JD's Midlife Tools For Living Practices, LLC

I am gratefully to have been able to work a few hours every day this week! Progress! It has felt sooooo good to get more of my life back!

I still have to be very careful to find the right balance of activity and rest. I know I teetered towards too much activity this week and need to do better next week for sure. Rest is on my agenda for the weekend!

It is not easy to figure out what to do to take care of myself sometimes and sometimes not so easy to give that to me either!

It certainly has taken a village of people to help me get back to work again. But is also has taken energy well beyond that village.

My morning sunrise walks have helped me immensely and bring a connection for me to the world beyond our world.

It is in that sunshine that I feel the presence of my dad and know he’s been walking with me this summer in my journey to get well-er. I don’t think I would be as far along with out having him there in the sunrise to talk to and have him hold me in that way.

It is in the stillness of the morning that my soul is at peace and I can hear that wise voice inside guiding me. This spiritual connection is my guide as I tap into the wisdom of the ages locked inside the depths of my being.

And this feels like home to me too. My being can rest assured having listened and heard that all knowing wisdom.

I know I will be and am ok. And all is well!

Where/when do you feel most connected to that vast village beyond?

It is raining today. We’ve needed the rain. I won’t have to finish watering the yard that my husband started yesterday! Yippee! I love crossing things off my “to do” list so easily.

As I sit listening to the rain coming down my mind wandered to that little rhyme from my childhood…rain rain go away…come again some other day. Do you remember that too?

I just realized this rhyme has little to do with rain and a lot to do with the reality we all fight with what is and want it to go away so we can have what it is we so badly want to have instead! It is just human nature to do so too.

Like all things there is good and bad in everything…I won’t get to see the sun rise this morning on one hand and on the other I won’t have to move the sprinkler around the yard today at all!

It is important to be able to see both the good and the bad in life’s situations. With out seeing both sides we are out of balance and life unfolds out of balance for us in all kinds of ways.

I’ve gone back to work as of Wednesday of this week for 1-2 hours each day, thankfully too. I am so very grateful for all the people who I work with. They have been so very supportive and happy to see me and so very helpful. My Substance Use Disorder team members have been filling in my group nights since early June for me and will have to continue to do so for several more weeks too as I slowly build up my energy and strength. I am so very grateful to them for pitching in as they have as well.

This rain in my life has taught me so very much that I would not have known if it hadn’t been raining so very hard for so very long!

I am filled with gratitude and appreciation for so many people and for so many small things in life and for learning more about how to let go and a great many other things too that I would not be holding in my heart at this very moment had the rain stopped before now!

All meant to be unfolding just as it is unfolding…all meant for me to be learning just as I am learning too…Amazing, life is just amazing!

What is unfolding in your life right now just as it is meant to unfold? What are you learning right now that you so badly needed to learn with it?

Finality insights…

The book is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi.

I thanked her for it and looked forward to reading it given the description of it she shared with me.

Since I’ve had time to read being home parked on the couch and some energy at times to do so I stared reading it several weeks ago. Like her experience with reading it I was compelled to continue but took my time in order to digest some of the contents more fully.

I have this thing about really good books and not wanting them to end so I take my sweet time reading some really good reads! This book is just such that kind of read too.

But, with all my health issues, the topic of this book and my awareness and belief that things happen and unfold in life just as they are meant to I wondered if, just if, I was handed this book to help me learn how to live my life with an end to my life in plain site. So, I set the book down and let it be for a spell in order to not stir up any more distress inside me.

You see the author Dr. Kalanithi is a young very very bright and talented neurosurgeon who learns he has a terminal cancer and actually learns how to really live life in the face of dying. It is a profound book. His insights are amazing and I urge you to read it.

I took this book with me to my mom’s when she was hospitalized along with some other books too. I hadn’t finished it yet.

And then I met Virginia, my mom’s delightful 95 year old roommate when my mom was hospitalized after having a stent put in. I wrote a post about her on 7/9/16.

You see Virginia has many health issues and decided in the midst of my time there with my mom that she didn’t want to do all the drastic measures to give herself the possibility of more life time. She is ready to die.

