It’s baaack!

Well much to my surprise I have been blessed with a return performance of old friend, MRSA. Yes, it’s back only this time instead of my spine it is in my lung. There was a possibility it was cancer but it wasn’t. I know most people won’t understand this but MRSA scares me more than cancer. I’ve had MRSA and I know what it can do. I’ve never had cancer and I know sometimes it can be removed surgically. MRSA has a mind of its own and sometimes responds to antibiotics and sometimes it doesn’t. I have read about the possibility that it can return. I was just getting better. I am able to amble around my house. And then this. I don’t want to go through being sick again. I am exhausted. The pain in my arm and chest distracts me all the time. I can’t get a full deep breathe. Coughing hurts my chest and my back. And I am tired of coughing up blood. I’m not sure if the people in my life will understand why I’m scared. They don’t have too but it would nice if they did. And as I sit here and type and think I still feel scared because I still don’t know when or how I’ll be started on an antibiotic because my insurance won’t pay for the oral one so now they to see if it will pay for the IV one. As I sit and wait and wonder.

"Out with Old and In with the New"

We tend to be creatures of habit so as many of us do at the end of one year and the beginning of a new one I want say what I am thankful for and what I hope for.
I am thankful for being born into the family of origin I had. I believe that we choose what family to be born into who will help us learn the lessons we are supposed to learn in this lifetime. Yes, I believe in karma and reincarnation. I believe we are born with all the skills we need to learn the lessons we are sent to learn. The difference we make with our free will is to make the most positive choices we can in our life. I believe that is why it looks like some people make "it" whatever "it" is to you and why some people don't.
I am thankful for all the people who touched my life these past 55 years. Some people just touched me briefly and others have always been with me.
I am thankful for Jennifer my wonderful, strong, intelligent and beautiful daughter.
I am thankful for my two adorable young grandsons and I hope to see them turn into kind, happy, and healthy young men.
I am thankful for all the strong and compassionate women who I have had the privilege to know. I am thankful for those who are actively in my life now.
I am thankful for Lisa my oldest friend. She is always the same no matter how long its been since we talked and she is the person who can make cry the easiest.
I am thankful for Rena. She is the sister is wasn't born with but the one who is closer to me than any sibling could be. She has been there for me in thick and thin. She has looked out for me and helped me through some of my darkest times. We have also had a helluva lot of fun together. Looking back we never doubted our ourselves when we were together. At least that is how I remember it. One perfect example is one weekend camping we took a walk and for some unknown reason decided to walk across a train track of some kind over water. Knowing us we probably did it just to prove we could. Well, she didn't like heights and I didn't like water. So as we walked across this track we held on to each other tighter and tighter. We made it across together. We came back a different way.
Thinking about all our adventures makes me smile. In fact, thinking of all the events in my life that can be thought of as an adventure, I smile. An adventure to me is something that teaches me something about myself, or the world.
I am thankful for Elizabeth. She has been many different people to me. When we worked together we often thought of each other as "office spouse" because we looked out for each other better than any partner ever did. She is younger than me but not really enough for me to be her mother and not young enough to be my daughter. She has been ther for me through many difficult times.
We have had a lot of fun together. I smile when I think of the adventures we have had.
I am thankful for Christina and Mayra.
I am thankful that I lost the ability to walk and that I have regained that ability.
Christina and Mayra are two wonderful young ladies who are going to be nurses and have taken care of me since July 09 when I was released from the hospital.
I owe them so much. They gave me what I needed to keep going, to keep pushing myself and know that they wouldn't let me fail or fall. They have become part of my family and I have been graced to be part of theirs. I hope that in 2011 my daughter and my sister can meet my family in Tucson, Elizabeth, Mayra and Christina.
I am thankful for learning so many things the past two years about myself, life and love.
It seems funny to be 55 and feel like you are just getting started again.
I am listening to" Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan and the last line hit me as so true for me right. I am learning to be all on my own but with support of the most fantastic group of women you could ever imagine.
It paralells what I have endured physically. I am able to stand physically on my own and finally emotionally to stand on my own as well. But I am able to accept the support of those who care about me without feeling weak. Sometimes I can even ask for help.
I am thankful for all the healthcare professionals who have treated me and cared for me these past two years. Doctors who took a chance and operated on me when they weren't even sure if I would survive the infection in my body, and who fixed my back so I could heal. I am thankful for all the nurses, techs and physical/ocuptational therapists that got me out of bed and into a wheelchair. And then got me home and healing.
I am even thankful for those who didn't think I would walk and told me because I love nothing more than a challenge. One of my life rules is that success is the best revenge and while this wasn't revenge I did want to prove them wrong. Fortunately, I had many more people telling me I would walk again.
I am thankful for growing up in New England and knowing the magic of city life. I am thankful for learning early that the mountains and deserts were magic as well. I have found my home in a little City with no skyscrapers but with a beautiful and magical desert surrounded by mountains. Tucson is my city. When I arrived in Tucson the song playing on the radio was "Funkytown". I am very much into the music of my life and that song let me know that this was the right place for me.
I want to thank Davena. One of the first women I met here who have helped me change my life. She has moved and is in Oregon now but I still feel as close to her as if she were right. She helped me get in touch the spiritual self that I lost as teenager. I learned you can be spiritual without being religious and that believing in yourself is believing in Divine Love that lives in each of us.
I am thankful for being born when I was. I was born in 1955 and that was the year Allan Freed coined the term "Rock and Roll". I don't know what I would have done with the music of those early years. The music made me happy, it made me feel understood and sometimes it made me cry. It did what I needed. It kept me from feeling alone.
This will sound silly to some people but I am thankful for being the right age to have really enjoyed the disco era. I absolutely love to dance. Dancing has always been a form of therapy for me. A world I could be in feeling free, strong and happy. I have said along that I would dance again and this is New Years Eve and while I am going to be home I plan on dancing a little in the living room!
Good day for now. I may be back before tomorrow.

