Truths...

When you are faced with continuous stress in multiple areas of your life for months it can be very trying and exhausting. It messes with your head, your mood and how you feel. For months, I was irritable, tired, moody and pretty closed off. Now one of my many flaws, is that I don't share the things going on with me until I work them out or I blow a gasket. This is not the healthiest way of dealing with many emotions or stressful situations. I am aware of this and it is one of the many things I am working on about myself. Luckily I have a very supportive husband who lets me vent, cry and snuggle as needed. He is the one person I consistently confide in before anyone else. I did let a couple of my close girlfriends know about what I was dealing with but it was limited and I mostly held radio silence with everyone because frankly I was trying to maintain my strength in myself. What I mean by that is it felt like if I started to open up, the floodgates would pour out and I wasn't ready but I am now so let the flood of info commence...

I know I told you all about the things that happened over the last few months, but I didn't mention that it put me in a funk. I didn't feel like myself. I felt constantly tired and just like I kinda deflated as a person for a little bit. I knew that I needed to get my head back on right. I my new job that I needed three weeks before I started because frankly I needed a break. I couldn't take it all anymore. I needed time home with my family. The most important people in my life, the ones that make me smile and the ones that just put things into perspective for me. Luckily for me, my old job let me go a week early which means that I got two weeks home. Two weeks to breath and not feel like everything was falling apart. During those two weeks, I took time to process everything and do a lot of soul searching.

First, I needed to deal with the intense sadness I felt from the death of my uncle's passing. The first day off was his funeral. As I said in my last post, I felt an intense need to take care of my Nana the entire funeral and witnessing the entire funeral was very soothing to my soul. It also helped that I got to look at him and touch his hand during the viewing. I was one of the last people in the room and so I took a minute to touch his hand. The same one I held all day a week before. It was cold and it made it very clear that he wasn't there anymore. I cried at that moment, but it felt like closure to me. To just know that he wasn't there. I cried during the funeral itself and by the end I felt a sense of peace in regards to his passing. I knew that he had been in a lot of pain and wanting to leave this world. It didn't make it easier for me to say goodbye. Remembering being a source of comfort during that last day with him and a source of strength for my Nana at the funeral, that made me feel better. It reminded me of my inner strength, my ability to listen, comfort and my ability to continuously remember all the wonderful times that I shared with him. After that day it was as if the sadness just left me. I miss and will continue to do so intensely and immensely. But it is not the same as the aching sadness I felt deep inside for the entire week after I was informed of his passing. It also made me appreciate family that much more. To see the way that family gathers, supports, comforts and loves each other is amazing to see and even more wonderful to feel and personally experience. My family was a wonderful support system during this time.

Next, I got to take my kids to school and pick them up everyday for two weeks. It was nice because I often have mom guilt for not being there for those things. My schedule and traffic requires me to leave the house at 4:30 am and I usually don't get home until 4 pm sometimes later. So getting a chance to finally meet my son's one on one aide and hear how his day was, receiving the reports directly and seeing their interactions just made me relax. Hubby usually handles all of this and he gives me the rundown daily of both the kids' days, which I love and appreciate with everything in me. But being able to witness it and participate eased my guilt and gave my children joy and Hubby a much needed break from these daily activities. It made me feel connected again. Just getting to spend all that time with my kids and Hubby gave me a sense of peace and comfort just by living life daily, by focusing on the needs of my family and taking care of them like I hadn't felt I had been doing.It was comforting and all the snuggles just made it that much better. I have to say being reminded of all the love provided by everybody during all these struggles just reinforced the goodness in the world.

Finally I focused on me. I provided myself with a lot of self care and love during this two weeks. First I slept in. After years of getting up every morning at 4 am, sleeping in every day until 630 for two weeks was amazing. It let me get some much needed rest and relaxation. One night after everyone else in the house went to bed, I danced around the house to some of my favorite songs. I also focused on the things that mean something to me. I let myself dream of what I want for the future and how I want to spend my time. I put together a list of the things I want to focus on for myself and then shared it with my husband so we are both on the same page. Plus I want the support of Hubby when I am working on these things. One of the things I want to focus on is writing, it is relaxing and brings me a lot of joy. So hopefully you all will see a lot from in the near future. I also love working with the amazing women of the Body Image Movement and the global ambassadors. They are incredible women who are working towards making global change. Many of them have made careers out of this. They have inspired me to work towards making this full time for myself as well. I am working on a plan of what my strengths are and how to do the most good with them. Let me start by sharing with you a course I took that helped me view myself in a completely different light. If you are struggling with yourself the way that I was, then this course is an excellent and informative step in truly accepting and loving yourself for who you are. This course is called Embrace You and you can check it out at the following link: https://bodyimagemovement.com/embraceyou/?ref=W217 Also if you have not yet watched the Embrace documentary then you should see it!!!! It is currently on Netflix in the U.S. and on ITunes in most other countries. I will use another post to go into more detail about all of this information but the most important thing I can tell you is to know that who you are as a person is amazing. We all deserve to love ourselves and I spent two weeks reminding myself exactly why I love myself.