This reality strikes me not only as very very sad because Virginia is an absolutely wonderful woman but as incredibly courageous and strong. She made that decision on her own and shared it with me…this stranger who just happened to be in the room with my mom.

Just how one can make that decision I’ve often wondered about and recognize that it must take such tremendous strength to face ones death right in the eye. I can’t imagine how I could do ever do that. I suppose one never does till that very moment is in our minds eye staring us down.

I mentioned this book to Virginia and also “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande because I thought they would help her and her family too. She wrote the titles down.

When my mom went back into the hospital again due to a TIA stroke, I visited Virginia once again and decided to take the book with me and offer it to her to read. She was delighted.

I checked in with her over the next couple of days and she was reading it and it was helpful to her. A friend of mom’s picked up the book from her for me on mom’s last day at the hospital when I was at my moms resting.

Virginia wrote me a note letting me know the book was wonderful and gave her great insight about one’s finality. I know this book is helping her in what ever time this dear woman has left.

I treasure her note. It brings tears each time I read it. She gives me courage and strength and once again I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet her and come to know a little about her.

I finished the book yesterday. But I am far from finished with this book that I will read several times more and of course recommend and share it with others too just as that person who gave it to me encouraged me to do. How can I not!

So you see, I know that I was given this book so that dear Virginia might read it at the very time she probably needed to read it…isn’t it amazing how life does unfold just as it is and just as it does?!

What thoughts do you have about what it would be like to know that you had very limited time left in your life? What would you do and not do? What’s most important to you? Who is most important in your life?

Do Contact Me together in Grief Therapy we can explore some of those questions.

It took a village of people for me to be able to walk down to my special spot to see the sunrise this morning. That village includes my wonderful husband, multiple health care providers for not only my many health problems but my mothers as well, a boat load of support from family, friends, coworkers and my employer and of course three very sweet kitties.

It has been a wild ride that isn’t over yet. I came home from my mom’s late this week and after a week of not enough rest I crashed Friday afternoon into a state of exhaustion. My own recovery slid backwards. As the weekend progresses so am I, slowly on the mend once again.

With all the tragedy and difficulties in the world right now, it can be hard to have faith in humanity. There are plenty of people who are very troubled and doing horrendous things to other people around the globe.

My very own village has renewed my faith in human kind.

I don’t have to look far to see all the good in all the people who have been there supporting me especially over the last two months. I would not be writing this if it weren’t for each one of them.

To each one of you who’ve been there for me I am very grateful and so very fortunate to have you in my life! I thank you from the bottom of my heart and then some!

Who are you grateful to have in your life and village of supporters?

Gifts come in all sized packages and in all kinds of ways to us and often when least expected too.

In the midst of my own health challenges my mom ended up with an emergency heart catheterization procedure this week and a stent was put in to correct the 95% blockage in her main artery. Fortunately she is doing well and I have been able to rest up at her house and hopefully will not slide backwards health wise myself!

There have been many gifts with all this “stuff” happening in my life from beautiful sunrises, to finally getting to see a gorgeous sunset this summer, to tender moments with my furry cuddly little kitties, to having some friends of my mom in law buy us all dinner on my mom in law’s birthday, to my mom’s blockage being diagnosed before she had a heart attack! And there are undoubtedly at least a thousand other gifts I have been given in the last two months.

A very special gift given recently has been the opportunity to visit a bit with my mom’s 95 year old hospital roommate who is articulate and gracious and you would not in a minute guess her to be anywhere close to being 95! She is a dear woman who after having been at the hospital for a week did not have any flowers at her bedside and only one visitor that I noticed too. I decided to get her some flowers when I picked up some for my mom. Victoria was so delighted with them and so grateful. She beamed.

We can really make someone’s day with very little effort!

I think those people who so kindly paid for my dinner made me think just a bit about that reality. They inspired me.

I called Victoria with a book title just a little bit ago and she told me that I had been a stranger to her but not anymore. I shed a happy tear after I hung up the phone.