12/23/10

Is it just the season that makes most people a bit bluer and the end of another year and start of a new one. All the things we have to be grateful for and all the things we miss, all the things left to do. I guess being a thinker at this season is not the best thing to do. However, being limited in my mobility, finances and ability to get around I have a lot of time to think. I have been trying to get “in touch” with my feelings. I have not been good at it ever. I stay calm, logical and focused on whatever is at hand. It may seem to some that I get emotional but I have held my feelings in for a very long time and sometimes something will slip in get me emotional and since it is just certain people with who I share my feelings. Those few should feel good about it because it means I trust them and I don’t trust many people.

I want to share some very good feelings I had yesterday. My boyfriend came over for awhile and took me out to eat. We got back and just sat on the couch. I didn’t turn the TV on or music. We just sat holding each other. I had forgotten I could feel so safe, so secure. And of course, being the thinker that I am I try to analyze it. Though I did keep trying to just stay with the feeling. It was romantic, comfortable, safe. By just sitting and holding and not even talking I felt more safe then I have since I was a teenager with my high school sweetheart. I felt safe with him. He had been my boyfriend through most of high school and he helped me so much in dealing with my mother. We got engaged and planned an untraditional wedding after we were in college a couple of years. After high school I had a place of my own and he still lived with his parents. I worked in a hospital kitchen and became friends with one of the cooks as we were close in age. Peter, Mark and his fiancé, Audrey became pretty good friends. We hung out together and Audrey and I got to be really good friends or so I thought. Mark found that Peter and Audrey had been messing around. I think I was the one who took it the hardest. I would have bet my life that Peter would never do that to me. When I had no one to trust, I always had him. Until this. Mark didn’t like but seemed able to just brush it off. I broke up our engagement. Mark and Audrey stayed engaged. Mark and I stayed friends and still worked together. We discussed what happened a lot. He felt engaged wasn’t like being married. But that wasn’t how I felt. He and I got close and a bit physical. It didn’t effect their relationship and because of what happened I was not able to maintain a friendship with her. Peter seemed a bit obsessed with my comings and goings. My social life was suffering and since I went to school full time, worked one job full time and another part time my social life already limited. So to get my life back I agreed to marry him. I was still so hurt and angry. Oddly enough, once we were married he stopped hounding me and we pretty much had separate lives. And because I was so hurt and angry I fully intended to go out whoever I wanted whenever I wanted. And that’s what I did for a year. But since we had been best friends after a year of this in your face behavior I knew I was hurting both of us and that we would be better off divorced. I did it since there were no children and he had just moved into my place. All we had to split up were LP’s.

