My Gifts To Myself

Greetings and Salutations,

     I hope that things are progressing in your life as you dreamed or you are hard at work if you don't reside in the life that you want for yourself.. I am here this week in my life, putting back the pieces and moving forward after the loss of my mother.. Things are still a bit foggy for me in my heart and mind but I am taking this week (off) after her services to get my head put back on straight and move forward with my life as both of us would want.. I am blessed with the experiences that I have had and continue to have in the grieving process.. I have kept my mind and heart open and allowed things to unfold infront of me.. I could not of planned the smoothness in which each event has happened such as helping to plan the services, to shopping for my dress.. From the woman at the salon who fixed my hair for me and treated me with loving care to how time kindly slowed to never rush me or let me feel frazzled.. I was able to complete all the things I needed to do in order to prepare for her service.. I, along with my step dad and sister, spoke at her funeral.. My backyard deck looks like Hyam's Garden Center (well, almost) and I have had many moments of feeling my mom's presence while gardening.. 

     I have spent the time during her illness and since her death quietly listening to my inner voice and taking care of myself.. I have wonderful friends that I owe a total debt of gratitude for checking in on me, letting me cry in their presence, both in person and on the phone, and crying with me.. My mom was a magical person and I have been approached by many people in businesses that she frequented and had them share with me what my mom meant to them.. I have great memories of my mom and have done things to remember the passing of my mother's life with happiness and joy, not just sorrow..

     I bought a windchime today after carefully parousing for the one that would "speak to me".. I finally found it after a week and every time I hear it from this day forward it will make me smile and think of my mom.. In my mind it will be her talking to me and looking over my life.. Reminding me that she is never far away and that one day, not a moment before it is my time, I will see her again..  Those of you who know me personally know that I love classical music.. I had to chose only 25 minutes of what would represent my mom through music for the seating portion of the services.. It was a challenge until I closed my eyes and let the decision come from my heart.. I want to share the list with you.. Canon in D --Pachelbel (Sally Harmon version) //Windmills of My Mind (Sally Harmon version) All I Ask of You (Sally Harmon version Phantom of The Opera)// Music of The Night (Sally Harmon version Phantom of The Opera)//The Arrival of A Friend (Sally Harmon)// Joie de Vivre (Sally Harmon)//Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack--a super fav of moms)// You Raise Me Up (Josh Groban).. Check it out and hope you enjoy it..

     I encourage each and everyone of you to find yourselves.. Find out who you are.. How to confort yourself in times when you are sad, life is screwing with you, or grief stricken.. Begin the journey of self actualization so that your life can be abundant with joy even in times of sorrow.. Bad times befall us all and I can't imagine what this would have begun to feel like if I hadn't started that journey a few years ago, but in earnest last May.. I have been able to cope with this most difficult time in my life by knowing myself and what I needed to heal intuitively.. I took time off from work because everyone I know that has had a death of a loved one and did not allow themselves to process it and grieve has paid for it dearly.. The road to recovery has been long for them and I want more for myself.. Pay now or pay later.. I chose to take time now so that the cost is minimal.. 

     I choose to practice healthy habits to deal with the pain and sadness such as acupuncture, yoga, music, and being social with my friends.. I have drank very little alcohol to my amazement actually.. I haven't started to smoke again (really can't believe that one) and I am plotting what I need to do to take my life to the next level of my dreams and desires.. I will look back on all of this as positive as possible.. To build on this for my future and know what I am made of.. I feel this is yet another brick in the foundation of who Heather is and will become..

     I have been on two dates with a fella and have a third planned tonight.. I have no idea where it will go but I am excited about the journey of discovering someone to spend time with and the possibilities of a relationship.. I finally feel a comfort in someone's presence I haven't felt, possibly ever.. I am beyond proud of myself of what has come out of my mouth in articulating my needs and wants out of a relationship with someone.. I really know what I want and see it so clearly now I feel fortunate it took this long.. I am in the moment I am meant to be.. This experience with my two dates thus far validates the existence of what I am looking for in a man.. I went out on the first date (with this fella) the day after mom died because I read the "tea leaves" and knew doing the opposite of what I was feeling was the right thing to do.. Mom wanted nothing more than for me to find love and be with someone that I could share myself with.. I think this just might be the first order of business my mom is doing for me in Heaven.. It is so something she would do.. I love her and will miss her deeply for the rest of my days..