We just never know where our daily travels will take us and who we will have the opportunity to meet along the way.

Victoria I am so very grateful for having met you! You’ve been a gift to me when I really needed to experience a gift like you.

What might you do to make someone’s day a little brighter today?

By the dawns early light…

What an absolutely beautiful Independence Day sunrise it was here this morning! I am so grateful for so very much today and that list starts with the beautiful sunrise I was so fortunate to witness!

Over the last several weeks I’ve been graced with so many people that have helped me and today I find myself reflecting with great gratitude on each of those individuals.

From my husband whose been concerned and supportive and helpful picking up slack around the house, to my kitties who’ve offered sweet loving just when I’ve needed it the most, to my clinic manager whose reassured me to park my guilt at the door and take care of myself week after week, to my 3 colleagues who’ve covered my group nights at the office week after week, to support staff at my office who have called and canceled and rescheduled my client case load week after week, to the Holland Hospital employees from Human Resources who have been kind, caring and helpful to a Wellness Coach who helped me let go and allow myself more badly needed rest to all the medical staff who have drawn blood and examined me and given me tests and cared in the special ways that they do, to my doctor and nurse practitioner who’ve been there for me again and again and all the staff at that office to who’ve helped me, to my dear friends and family members who’ve called, come visit, wrote me notes and let me know they care…

I am most grateful to all of you and to have each one of you in my life!

I am also grateful to live in this country of ours as messed up as it is at times I would not want to live elsewhere, to live in this lovely small town of Holland and to have my little cottage in the woods I call home in this gorgeous area that affords me the opportunity to get up each morning and watch the sun rise yet once again!

Happy Independence Day to you!

What are you grateful for today?

My early morning sunrise walks have grown increasingly therapeutic for me over the last month. I would wager that there are no two sunrises alike just like they say that there are no two snow flakes that are alike. I process some times even out loud on my slow journey into the sunrise. I value this time outside immensely.

My mind remains much like the energizer bunny raring to go and my body is still much like an inch work slowly moving along.

No matter how much I want to do, and just when I think I’ve simplified my wants down and let a want-to-do go, there is even more I have to say no to doing…like that energizer bunny it just keeps on moving but by that I mean, having to say no to moving as much as I want to be doing!

This reality at moments has been very difficult for me to accept. It seems that after a month I “should” be better as in well-er than I am. But I ain’t! And no matter how much I want to be, it is what it is, and I ain’t well-er than I am. And of course this is taking way longer than I had hoped and wanted it to take…not in my time, insert life lesson learning time here!

I am learning how to better prioritize what is most important to me. This is a gift, a valuable life skill that I’ve been given because of all this I know for certain.

I found a very important book that is helping me come to be more at peace with being so unwell: Coping with the Psychological Effects of Illness, Strategies to Manage Anxiety and Depression by Dr. Fran Smith, Dr. Carina Eriksen and Professor Robert Bor. I highly recommend this book if you or a loved one is dealing with a debilitating illness.

The very first paragraph had me hooked: “Having a physical illness affects us psychologically in two main ways. On one level it is an individual matter that can affect how we think, behave and feel, both emotionally and physically. On another level it affects our relationships with people around us, our patterns of support and our life roles.”

The start of the second paragraph made it hard for me to put the book down: “A health problem does not have the same effects on everyone. There are factors that influence how people react to, cope with and adjust to becoming unwell.”

I’ve been highlighting more of the sentences in the book than not! This book will help you and your loved ones understand what happens when someone becomes chronically ill or suddenly very ill.

It is amazing to me how things I’ve needed, people I’ve needed have come my way just when I’ve needed them too! I am blessed.

If is weren’t for this lengthy illness I would have missed out on seeing so many beautiful sunrises…see there are good things that come from not so good things after all!

What is something good that has come from a challenging situation in your life recently?

I happen to believe that things do happen just as they are supposed to happen in our lives and that we learn a great many life lessons from each and every one of those happenings.

It was meant for me to be as sick as I have been. I’ve been learning a lot from it about a great many things including myself that I would not have learned other wise. For this extended illness I am actually grateful as strange as that is to say.

