Self Care Plan

If you know someone going through a bad breakup, someone grieving a loss, someone who lives with mental illness, or someone going through a new or ongoing health crisis, share this image with them to save on their phone or computer.

If you’re going through a tough season and *need* to ask for help, I pray you have the courage to do so, and a compassionate soul who will answer that call.

Sometimes what we need wins over what we want. Our pride never wants to concede in that battle of wills.

There’s no shame or guilt in doing the right thing for your survival. Don’t let those ugly whispers (of guilt or shame) predict how you should live ♡

If you are struggling today, please call your State Behavioral Health Crisis Line. They are professionals and are trained to listen.

What are your basics?

If you made a list, what would be on it?

What helps you feel like a human being again?

Maybe you like to brush your hair, or maybe drinking coffee in the morning does the trick. Some people must first put on lipstick, and for others, it’s saying hello to their furry friends that begins to restore their equalibrium.

Core Basics:

-Drink Water

-Eat Something

-Take your Pills

-Brush your Teeth

-Wash up

-Change Clothes

Secondary Basics:

-Move your body/Stretch

-Read something inspiring

-Call/contact a loved one

-Pray, Rest, Meditate

-Do something fun/hobby

You’ll notice, I didn’t add “Eat something healthy” because sometimes the best we can do is eat anything at all. After you have fed your stomach, hydrated thoroughly, and you’ve taken your meds and/or vitamins, make sure to feed your soul.

Feeding my soul is just as nourishing as feeding my body. If all I set my eyes and heart on is social media and television for a week, I can’t be surprised if I’m feeling nervous and low by the end of the week. I love the term “Inspirationalizing” as an active verb. We have to go out of our way to find uplifting articles for hope, books and quotes by our role models for wisdom, seeking out words of wisdom from your faith for guidance.

What ways do you like to feed your soul?

Since my divorce, I have overhauled my self care. In a relationship, you each have a schedule and you’re attuned to the other person’s needs. They know you, and are able to remind you of your needs- you lean on one another, and develop patterns. These habits and patterns had become  engrained over 15 years. But patterns can be changed- and self care is a pattern that we all have to develop.

As I continue adjusting to my single life, in time, I’ve learned to check in with myself with as much effort as I would have my spouse. Having a schedule of sorts helps, and prioritising is especially important for me. In the beginning, the transition was especially difficult. It took time. If you are facing a transition, give yourself time… Things will find their place again. Please don’t neglect your well being in the mean time.

Whichever self care step you’re struggling with, find a way to make it easier on you to accomplish. For instance, if washing your hair has become your arch nemesis, then get creative. Maybe it’s due to chronic pain in your arm, or a slow healing back surgery. In that case, keep a bottle of no-rinse shampoo handy. Keep it with you at all times so you can do your hair washing at the times you feel able.

Similarly, if it’s tooth brushing that you can’t seem to fit in twice each day, know that you’re not alone and don’t be ashamed. Get creative.

There are plenty of solutions to make your personal care work for your special needs and your unique schedule.

What are some goals you have on your self care list?

What self care would you like to set as a priority for yourself this year?

“Life will break you” quote Louise Erdrich

The Interrupted Kiss by Amandine Van Ray

“Life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won’t either,

for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,

or betrayed, or left, or hurt,

or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree

and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,

wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich

It’s the love that hurts the most: Poem

The August Weary Soul by Natalia Drepina

~It’s the love that hurts the most~

Is that you?

Is that your voice I heard whispering to me last night?

In a dream,

In a nightmare,

In a moment, I felt you again.

I rolled around in the sticky sickly pieces of our past.

I awoke covered in your aftermath.

Threatened by your promises,

Violence to my heart,

The remnants of our love still cut me,

Shards slice through my consciousness,

Ripping me apart.

 

More like a death than a divorce

Secretly, some days I think if he had died instead, this would all be less complicated. I know you’re cringing. I am going to lose some of you right away for saying that. It’s totally perverse, and I feel so much shame for thinking it, but I have thought it.

It’s like when I hear people with a rare disease say they wish they had cancer instead. CANCER? What?! No one wants cancer. That’s a horrible thing to say, but when doctors, family and society can’t comprehend how severely you are suffering, it is not rare at all for people to say, “At least if I said I had cancer, people would take my suffering seriously.”

When a loved one passes, that memory is in tact. In time, the very best memories rise to the surface. Their imperfections drift away. You cling most to the joy and love you shared, and their best attributes shine. That’s what I want for him. I want his legacy to be in tact, and to be part of my heart… for him not to have broken it.

In a divorce, even if you shared a long, loving and sweet relationship, the breakup and divorce process turns it all sour. I wish there were a way to put 16 years in a time capsule, and then just sweep away the last 9 months.

I want so badly to remember him as he used to be. It’s impossible to look back at the relationship with the love and sweetness it deserves without the ending shading every single moment beforehand. That’s how bitterness blooms.

I don’t want the best years of my life to be erased by a few months of the worst. Many have advised to just let go of it, but you can’t just punch out half of your life. I can’t move from this so quickly. Especially not when it ended so abruptly. It deserves to be felt. I loved him that much that I’m willing to feel it all.

I want to grieve the man I love like the widow grieves her departed. I want to cherish the love we shared like the treasure I believed it to be. I want to bury our marriage so it rests in peace. 

My other secret is that I pray for him. That he is well, and God is taking care of him.

I always thought that I’d see you again

So it has been 9 months since my husband and I parted ways. For us it was not a gradual thing. Well, maybe for him it was….

