The Quiet Space

Several years ago, our kiddo was hit with a heavy health diagnosis that flipped our lives upside down. The anniversary is coming up in the next couple of months and for some reason I started thinking about it today. Keep in mind (well, you wouldn’t know this about me unless you know me in real life, but…) I am a hippie. We’re talking born at home, homeschooled, (we shopped at Earth Fare b/f it was cool to do so!), barefoot most of the time (I’m still that way :)), free range/outdoors as much as the weather permitted, rarely ate anything that wasn’t prepared at home, card carrying member of 4-H (my hubby still gives me &%#@ about my award ribbons from those days), no red dye, you get the picture. While I may have been off & on the wagon of hippie-ness throughout the years, by the time said kiddo was 2 or 3yrs old, I was back “on” and she grew up being the kid who was always trying to trade her healthy goodies for the more “fun” foods her friends had at the lunch table. So when things went awry with her health, I went into full melt-down mode (i.e. I felt as though something I had or hadn’t done had made my child sick). Obviously, it wasn’t my fault, but dang that lovely thing called “mom guilt” which then created a first for me, I had a breakdown. Not the type that left me needing to go away for a while (maybe I needed that, but god help anyone that would have tried to do it) but the kind that leaves you reeling, the kind that knocks you flat on your back, the kind that had me speed walking the cul-de-sac in our neighborhood to try and get my thoughts together to formulate a plan of how to proceed. I’m getting to the gratitude part, I promise. Two months before %#&@ hit the fan, I had started a full-time job (something I hadn’t done since my daughter was born) and with that job, came some wonderful health insurance (we did private pay before that), there, that is my gratitude as promised. The point of this long-winded story is, even when you are melting down (I have more melt-down stories to tell, don’t you worry ;)) there is always something to be grateful for. In those days, health insurance was all I could find to be thankful for sometimes, that was (and is) enough. Other days, I’m so full of (well $&#@, yes, but also) gratitude that the list is a mile long. Today, I’m grateful for You, dear reader who has stuck it out this far 🙂