We continued being friends and even did some double dating. If we had stayed married this past June would have been 35 years. And I have no real idea how got from feeling safe and secure last night to my tale of marriage #1. I guess that after feeling that way with Peter before what happened with Audrey, last night was truly the first time in over 35 years that I had that feeling. Sometimes it scares me to feel that way which is why I have not let myself feel it in decades. Last night was simple yet so meaningful. I treasure last night, I treasure that feeling and I hope I feel it again. I believe I have evolved emotionally enough to be open to warm loving feelings if I can’t the rest of my life will be even lonelier than the first half.

12/21/10

I'll tell you internal review is very difficult. I thought I had all my emotions sorted and catergorized in neat little piles. I don't and I don't like what I feel. I don't want to have the feelings or needs that I have. I want what I can't have, I want what I can live and have lived without. But I don't want it to be that way. I realize this may sound confusing but its real. I know I have a few loyal readers and its just those wonderful dear people that I don't want to know what I want and what I feel. I'm strong, I'm tough and having felt like this before I know it will pass and it will be nicely stuffed again.

How do you know who you will be

I’ve been thinking a lot about why my font won’t cooperate!!!!!!

No, really I’ve been thinking about what not only makes us who we are but how we end up on the life path we travel. I suppose these thoughts are not so unusual for the coming of a new year. I look back at so much of my life and see a strong determined crusader and if I look at myself through a different kaleidoscope I see something very different. I tried my whole life to do things differently than my mother thinking I could make a better life for my family. I’d say I succeeded professionally. I don’t really have any regrets related to work or school. I am pretty sure I did poorly with male relationships. I guess I didn’t know what to look for anymore than I knew what kind of mother to be. My father left before I was born and I don’t ever recall living with him. My brother was 9 years older and as a little girl I thought he was wonderful. When he turned 18 he joined the Navy and I saw him once after that until our mother died and it had been over 25 years. But he found me then. I am finally beginning to realize that as far as relationships I don’t think I am worthwhile at all. Don’t feel bad that I know this now because all my life I was in denial about that and I got a way with it for the most part because I was always busy with work, school, being the kind of mom I had wanted. And those things kept me fulfilled. Now with the disability I don’t have so many place to put myself. I am walking so much better than I expected. I have wonderful friends, a nice little adopted family and a wonderful family and friends in TN. So this Winter Solstice should be one of my best, and in many ways it is. In trying so hard to be good at things and be independent to protect my heart I think I may have done it an injustice. One of my goals has been to allow myself to feel my emotions. That is something I never let myself do. No matter what hold back the tears, suck up the pain, the disappointment the hurts. I hope I can start the new years with all the bad feelings out. And a new bestseller!

Merry Christmas

Dec. 17th was the first annual Brooks-Mart family holiday gathering. Our two adopted daughters Mayra and Christine shared, pizza, veggies and cheesecakes. Pictures were taken and smiles and laughter were in abundance.

21 day consciousness cleanse

I finished the 21 day consciousness cleanse in less than 21 days. By the time I got to the section for future I did that week in a day. One thing I learned is that I am not as patient as I could be but its ok and I have actually lived my life and thoughts thoughts encouraged in this book. There were aparts in it that seemed to have come straight from my head. This is not a new experience for me. For as long as I can remember I would read a book usually a text book or a book that I just found interesting and what I read were thoughts or beliefs or behaviors I already had. I know the universe is full synchronicity but now that I know what all those things were--guardian angels, intuitive insights, a feeling of wanting to better just to be role model for change and goodness. It all makes sense now. My whole life the good and the not so good. I think I had a hard lesson to learn. I am responsible for me and I have to take care of and part of that is knowing when to ask for help and that it is ok to ask for help and ok to slow down. I think the biggest whack on the head and soul I got was getting sick and almost dying and being paralyzed. I made it through that by strength and courage but also by saying what I needed and relying on others when I had no choice but to do that. It was a very humbling feeling and sometimes scary. But as with everything else in my life there were lessons to be learned and I think I have learned some of them but I sure of one thing there will always be more lessons in this life and different lessons in our next life. Anyway, its a good book and while it didn't tell me or have me experience anything I hadn't already known or done it was good to see that according to one authors point of view I have been on the right track.