Out of the ashes rises a Phoinex, in the dirt a dove.

I haven’t said too much about my mother recently, because for the most part there was nothing new (good) to report, but unfortunately she has taken a bit of a turn for the worse, she was rushed to the hospital yesterday because she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t walk. She has Pneumonia and it just doesn’t look good. (there I go again with my optimist attitude).
We are going to deal with it, the best that we can, every day, expect the worst, hope for the best and leave the rest in Gods hands.
In the midst of all this sorrow, I feel like a new part of me is being born, a stronger willed, more responsible me, a person more able to adapt on her own, and forge her own path in life. A couple of things that I have evolved in as a person:

Acceptance/Confidence
My mother has always been my best friend, my cheerleader and my muse. When I was younger she was the one who would get head over heels excited about the things that I did, so in life I always used her excitement to judge how I did on something, I always wanted to impress her and make her proud (I found out recently from her that I have exceeded in doing that) But my mom won’t be around forever, I wont always have her around to make me feel good when I accomplish something. I have to be my own cheerleader now and honestly that took some getting used to, but I can now say that when my mom is too sick to be excited about something that I’ve done, I can take no offense to it, and I can still feel good about it.
Compassion
I was never really a compassionate child, but the older that I got and the less selfish I became, the more giving I became and I believe that is a big part of me today. It seems I become more compassionate every year, I want to give everyone everything, I want to be everyone’s savior. I want to fix everyone’s problems. But that obviously can have it’s downfalls as well. Because of that, I often times forgo my own sanity and health in order to help others. That I will agree is something I need to really work on, taking better care of myself and letting myself be a little selfish and say no from time to time. But back to the point, in general my mothers Illness has made me even MORE giving, loving and understanding of people’s problems and issues. I have always loved the quote “you never know what battles people are fighting privately, so try not to judge them based on what you see” and this is SO true. If Half of the people I work with KNEW the whole story with what I am dealing with mentally and emotionally lately, they would probably see why I’m so quiet half the time. Regardless, the spirit of the season has picked me up and danced me around, I feel it in my heart and my soul, something is different this year.

Carpe Diem
My mothers’ illness has most importantly made me a better mother, wife and general liver of life. Life is SO short and can be taken away from us so quickly and at any time. Realizing this has given me the ability to say “screw you” to small daily annoyances, dishes that don’t get done, a chore I ran out of time to get done, because I was enjoying quality time with my kid, work politics family drama ect. I am more apt now than was before to say “forgetaboutit” I move on, …..done. Onto the next obstacle. I sign up for as much fun stuff at work and elsewhere as I can socially handle, I make sure to really express how much I love my family and friends. I hold back no secrets or feelings, life is too damn short to do that!

Finding Peace and Solace
Each night after dinner, Hudson and I have a play date, then take a bath where we play some more,read a book have our night time snack, then I hold him in my arms while I watch T.V. with my nose in his hair taking in all his delicious babyness, kissing his juicy little cheeks and enjoying every minute of our snuggle before I put him to sleep. Then coming down stairs to my husbands arms, and falling into them. I find solace in these things at the end of a rough day, I know I still have my husband, my baby and my big stinky dog waiting at home for me to erase the day away. In the morning I do yoga or try to sneak out of bed early enough to get in some cardio. Those are things that I can do for myself,and those things are important to keeping my sanity in this difficult time.

It’s both amazing and sad how things such as this shape our lives and make us change most of the time for the better. Incidentally In writing this post, I got word that my mother was transferred to the ICU because they found a blood clot in her lung, this is actually a good thing, they believe it may have led to her pneumonia and swollen feet, wich would have led to her falling a lot in the past month, they think it may all be connected. We are just lucky that they found it.
If I can try and find the beauty in all of this muck, the good things, then I may be just fine…..Eventually.