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Showing posts from May, 2018

My mid-life breakthrough

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Today I hope I find the energy to do everything I need to get done.  There is so much. Sometimes it is hell having autoimmune issues. And, while I am finally learning and understanding my body and its needs more than ever before, I am unable to make all the signs and symptoms disappear. That frustrates me. Last summer I started noticing new symptoms, well not really new but now more consistent that ever before. I've always had issues with my stomach, I just put them all off as stress - a life of stress but it was getting to the point I was scared there was something else going on. I had a hard time keeping food in me, especially when my co-workers and I would grab a bite to eat.  I didn't know what was going on.  I'd eat and within 20 minutes I had to run, quite literally run, to a bathroom. My allergies were out of control, I was constantly tired and just sick. My joints were constantly red and inflamed. I was walking around puffy but feeling malnourished. It was get

Sometimes I want to scream, "STOP!"

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"Just stop!" Is what I want to scream, but I know they will not hear me. I meet with a lot of women struggling with healing from abuse. I wish society knew just exactly how rampant that fact is - the struggle is real. Too real, in fact, that filling your life with distractions is a lot easier to do than digging deep and facing those horrors once suffered. They have to be faced so they can be nurtured and healed. The distractions I am talking about is running to the next wounded male to be his "be all and end all." Those hurting males will tell that woman no one else can help him, no one else understands him like they do. No one else. The bond is forged. A bond that will soon turn into yet another festering nightmare - cycles repeat. That caring "understanding" woman will put all her needs aside for him - the more she does, the more he will expect and the less he will appreciate. It will not be long before that relationship is all about keeping hi

Growing up in Evanston

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I was born in Burbank, California back in 1967. My dad was a driver for Schneider Ambulance. How he landed in California, I am not absolutely sure of as he was brought up in Evanston, IL.  All I know was it was after he returned from duty during the Korean War. When I was just under the age of two, my parents picked up everything and moved to my father's childhood hometown, where his parents still lived in a home they had rented since my father was just a boy. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' home. That little house sitting off an alley on Florence Ave. in Evanston.  It was a small home. To get to the main living area, you had to climb a set of stairs - the main house was raised and below was a very large basement, that also included a bedroom and shower area, even though it wasn't finished like homes of today. That is where my Grandfather took his afternoon naps while Grandma and I sat in the kitchen peeling potatoes or snapping the ends off of green be

The spring of my living years

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Finally, spring is here. The calendar claims it has been spring for over a month now, but our weather battled that transition from the cold days of winter to a budding new day, finally-now-we can say that spring is truly here. The air is warmer, the spring rains are falling and the flowers are starting on their journey to one day, soon, fully blossoming. I may have some stressors of yesteryear clinging on but every day now when I leave the house and walk outside I can smell and feel the air of new beginnings all around me, including in myself. I said early on as 2017 turned to 2018 that I could sense this would be a year of transitions, a year of changes. With each day passing, I am noticing something within me-I am getting stronger in walking towards goals I've held close to me for years. Ambitions that once I felt were just dreams and distractions to get me through some rough times. I think the turning point was finally accepting to be patient with myself, something I tell m