[I’m going to get through this without talking about his personal details.]

On my end, I knew he had been struggling all year, and I was trying to be uplifting. One day, I was texting him love messages, silly photos (which are now just embarrassing), funny videos, and anything to try to help him smile at work. The very next day, I was living at my parents’, confused, and unsure what happened the day before, or why.

I don’t remember much about that conversation after he got home. I do remember messaging a friend in a daze asking what I should take with me, and Google searching: “what do you take in case of a fire.”

In some ways, 9 months has flown by, and in other ways, it has dragged on much too slowly. It has felt impossible at times for my heart to catch up to all that has occurred, the choices that were no longer mine to make, the quickly unraveling dreams that were out of my control. I was often reminded that I had experience with surrendering, and making peace with pain, and could do it again if forced to. (I think people with disabilities are resilient in that way, and though it feels like every day is a fight, we learn adaptability which is a gift!) On the other hand, I felt continually impatient. If you have ever waited for test results that would almost surely come back with an outcome you don’t want to hear, something within you cannot help but crave the knowledge of it, no matter how bad. Almost like the tree of good and evil. Waiting was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. A part of me wanted to know my future in certain terms, and with immediacy. The rest of me was at peace to wait a lifetime in limbo, however impractical that would be.

That afternoon was our last conversation as husband and wife; I didn’t know it was goodbye at the time. You may remember, I wrote A Season of Waiting just after. Now you know the inspiration behind the message.

And while so many months can seem like a very long time, with a new life emerging beneath me, there are still huge landmines that explode in my face when I least expect it. Several exploded from the mail box right after breakfast this morning. It was a hard day, but not the first, not the last, and I’ve certainly not seen the last good day either. The “process” ended just last month, but THIS process is only beginning.

I’m trying to grow accustomed to managing life on my own. …Without having someone to share these pitfalls and triumphs with. Loss and heartbreak is certainly not new to humans; and I will adjust to it better and better. I confide in God, and it is incredibly humbling to share my worries with the creator of the universe.

I’m thankful to be ending my day with you, eating bacon and drinking chocolate coconut milk. (I get to eat that kind of thing, because I have POTS… at least that’s my story.) That IS my story… at least part of it.

Have a good night. And avoid those landmines.

New page, Disabled and Divorced

PS, Check out the counter for my sister’s wedding at the bottom of the page. Getting close!

 

Multiple Sensitivities…of the Heart

Breathe. Don’t pass out. Keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other. Pay no attention to your pain. Focus on your breathing. Focus on your legs not giving out. Don’t fall down! Ok, throwing up would be the worst right now. Here come the shakes… Breath girl! The light? Do we have to do the light? Oh no, there goes your head. I can’t see, I can’t see… This hurts too much. I can’t do this. I have to do it. Okay, let’s do it.

*****

This was this morning in physical therapy. My physical therapist comes by once each week. Some days are good, some days are bad. Today was a great day, so we decided to do something I’ve never done before… at least not for almost 5 years: go outside.

When I go to doctor’s appointments, I’m usually taken out from my bed in a wheelchair. I have a face mask on, ear plugs, a head set, and I keep my head down between my knees to keep my blood pressure from plummeting, so I don’t faint. If I’m in the seated position too long, over with my head down, I have to get out of the chair and lay down on the ground with my knees tucked to regulate my blood pressure, breathing, and head pain. (Laying in an elevator or doctor’s office waiting room hasn’t made me any friends-yet.) When I get to the car, I lay in the backseat under pillows and blankets for arduous the drive.

Today, I wasn’t going anywhere but the porch. It was a warm overcast day, and happened to be very quiet on our road. What better day than this to do an “exposure” to sound and light? I don’t have OCD or an anxiety disorder and I’m not in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but desensitizing your body and brain to stressors and pain are very similar in traditional Physical Therapy. My PT uses Cardiac Rehab Therapy and Pain Rehab Therapy with me to get me stronger and moving… and it IS working. My fatigue is lessening, I’m stronger, I can tolerate more sound and light than I used to, I don’t pass out like before, and I’m progressing in general.

But today, there was another sensitivity I didn’t expect to encounter…

I bent over my brand new walker, slowly moving out toward the door for the first time, swapping my eye-mask for dark tinted sunglasses. Because I was pretty much blinded by the daylight, I was trying to maneuver awkwardly out the front door. My brother had joined in with my physical therapist to help me on my pilgrimage. I was so focused on all of the physical aspects written in the first paragraph that it caught me so off guard when my physical therapist wrapped his hand around my waste and grabbed my hand to help me out. That’s the moment I choked back tears. That’s the pain that hurt the worst.

It wasn’t the horrible pain in my head, the ringing in my ears, the screaming sound of birds chirping, or my heart racing from trying to be on my feet for too long, it was the caring touch of another person that reminded me so much of my ex-spouse… that almost took me down.

Maybe that sounds creepy to you, but if you have a condition like CRPS/RSD in which people around you are unsure where and how they can touch you, so much that they decide it’s best not to at all, you understand the touch aspect of this. Or, if you are no longer with your once-significant other, you will understand missing supportive touch, like a pat on the back, or an outreached hand when they notice you need help down a step.

Today was 2 firsts. I went out onto the porch successfully. I knocked out another goal! Wahoo! I turned my low pain day into a triumph. It was also a day I realized how much I miss supportive touch. I really want to find ways to incorporate touch back into my life, however physically painful, so it isn’t this emotionally painful to be without.

“Touch has a memory.”
― John Keats