Tootles :)

Heather

I love you Mom

Greetings and Salutations--
     Today I lost my mom to a stroke (second one in 24 days) and I will not be blogging this Monday...please check back later this week/weekend...I love you mom...I know you know just how much I do....My thoughts and prayers go out to any one who is in need of such things and I pray you have the strength you need to work though what ever troubles you are having in your life....

Heather

Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

Greetings and Salutations--
     I hope that I find you well and having a wonderful start to you week.. Last Monday I fell short of creativity and couldn't keep the waterworks shut off to my eyes.. Oh what a wonderful difference seven days can make.. For that I am eternally grateful that I have been granted more time with my mom.. My mother has always been my fountain of inspiration and strength.. Now I know what this woman is truly made of.. I have learned so very much about myself and how I relate to the world around me, with stress I have never seen the likes of until now.. I look forward to the coming months to see how all this will shape me into the person I can sense is just underneath the surface.. I can't begin to tell you how I felt when they extubated her (took the breathing tube out) and 10 minutes later a woman who was only able to respond with holding up fingers as requested but unable to hold her eyes completely open for more than a few minutes was sitting up, wide awake, talking, and the personality that is my mom shining through.. It was like seeing a dead person speak and in my twenty years of nursing, sixteen of which I have spent in Emergency Rooms across the United States, I've never experienced anything like it..
     Today, twenty days into this journey that I am on with my mom takes me to new ground.. I feel an awareness that I have never felt before.. Things that I once may have had trouble seeing clearly as to where they fit into the importance in my life are now sharp in color and contrast.. I feel more determined than ever to make my life count to both myself and any one that I could possibly touch.. I feel different with everyone I am coming into contact with.. Today was my first day back at work after taking time to process what had happened and be available to see my mom and cry my ass off.. To go through those steps I learned about in nursing school that I thought I could skip over with some time in the yard.. Its an odd thing to understand what you are about to go through from a academic standpoint, yet also to recognize that even if you know a glimpse of what is about to come next, it is best to ride the wave and attempt to control the length of time you spend riding it then try and control even getting on it in the first place..
     I feel as if my skin is crawling with the anticipation of what I want to do next.. What I want to cultivate into happening in my life.. That quote "Get busy living or get busy dying" from Shawshank Redemption  just popped into my head as I am writing this to you and I really think that it best, simply describes how I feel at this moment.. I mean this in relationship to my experience which I understand isn't a singularity.. I am speaking (humbly) to what my thoughts and feelings are about what has happened and yet to happen with the most important person in my life on this earth.. You can either take an experience in your life and go through it with patience and understanding for yourself and be determined to make it work to your advantage, or you can be a victim.. You can put your head down and let it defeat you.. You can be a shell of the person you were before "it" (what ever "it" may be) happened.. The choice is yours.. (Maybe) not to what happened but to your response to it..
     I can easily look at this life threatening health event with my mom and say "see, what good does it do you to be healthy.. Here is a woman who doesn't smoke, drink, take meds, or have any medical conditions and yet out of the blue she suffered a major stroke".. I say where she is today, her fortitude withstanding, is very much based on the lifestyle which she has lead (Bless her for the lack of drinking and may I be forgiven later for all of mine LOL).. She has a healthy body to be the foundation to recover from.. I am not forgetting God, the thousands of prayers that have been prayed on her behalf, or the outright tenacity that my mom has.. I could blog on those topics for weeks.. I am just speaking of the foundation of what God, prayers, and her will had to work with when this happened..
     I lasted ten days before it all crumbled around me.. When the nurse lost the battle to the daughter inside that hadn't taken the first class on how to handle something she had never been through in her life.. For the nurse to let the daughter take over and begin to feel what needed to be felt in order to be healthy and start to heal.. It took about five days to feel like my head was above water and I could actually breathe even a shallow breath.. To begin to work though the process with the aid of some wonderful friends and knowing that my mom was surrounded in thoughts and prayers and the wonderful care she was receiving in the ICU.. Then I could start the process to pull into myself and at the core, work my way thought all of this on my terms.. To know and learn myself as I navigated new waters.. To feel what I intuitively needed to get to the other side of this awful experience.. To not stop believing that soon, I would stop crying and be strong.. That it is OK for me to be weak and grow strength from this painful experience..
     I did acupuncture.. I spent one night getting rip roaring drunk (so glad these days that only took one day to get that out of my system).. I prayed.. I cried.. I watched TV and movies.. I cried.. Most of all I never lost sight of wanting to make all of this count.. Feeling that as close as I came to losing my mom, she is in my heart and soul on or off this planet and I found comfort to know God was in control of this.. My wants of this earth are selfish and I want what was best for my mother.. I didn't want her to suffer not even one nanosecond.. Even in near death as mush as possible, she is inside me and I can be close to her by living the example I believe she gave birth for me to pursue.. She has given me the gift of my tenacity and love for life.. I know now more than ever I don't want to squander the life she gave me.. I will be blessed every day she remains in my life and forever grateful God has granted me more time to learn from my mother..


