Foot Prints in the Sand

I love the sound of the surf  on a quiet day and I love it on a wild and noisy day as well.   I love sitting on the beach sometimes to read, sometimes to sleep and sometimes just to sit and be.  I love putting my face up to feel the warmth of the sun and I like to walk in the sand and when I am sitting on the beach I love to sit and let the sand run through my hands.  I am not walking on the beach much these days mostly because it is winter in New Brunswick and the sand is mostly covered in snow!  The snow is its own kind of majestic beauty and after a fresh snow fall it is amazing to stand and admire how it hangs on the branches of the trees and falls on the bushes and left over summer furniture in the garden.  I listen to the gentle breeze in the trees and just stand still and marvel at the beauty and the joy of being alive.  Those prescious moments the lived ones and the remembered ones seem even more important to me these days as so often I feel so overwhelmed.  I fell like my life is changing faster than I can keep up with it and certainly fell like something vital is slipping away from me and I can't do anything about it!  I can't do anything about it because it is not really about me and yet it affects me.  Affects every breathe i take everything I thought was real doesn't seem so real anymore.  i seem to be questioniong almost everything these days.  However walking in the sand is a metaphor for me when I think of the waves coming in and washing away all my stress and all my feelings of being overwhelmed.  Bring on the waves!!!!!!!!!

What Came First...........

 After many long and challenging conversations with mySelf I sit at my computer and type the first few words.  Words that I am committed to type for mySelf and words I am equally committed to post and to share!  Words I will choose and choose again to reflect my innermost thoughts and feelings to help me recall and track the shape and character of my life over the past four years and also for all that is yet to come.   I knew what I knew four long years ago and yet I doubted all that I knew and in the doubting I had no idea how to name what I was experiencing and so I struggled even more.  Struggled in that I doubted my own feelings, doubted what I was experiencing, doubted the messages of my own body.  That didn't work very well for me after all the only real currency any of us have to spend is our body our health.   By not acknowledging what I knew I knew I created a sense of restlessness, a sense of not really knowing my way and most of all the music of my relationship, the rhythm of the steps of our dance seemed to have changed and I had no idea exactly what had changed or when it changed or how to change it back!   How do you change it back when you are not exactly sure what "it" is?  And so I plodded along and did what I really did know how to do I worked.  Not so much extra at first but over time as other things changed ever so slowly, ever so subtly I filled the space with work.  And even with my vibrant health my body began to speak to me to let me know that not all was well.  In April of 2006 after 28 years of being asthma free I had a massive asthma attack and over the past four years my lung function has ranged from a low of 19% to a almost normal 84%.   Often my lungs send me the strongest message when I have been ignoring my body message the most and my lung function has often paralleled other goings on in my environment.  From April of 2008 until January of 2009 my husband was seen by a number of physicians and underwent a lot of tests.  When we were told his diagnosis I was the one who cried.  I cried because I knew and had known for at least a year.  I knew because I was studying to be an Elder Mediator and our studies taught us about Alzheimers the most recognizable form of dementia along with the other 27 varieties.  I cried for him and I cried for me and cried because I loved him and I cried because I knew more that he did and cried because I felt sad and I felt afraid and I cried because it was felt like at last I was doing something other than just holding it all inside.  And so our journey began in earnest, began because it finally had a name and with a name everything began to at least make sense....a start.