One of the things I realized today is that I currently have a lot of “everything is as it should be” some what difficult things going on in my own life and in the lives of people who are in my life. It seems like my plate is full. And, this is making it really challenging for me at times to easily go to the ”everything is as it should be” place of acceptance and peace inside!

There are simple things like the challenges of getting around the small town I live in because of major road projects. It seemingly is not easy to get just about anywhere without coming into contact with a road project that has an impact on the drive and time it takes. Then there are health problems for special people in my life that are worrisome. And then, I have a young second cousin who died unexpectedly after jumping out of a moving vehicle. His extended family members have health issues and a cousin of mine has been very stressed dealing with all that is on her plate with all of this. Being home I’ve been able to be in touch with her and offer support. Thankfully, ‘everything is…as it should be!”

And then, there is my own condition that is taking a very long time to slowly improve. I’ve completed a third week at home of mostly resting on the couch for most of my day. I try to go for a slow walk each morning when I am up for it. I’ve been able to do some grocery shopping for us which takes all my energy and effort to complete. I am able to do only a fraction of my normal daily activity. I get very tired and am weak but can see slow improvements thankfully.

I’ve had to let go of attending a conference I so badly wanted to attend and am letting go of an overnight trip up north next week that I was really looking forward to doing. And this is all because I am simply not up to it.

Instead of a trip up north we decided to have a stay-cation right here in good old River City AKA Holland MI and play tourist here for a few days. This way I can come home and nap in between as needed in the comfort of my own home. We can do as much or as little as needed and still do the rest another time rather easily too! There are many things in this area I’ve wanted to do and not done. Perhaps next week I can cross one or two of those things off my list!

I want to do more than I really can. It has not been easy to accept my limitations!

Thankfully I know “this too shall pass” but, of course, I want what I want to do right now and I can’t. These last five weeks have helped me to better understand what people who develop disabilities must endure and what it is like when getting older happens to us all. I only hope I can use my experience to better empathize with people in my clinical practice.

I’ve been learning how to pace myself, and to say no to me when I want to tackle too much at one time or simply too much to begin with. I suspect learning this will perhaps help me not only today but into my future too.

All this is meant for many reasons I know way deep inside. I’m learning a lot!

I went through a grief process a week ago and found myself frustrated with those people who exposed me to the initial virus. I thought about saying a few things to them so that they might think before doing something like that in the future too. I chose rather to keep my mouth shut and worked on accepting that “everything is as it should be” instead. At moments this has not been easy for sure!

It has been important for me to step back and learn life lessons from the choices that I’ve made. I contributed to my condition by being careless about washing my hands. Not so anymore! I have hand sanitizer I use now when out in public and wipe down my grocery cart with those wipes that stores provide too! I hope to not contract such a virus again and I will do my best towards that end unlike before.

I, of course, want to have control and in reality have little other than working on my own attitude and my “own stuff” as I call it…we all got “stuff” to work on in life we just do. This is where my power lies.

I find it most helpful to take my morning sunrise walk. I feel very connected to the world around me at that hour. It is beautiful and peaceful and as I slowly walk into the sunrise I feel the arms of the universe surrounding me letting me know it’s all ok!

Ain’t life grand! Thankfully we learn more every day! And don’t stop learning and discovering more about ourselves till we take our last breath too!

But, please do remember to wash your hands often and buy a big bottle of hand sanitizer too!

What life lessons have you learned about “your stuff” today?

Dear Dad,
It will be Father’s Day tomorrow and you will not be at the table once again to celebrate it with us. I miss you. This year your birthday, Father’s Day and my birthday are hitting me hard. My grief is raw. While it still seems surreal that you are gone it is very much evident that you are in fact gone. I keep wondering how it can be that someone is just simply no longer here. I do however feel you ever present around me, in the morning sunshine, in the call of the song birds and in the eyes of my dear little cats your spirit hugs me and I am comforted once again.

So Happy Father’s Day Dad! I thank you for giving me life and for all the countless ways you gave to my life and still do!
I love you-
Jude

Do Contact Me with Grief Therapy you can learn to navigate your way.

