108 days... Day 2

My Plan:  Get up and get the kids off to school.  Meditate outside on my bench while its still cool for 15 minutes.  Blog about it, get in the shower, and kick butt today- all before 9.

My reality:  Woke up with a migraine.  Wednesdays are my least favorite day of the week.  Seriously.  Its the hardest day to get up for, the hardest, longest work day and quite honestly, Wednesday migraines are not uncommon.  Uggg.

So anyway I woke up and felt like crap.  Was grumpy with the girls, who also were not feeling on top of the world this morning.  Not a mom of the year morning for sure.  And feeling bad about me starting their day off crappy too.  Anyway, after wasting an hour playing on the computer I finally decided it was time to go outside and meditate.  And it was hot and after 3 cups of coffee (rough morning, I told ya) my mind was racing and it wasn't  meditating.  I was sad sitting there missing my tree and my lovely meditation garden and it just overwhelmed me.  I totally miss my tree and the refuge it provided and the years I spent creating it.  

I am realizing how connected I am to the earth.  I know we all are, really, but I feel it so deeply, I am so AWARE of it..  And that's a good thing.  While the Wednesday migraines could very well be stress related, a lot of times, I get really bad headaches as the weather changes.  Which sucks, but honestly its kind of cool to be so aware of pressure changes in the atmosphere.  And to be in touch with the plants and the animals and the trees (besides having permanently labeled myself as a hippy with that last statements)  I love that about myself.  I love that last night the sunset was so beautiful that when I got home I dragged C out of the house and we ran down the street barefoot to catch the view as it was disappearing.  She was complaining the whole way and then just stopped and it was freakin amazing- both the sunset and her instant awestruck silence!

I don't think of myself as being an overly happy or optimistic person.  I don't really believe that most people will follow the inherent good inside themselves, only that they have it and that if a few people do, the world is a better place.  But what I do know, is that most of my life I felt like I had a black cloud hanging over my head.  I never really felt at peace, and enjoyable moments weren't truly happy as my mind was somewhere else.  I felt numb when I didn't feel pain.  I guess that's depression and anxiety (mental issues I'll save for another post tho) and time and time again I addressed them I thought and if it helped, it was only temporary and then I slid back into the dark abyss of either depression or addiction or both, as they fueled each other.

It would get better and then the bottom would fall out.  So when things were good, I always felt scared that it was temporary and that it would be awful soon.

And that is true.  Every time it gets too easy, it gets hard.  Such is life, and I am aware of that now.  What is different is the ability I have gained to accept and acknowlege this and yet, still be ok.  Mental, emotional and spiritual health, and physical health, are all things I actually have to work really hard on to maintain.  But now, I know that.  I can let myself slide, but it seems like lately I don't let myself slide very far.  Because bottom line, as hard as my life can be at times, as broke as I am some weeks (hello I had to buy tampons with change yesterday- seriously embarrassing!)  my life doesn't suck.  My marriage doesn't suck, although we have had our struggles and we are both certainly difficult people.  Being a mom doesn't suck and I don't get up each day with a sense of dread that I will fail as a mom, or that I can't do it.  I appreciate my health, my body, my teeth, so much because I have been so sick for extended periods of time.

Basically, what I see in my own life is that I have made progress.  Enormous huge leaps forward.  Most of the time, I still see all the work that lies ahead, all the stuff I need to do or fix or the habits I need to change or my flaws.  But today, I am going to focus on where I am at.  Here is some progress...


My house may not be spotless (far from) but it can be cleaned up enough for people to come visit in a couple hours and could be deep cleaned and spiffed up in a day or two (not on the to do list tho :-).  Progress is that Jeff and I both have some hoarder tendencies and there was a time frame of a couple years, maybe more,  when he went through interferon and then when I got sick that our house was so full of junk and so behind on laundry and cleaning and everything that NO ONE was ever invited over or even allowed in.  It was gross, embarrassing, depressing, tragic.  The irony is that now I clean 2 buildings and help people clean up their lives.  Karma.

I have some rockin muscles and can do awesome yoga poses.  I am however kept humble by the fact that for the most part, I don't practice in the classes we do all those complicated poses, I practice with a bunch of real world people and some ladies who are old enough to be my mom, sometimes older, and are so freaking strong and agile and beautiful that I always leave class recommitted to the basics, and to the need to work on my foundation.  Yup still working on the foundation.  Not just in yoga, in life.  It never really turned out well when I didn't. 

And here is what is so cool about those muscles and that handstand I just learned how to do:  A few years ago, I was so sick that I couldn't leave the house for a year and a half.  The vertigo was so severe that standing up made me nauseous.  I couldn't drive, I couldn't even walk the 2 blocks to the elementary school.  I couldn't be a mom.  I couldn't cook, I couldn't even eat anything,  I couldn't be supportive, I couldn't really live.  I wondered if I was going to die, the doctors wondered if I was going to die, and the er staff knew me because they had to give me iv's to hydrate me so often.  Sometimes I forget what that was like.  I feel so guilty about it because I couldn't be the mom my kids needed, but damn look at me now.

Its not really that I feel like an athlete again (not just from yoga, but from everything- I love that feeling) its that I can cook and eat, I have a beautiful smile because to save my life, I had to get all my teeth fixed.  (1 surgery and another one scheduled on my stomach and they finally figured out what I had been saying all along- that it was my ears- and the source of the chronic ear infections that caused vertigo, which made me nausous and all throw up-y and stuff was from my teeth... its a whole long story of how that was discovered and I'll write that one down later- but it was a miracle for sure.)  I learned to trust my intuition when it comes to my body because I knew all along what was wrong with me and discounted myself because the doctors were sure it was something else.  And I can be a mom.  I can show up and I can be there.  Not perfectly, not all the time, but I do appreciate that and I hope my kiddos know that I treasure the ability to be involved in their lives like I am.  I can be a wife.  I get mad at J for not helping me more with the kids and the house, but how easily I forget that for 13 months he couldn't even function as he went through interferon (yet for most of that time he still maintained his job to support his family) and before he could even recover from that, I got sick and all of our life's responsibilities were forced onto him.  We are so much further along that we ever have been before.  We have made progress. 

So once again, today, I am going to be grateful that the progress I have made, with the help and support of my husband, my children, my family and my very close and dear friends; and marvel that I am here, and that I have amazing people in my life who love me and support me in spite of me.  And who aren't going to be scared by reading these posts from the brain of Bridget because they already either know me better than I think they do, or they just love me and don't care.  I am following my dreams.  I am loved.  I am a good mom.  I am even making a little money these days doing what I love and a little more doing what I don't love, but what I don't hate either.   Today.