Tootles :)
Heather

Be Open to Experience

Greetings and Salutations--
    First off I want to take a moment to speak of my debit of gratitude that I feel for everyone that I know (and those I don't, but know me through someone who does) that is praying and or thinking of my mother.. For words and offers of support and volunteering to help look after my mom in the coming weeks and months.. While I have been a nurse for twenty years I have to say that I feel like a new grad being on this end of health care.. In my forty-two years all she has ever had was a flipping colonoscopy.. My mom is the salt of the earth in my life and a rock that I have always been able to lean upon.. I can feel the warmth and love that is being sent out from everyone and it means more that I can ever express.. That being said things feel better when the "show goes on" and I have a blog to put out  :)
     As you can all well imagine I have a million things to blog on about what I am going through at this time in my life.. The one that has filtered it's way to the top is experience and how much of it we need to relate to other people with compassion and understanding.. The experience of love, friendship, disappointment, devastation, sadness, happiness, hope, and endless wonderful possibilities alas require direct participation if you want the most out of life.. It dictates that the only way to understand where another person is coming from is either to have had the same experience or something close enough that you can relate to.. This has taken on sharper meaning as this experience has unfolded, sitting in an ICU waiting room.. That you can't truly begin to know how any particular situation feels until you are standing square in the middle of it..
     Someone can tell you about their plight in life.. Someone can tell you about how their life was forever changed for the best when they altered how they view their world.. It means nothing until you bring it home to your own mind and soul.. Until something you go through changes the core of who you are..  Until you live it yourself, good or bad.. Maybe something as simple as having a conversation with a stranger and realizing how much negativity is out in the world that surrounds us all.. How sorry you feel for that person that they don't have the life skills to feel positive about any given situation.. That (positive) perspective is truly the key to a life lived in a deeply purposeful way..
     People tend to stay within the confines of their world and shy away from what will make them learn.. What doesn't feel good emotionally doesn't feel comfortable.. They travel very little.. They have friends that all feel about love, life and politics as they themselves do.. They don't take the time to learn another way to view a situation.. The very nature of being able to see more than one side of a situation or feeling is to be exposed to various DIFFERENT ways of thinking and believing.. A skill, thought, or feeling can't be mastered until you do it enough for it to move from uncomfortable to comfortable.. That takes repeated exposure to the very thing that made you uncomfortable in the first place.. That requires perseverance.. It takes a lot of hard work to stay in a moment of time (situation) that doesn't feel familiar.. By human nature, when we are uncomfortable, we will go to extraordinary lengths to get back to our comfort zone..
     Here is what I offer for consideration.. I think that we should put ourselves out there as much as possible.. Make travel a priority.. Seek out what makes you uncomfortable and work to appreciate what you don't understand or agree with.. The next time someone offers a contrary point of view make a conscious effort to open you mind and listen.. Open yourself up to the opportunity to learn more than one way to think or feel.. The more connected we are to each other the more we live with compassion for those we share this earth with.. The more connected we are the better we all coexist.. I love that word "coexist" for alot of reasons but mostly because it doesn't imply I have to agree with your point of view or choices.. It just means I have an edge that I can respect the differences in people and not take it personally.. It would be a truly boring place if we all felt and looked at life and all its happenings the same.. Push past your boundaries.. Apply all this to a family member you have ostracized because you disagree with  their choices or who they are from something that happened in the past..
     Love everyone you can for who they are and more importantly for who they are not, for that is where the essence of that person lives.. Not who you think they are or wish them to be, but who they are as the rest of the world sees them.. Allow them to arrive at their destination in life on their own time frame, not yours.. Be OK that you see or feel things differently from them.. Live your life and with all those in it so that if tomorrow it all changed you can look in the mirror and say "I've done right by those that I've loved".. Life isn't about having no regrets for those are inevitable . The life we get up and live everyday for should be such that if someone dear to you were taken tomorrow, you lived a life of fulfillment with them to the best of your ability, not full of regret for what you should have said or done with them when you had them.. We all have room for improvement.. Make sure your room is as small as possible on purpose--Regrets take up more space than you anticipate in the end..

Tootles :)
Heather