, is what I suppose it would be like for someone who is now blind, but once had sight. Difficult on some days, impossible on most. But, when people ask me, and I sense that they earnestly want to know, I describe the way that I feel as having the flu, all of the time.

When this illness came on several years ago for the second time, I fought like hell to deny it access into my consciousness. I told myself that I was still recovering from another virus, that I was run down, that I was exhausted from raising four small children. I lied and lied to myself until finally a doctor looked me in the eyes after six long months of battle, and said to me, "Debbie, you have Fibromyalgia and there's not a damn thing I can do about it." Deep down in my soul, I knew it had returned. The cellular memory of this illness is not something that the body soon forgets, even after a blessed remission of fifteen long years. My denial came from the fact that I was a busy, dedicated mother, wife, daughter, friend, volunteer, etc., and I did not have time to be sick. I had recently become certified to work as a Spiritual Care Volunteer at our local hospital, visiting patients as a Lay-Chaplain. My girls were all in school, and I read about the need for volunteers. It was never something that I had ever thought about doing, but when I read about the position, something inside of my heart spoke out and told me that I was supposed to do this. After three months of training, I was on my own. I went from room to room, visiting with very sick people, people who were often lonely and scared. I sat with them for as long as they needed me to, each individual requiring something different when I was with them. I spoke with their families, I listened to their stories, I laughed with them, I held their hands. Our visits would often end with my offering a non-sectarian prayer, and most accepted. Something that I learned during that time, is that if I could offer myself to be fully present for someone, totally and without any other distractions, that was when the absolutely purest form of human connection could take place. Often, when I held hands with someone and looked into their eyes while saying a healing prayer for them, their immediate reaction would be tears. Interestingly enough, if I was to cause someone to cry in most any other circumstance, I would feel terrible, but the tears of these sacred moments left me feeling fuller and unmistakably connected to each person, to the Universe, to God. I was lucky enough to be able to hold on to my position as Spiritual Care Volunteer for more than three years. I did this while my own body weakened, and fought me. I did it until I could not do it any more without putting my own health into more jeopardy.

For a very long time, I felt guilty for giving up on something that I loved doing so much. I told myself that I would go back to volunteer at the hospital as soon as I could. That was until I began to honor myself in the same way that I had honored and respected the needs of my patients. I knew then, as I know now, that there was no way that I would ever begin to feel better unless I started paying more attention to my own needs. Both physically and emotionally, I was allowing myself to deteriorate by paying closer attention to the needs of everyone else(including strangers), than I was to my own. I began to pare down my life into things that were absolutely necessary, and things that I could release. I continued to evaluate my obligations until I understood the things that were truly important. I put my daughters and my husband at the very top of my list, with myself as a close second. That was about three years ago. Now that my girls are getting older, the physical demands of being a full-time mother are becoming less. I am slowly, very slowly moving myself up to an even higher place on my list. As I do this, my family becomes a bit more independent. They start to view me as someone who also has needs, and who requires time to grow and heal. We are all growing up, together.

Thanksgiving just passed, and so our family traveled up to our Mountain home together. We had time to express our gratitude for each other, and for all of the other wonderful people and things in our lives. We spent time alone, together. This is something that I think keeps a family strong and vital, regardless of how large or how small that family might be. But yesterday, my sweet husband and my angel daughters gave mom what they knew she needed. They drove down the mountain, and left me to renew and refresh by myself. And so, I wanted to share the photo of the fireplace at the top of this page. My body is still physically ill, but my spirit is growing stronger. I am learning to advocate for myself, by admitting that I must have time alone, sometimes. I am taking the time to honor my own need for quiet and for stillness. I will be going back home tomorrow, but until then, I will sit quietly in front of this fireplace allowing myself the space that I need in order to be more for everyone else, including myself.

May you find a quiet corner in your life, where you can balance your own needs for stillness and connection. May you always give as much as you can, while remembering that there must always be something left for yourself.