Growing with gratitude for life's challenges
“Do you have time to talk?” Sweet of her to ask, my 93-year-old mother. Of course I have time.“What’s up Mom?”“I’ve been thinking that before I die, I should call Karen. What do you think?” I draw a blank. “Who is Karen?”“Reg’s other daughter – she doesn’t know he was her Dad, and well, since […]
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The thing about my mother and I is that the intimacy has not always been healthy. The roles have mostly been reversed from the first meltdown that I witnessed at age five to the second when I was just twelve and then again when I was fifteen. I don’t know where Mom went in those […]
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This week, I want to talk about intimacy. For many years, I limited thoughts of intimacy to sexuality, however; age and challenges have altered that perception. The desire for intimacy remains. Defining what that is has become a recurring question. Then I came across K E Garland’s post: Mental Health Matters: Learning to Be Intimate, […]
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Frivolous, giddy, flippant, lighthearted, silly….words I might never have used to describe myself. Ric is trying to rehabilitate me. Take for example, an outing to replace one sketching pencil. The singles were sold out at our local art store, so I bought a whole set. It took quite a bit of convincing. The single pencils […]
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For Bird Weekly: Wading Birds
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“It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft […]
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Nature herself seems confused these days – flowers linger despite the frosty chill. Inside, we prepare to hunker down for the cold weather, knowing that there is always potential for hindered travel. Isolation plays with the mind, conjures certainty of malfeasance. Ric’s recovery is slow and his spirit is lagging. I feel somehow left behind, […]
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“What’s in this box?” “Good question. To be honest every time I look at the contents, I just…” “… glaze over?” “Exactly.” Turns out there were pens and lightbulbs and notepads, and something Ric’s been looking for. Likely the contents of a junk drawer – you know, the stuff you put out of sight because […]
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It was a neighbour girl that started it. We played together one day – a rare occurrence, as she seldom came outside. “How do you know you’re not adopted?” she hissed at me, as if to say: You don’t know everything. I started to answer, but then, the words got stuck. How did I know? […]
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The meeting was both exciting and a letdown. Exciting because it was my first attempt at a social event in over three years, having been bed bound all that time. A letdown as soon as the participants talked about early morning walks as the best way to spot birds. Mornings were still tough for me, […]
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