So if you are still with me, thank you for letting me ramble all of the information that has gone through my mind over the last couple of weeks. Also if you want more information about Embrace, the Embrace You course or the Body Image Movement please let me know. I will gladly share it all with you. Let me know some truths that you have discovered. What experiences made you see what you really want? What are your dreams for the future? What are some ways that you provide yourself with some self love/care? Feel free to share whatever you want with me, I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings. Until next time I will just keep dreaming through this journey of an everyday mom.

Life...

Hello all! So life has been crazy lately and I have been trying to do my best to deal with it to the best of my ability which means that I am only human and have had many ups and downs over the last couple of months. There is so much to share with you and I'm not sure I will get through all of it in one post. Let me start with the crazy and not so great stuff and then in another post I will focus on all the positive that has come out of it for me.

Towards the end of the year, we had several IEP meetings for Bugaboo in regards to getting him a full time, personal one on one aide which we felt was necessary. It took several months, assessments, several meetings but it was finally approved. It took several more weeks before his aide was hired. I don't know how many of you have had IEP meetings but they can take up to several hours depending on the amount of things that need to be discussed. The assessment required several people to come out and observe Bugaboo in class for two months. It was a long but necessary process. The results have been worth it. He adores his aide and there have been positive results that we can see in class. Our school district is amazing and has been very easy to work with not to mention the support from the staff, his teacher and school psychologists has made things tremendously easier for us when going through this process. We also have had a lot of support from Inland Regional Center, who visits in school, is willing to attend the IEP meetings and send us to conferences in regards to IEPs. This alone sent us on some highs and lows but ultimately turned out alright.

Our Christmas this year was very different, you see Hubby's grandfather unexpectedly passed away on Christmas Eve. Hubby spent as much time at the hospital as he could spending time with his grandfather and being supportive of his family that were shocked, sad and heartbroken. I had to explain to my children to the best of my ability that their great grandfather passed away. It is not easy to explain in child friendly terms and it is hard to expect what their reaction would be. My children happened to be much more understanding because I did have to explain this concept previously when we had to put our cat down unexpectedly due to illness. In January, I found out that my great uncle who is like a grandfather to me had only a few days left to live. Now this man was 96 years old, and ornery as no other. I mean at 90 he was still climbing on the roof to fix things. He has had several close calls through out the years but of course we went immediately to visit him. Unfortunately, this time was much different. When we arrived he was no longer able to speak and had very limited responses. Fortunately for me, I was the one he responded to the most that day. I spent the entire day by his bed side, talking to him, holding his hand and telling him how much I love him. As devastating as it was to have to say goodbye, it was quite cathartic to be able to spend that time with him. During his viewing and funeral, I was my nana's support (although there were several people there for her that day) I had an intense need to hold her hand throughout the viewing and funeral itself. Seeing a military service first hand is quite the moving experience, you see my uncle was in the Navy during WWII. To see all the veterans, the union come that he was in for so long and see the church community come out to show their support, offer their help and pay their condolences was a soul soothing experience.

On top of all of this there was some major stress going on at work. The company I worked for was bought and the new owners came in. At first it was a positive experience and I was excited about everything. Unfortunately that changed with the hiring of a new production manager. I was unable to work with him. I had to do several aspects of his job, I'm unsure if he wasn't sure how to do these things or just unwilling but either way I was doing the job of multiple people which was not easy. Add on to this that I started witnessing some unprofessional behavior towards the men who worked in the shop that I could not tolerate. While I won't go into all the details, it became abundantly clear to me that I needed to make a change. I was consistently stressed, unhappy, angry, frustrated and felt completely unheard. So I took a job offer I received and put in my two weeks notice. Now I am going into a completely different role than what I have ever done before, but I am hoping that this new experience is going to be a good change for me.

Oh and I had the stomach flu the entire first week of the new year ugh!!!!

Life has been crazy, thrown me some massive curve balls over the last few months but it has also shown me some amazing truths. I will tell you all about those truths in my next post.
Have any of you dealt with some massive curve balls? When was life craziest for you? Share your stories with me, I would love to hear them.

Until next time, I am going to keep pushing on in this journey of an everyday mom....