Who we are

 I have a small letter board where quotes are displayed in our home. I change the quote periodically and mostly they are silly or funny. As I was scouring the internet today to find a new quote, I came across one that hit me deeply and I knew that we needed it as a reminder in our home. It speaks to something I have been thinking about a lot in the past few weeks and actually felt inspired to share my thoughts with my boys recently. The quote says, "The world needs who you were made to be." I asked Malcolm today what he thought it meant and he surprised me by saying, "it means to be me." why? "because the world needs me." Its so true! We were all born with a worth that is individual to us. Something we brought into this existence that no one else can replicate or master. Something that is so distinctly YOU that it can't be bought or sold and the world needs it. In the past I have tried to cover who I am to conform with who I think I need to be. I masked my reaction to adversity because I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling the way I did about challenges. When Jeff was first told he had a brain tumour, he was at the Lethbridge hospital for a CT which was ordered by the dr as a precautionary measure. I had completely forgotten he even had the CT that day but I got a phone call from Jeff telling me they wouldn't let him drive home and he needed someone to come and get him. When I got there, they directed us into a little room with a computer and pulled up the images of his brain scan on the screen. They explained that the tumour was significant in size and a neurosurgeon would be in contact with us ASAP. They predicted surgery within a week and a long road ahead, and do you want to know what my first reaction was? I so distinctly remember sitting in that room thinking "Bring it on! We got this!" I didn't worry about the hard, I didn't cry, I didn't wonder what life would be like, I felt excited for the challenge. I don’t usually tell people what my reaction was and I covered it for so long because I knew that wasn't what a normal reaction should have been. I should have been devastated. I should have been terrified. I should have cried. It may have been that I was young and naive, that I truly didn't know what the extent of this hardship would cost but I knew that my reaction set me apart from other people. I didn't understand at the time how much of a gift that initial reaction and mindset was but I am slowly discovering as I become the person I was sent here to be that I no longer have to hide it and conform to the way I "should" be. The world needs who I was sent here to be. 

Small steps

On my way to work yesterday I was formulating a blog post in my head about the small steps taken every day that add up to big accomplishments. I was feeling particularly happy as the day consisted of me working out at the track with my family, making a healthy and delicious soup from scratch for supper and baking 2 loafs of my best sourdough bread yet. Earlier in the day I also got the house clean with the help of my kids and managed to sneak in a nap before working a night shift. I was reflecting on the accomplishments of the day and realized it took a lot of little changes in my life in order for me to get to where I am now and not every day is as good as that day was but I have been having more good than bad days lately. It WAS a good day, until I snapped. A supervisor at work, whom I don't always agree with, made a stupid decision (in my opinion) and I lost it. Lost it the way I lose it on Jeff when I feel like things are spiralling out of control. Lost it like I was falling and had nothing else left to grab onto. Lost it like I so often wanted to lose it when everything was going wrong but I felt like I couldn't because I had to be the strong one. I don't know where it came from and it scared me to think thats whats inside of me. I have been struggling for a very long time and even though therapy helps, I still feel so raw and damaged inside. Another contribution to the situation could have been that I have had daily struggles with this supervisor and have kept my mouth shut about it all because I want to come across as a perfect employee. I held it all in until I snapped which is a whole other topic. The point is, I was so prepared to write about how little changes today can mean big things in the future and that even thought I still have my hard days, they are becoming easier to handle and further apart. I had no I idea I was about to be blindsided by my raw emotion thats been so desperate to get out. This has helped me to realize I can't cover up the hurt and damage I feel with eating healthy and working out. Thats not to say eating healthy and working out is a bad thing, its a lot better than the other ways I used to distract myself, but its just that, a distraction. I have so much joy for what my body can accomplish but I have come to realize I need to use it to explore those hard emotions instead of as a distraction from them. When I was going to school people would tell me how strong I am and that I doing an incredible thing by working full time and going to school full time while dealing with a sick husband and raising 2 kids. All I could think when people would praise me is, ya but I'm still fat. Ya I could do all these incredible things, but I ate like crap and I couldn't lose weight. I didn't realize it wasn't actually the weight that was causing me to not believe them but my deeper feelings of control, or lack thereof. It was my deeper feelings of not wanting to lose my husband and have to do this alone. It was my feelings that nothing I could do would make him better and for some reason that made me a failure. It is those deeper raw emotions that need to be addressed now along with eating healthy and moving my body. Its going to take a lot of small steps and I am going to trip along the way but I'm starting where I am.