Yes, my mind tells me it wants to be active doing things as I usually do and my body isn’t cooperating and keeps saying no way…I wish they would get it together!

I had a bout with the Norovirus a couple weeks ago and missed a whole week of work…that was not fun and, you do not EVER want to get that. I’m just sayin’!

And then, last Sunday spots developed on my belly and shingles were confirmed on Monday and I’ve been home ever since mostly on the couch exhausted yet wanting to get up and go and I can’t. These two conditions are related. I would not likely have gotten the shingles if I had not had the Norovirus. Lucky me!

I had shingles 20 years ago that was diagnosed quickly and like now I got on meds right away and they didn’t get bad; except for how shingles plays out on inside me that is. They are not painful and only mildly itchy—I recall itching terribly with chicken pox as a kid fortunately that has not been the case since then. But, for me the shingles wipe me out physically and emotionally. I only wish I could remember how long it took me to get over these symptoms the last time. But then I am 20 years older too….

I’ve learned a lot since getting the Norovirus about a great many different things. And once again know way deep down that everything is, as it should be too!

I would not have gained the awareness’s I now have without having gone though all that I have been experiencing. Interestingly, I am very very grateful for this too!

I really needed to learn the stuff that I’ve been learning! Since I am pig headed and stubborn at times, I do tend in my life, to have learned the hard way about many things too!

There is a meditation practice call “willing hands”. What you do is simply turn your palms upward…just try it and see what happens. If you are like me you will notice a shift in your thinking that happens. It is a very helpful tool when trying to open yourself up to just about anything.

I was supposed to attend a conference in the Chicago area this coming Monday and Tuesday that I soooooo badly wanted to attend to learn from the trainers and be spoiled in the luxury of the hotel I planned to stay in too. I picked out some wonderful workshop sessions and was very enthused with the programs and speakers.

While my mind so very much wants to go my dear body has other plans. I knew Friday morning when I woke up that I really was not up to the drive at all. So, I looked on the Amtrack website and found a train that left out of Kalamazoo mid afternoon today and booked the very last seat. I could drive to Kalamazoo much easier than negotiate through all the traffic in my emotional and physical state I thought. Getting the very last seat seemed like that was meant to be too!

My dear mom was trying to talk some sense in me for a couple of days about not going but my stubborn teenager mind wouldn’t hear of it at all. I was right back where I was in my mind as a teen too thinking I knew more that she did. Go away I don’t want to hear it. If I was a teen of today’s generation I would have rolled my eyes I am sure!

This is amusing because more recently she and I have had some role reversals and I’ve felt like the mom telling her things like to put her hat and gloves on this winter when visiting her and taking her out shopping! She refused the gloves I might add and later wished she had taken them after all too! We laughed about that. See mom if you’d only listened to me…

I told mom on Friday that I would not go if I was not up to it, yet she worried and pressed me and I held firm. My husband let me know he was worried about me and the trip too that afternoon. And I reassured him I would not make it if not up to it even on the train.

Friday after napping before dinner on the couch and I fell asleep right after dinner on the couch and then got into bed before 9. And, my body started to ache. I have involuntary body jerking movements as one of my symptoms that got worse that evening as well.

At 11:30 pm my dear cat Gurney woke me up. She had a hairball I later learned and after vomiting up her food had a hungry tummy. I glanced at the clock and asked her to leave me alone and became aware of just how horrible I was feeling physically and well, my mind finally got in sync with my body and told me I was not even up to a train ride to Chicago let alone a two day conference far away from my couch and bed. I recall turning my palms upward willingly accepting this reality and fell rather quickly back to sleep.

I thank you Gurney for enduring that hair ball and waking me up. I might not have come to that realization without your help! And to my husband for cleaning it all up…it was a rather nasty episode too.

On Saturday as soon as I woke up, I canceled the hotel and train ride thankfully getting refunds on those and tried to reach the conference people via phone to leave a message but could not leave one. So, I emailed the person who registers people for the conference canceling and asked her to please give my space to someone who really wanted to go that was not able to do so. She wrote back and told me she has someone in mind and wished me well.

I think this person whom ever it is, is the one meant to attend those workshops and not me. I really do.

It amazes me just exactly how things not only happen for a reason but happen exactly just as they are meant to be!

Not only have I been learning what I needed to learn throughout all this but someone who really needs to hear and experience that conference and those sessions I picked out is getting to do just that. And all is well and soon I will be too if I let myself rest up some more!

What has been happening in your life recently just as it should be?

I love early morning walks. On the weekends I so enjoy taking my cup of coffee out for a stroll with me. A few weeks ago I went round the corner and added a second mile to my morning adventure. You just never know who or what you will find in the wee hours of the morning.

I scared a small deer not too long ago, have said hello to many a rabbit munching away, chased squirrels and chipmunks down the path, had Canada geese honk at me, and watched some wild turkey’s doing what most likely was “fooling around”—and right in plain view too!

And, there are always the song birds chirping merrily away. I love hearing their tunes. There is one that reminds me of my very happy cat Dunkin. If Dunkin were a bird she’d be that one. She’d be happy as can be singing away much like she dances around the house lightly and gracefully and ever so sweetly too. She reminds me of Audrey Hepburn—beautiful, sleek and full of grace.

Around that corner is a delightful path through some woods with curves and slight bends and you really don’t know what lies up a head in spots. The sun streams in brightly through the trees in the morning along that part of my path. It is quite beautiful. It is my slice of heaven. I can pretend I’m far away and not see the road that really is just 10 feet away.

I am peace filled and very spiritually connected on my morning walk. I know I am not alone and all is well.

Much like each new day, I never know who I will encounter when I begin my morning venture or where my walk will take me either.

My path took me to think about Dorothy lost and afraid and wandering her yellow brick road searching for answers and the great Wizard all the time hoping to find her way back home. She built a support system around her as she followed that yellow brick road. They helped each other and learned so very much along the way. Life is kind of just like that isn’t it!

As I venture down my yellow brick road I am filled with gratitude as I reflect on all the wonderful people in my life, lessons I’ve learned from the many challenges life has brought my way and all that I have been given—I have so very much.

My yellow brick road does make me feel like I’m all ready at home!

But then, after filling myself all up well prepared for the rest on my day, I get to wander back home. After all, there really just is no place like home!

What twists and turns has your life’s yellow brick road brought to you today? What can help prepare you to meet those challenges on this very day?

Hallelujah! Found at last and not a moment too soon too!

Our dearest little Dunkin’s very favorite baby had been missing for a couple of weeks till just a couple days ago. My husband and I both searched high and low for the ratty little green mouse she likes to carry around and chirp with happily as she does. I spent time crawling around looking under all kinds of things in all kinds of places more than once too.

For some reason my husband decided to look not only under his dresser once again but up under it this time. And low and behold the little very well loved mousey was resting there where it had undoubtedly been tossed up on a brace like shelf well hidden from view. What possessed him to look there I don’t know. We are all grateful that he did.

It has been wonderful to hear our little Dunkin chirping merrily around the house once again. She is such a joyful little cat and it is especially amusing to watch and hear her playing with her baby.

The universe has a way of providing for us and so often in ways we don’t realize till we look beyond the surface.

Just a couple of weeks ago I was thinking that I needed to plan for some time away from work and give myself the opportunity to rest, sit, read, knit, get with some friends, have time with my husband and do whatever I needed to do in the moment for some quality “me” time. And I did in fact make plans down the road to accomplish just that.

And, then I get sick with this crud that has wiped me out completely and forced me to sit and rest and really do “me” time. I’ve had no choice. I guess I needed this rest time more than I realized and sooner than I anticipated.

It’s often hard for me to know when to say when. This is a good lesson for me to remember.

That wise voice inside knew. I need to learn to hear and heed her call sooner!

Dunkin and her mousey
Sittin’ in a tree
K-i-s-s-i-n-g…

What has the universe provided for you that you’ve really needed recently?