Love and loss

     It's been a rough week. There has been a lot emotional bumps for me. The first one is hearing that Kevin's Grandmother passed away. I only met her once, and I know Kevin is not close to her, but she was still a part of the family, and it brings back other losses of grandparents and makes those feelings fresh again.
     Then the next day I heard that Mimi, an elephant at the Denver Zoo, has been put in hospice care. She is at least 53 years old and her health is starting to decline more rapidly. Her care takers believe it is just a matter of time now. I hate to have favorites amongst a species I adore so much. But Mimi is my girl. I just love her to pieces and hearing this tore me to shreds. I cried for half a day. I guess it's good to have time to prepare but this is not easy.

   Today I found out that Snow, Klondike's sister and one of Denver's Polar Bear miracles from 1994 passed away unexpectedly in her sleep last night at 17 years old. I was 11 years old when these two little guys were born. They were abandoned by their mother and hand raised at the Denver Zoo. I remember being in complete awe of the whole situation. I remember visiting them at the zoo nursery and seeing them laying there sucking on huge blocks of ice before they could even walk. I watched and listened to every story I could about them while they were growing up, following their every move. I cried when at a year old they were sent to their new home in Florida. I didn't think it was fair that after all the time spent loving and caring for them that they would just ship them off somewhere else. My 12 year old brain couldn't fathom it and didn't think it was fair at all. I went to visit them in Florida 8 years ago on my honeymoon. They've been a part of a HUGE chunk of my life. And now she is gone.
   

     So yeah, it's been a rough week. Made even rougher by the fact that everybody close to me does not really understand all of this loss and emotion. I am a very emotional person with a huge reliance on connections to people and things in my life so all of this has a more profound impact on me that it might have on other people. It feels pretty huge to me. It really sucks that I can't really share it with someone else close to me. I know I will be ok, I just get frustrated about that sometimes. It makes me feel isolated.

     On a positive note, On August 28th a new little girl was welcomed to the Elephant herd at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. She shares a birthday with my little man and she is a cutie. I celebrate and am so glad that they have had so much breeding success with these amazing animals. I hope some day I can be a part of something like that.

TTFN

I realized something today. I realized something very deep and important to me. Something that could potentially change everything for me. It scares the living daylights out of me to think about letting it in, and yet I look at it with such longing and need for it that I don't know how to not let it in. Today I realized who I am and why I feel like I have been chasing my tail for so long.

My whole life I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I wanted so badly for my children to know and feel all the love and patience and total adoration I had to give them. I knew I wanted to stay at home with them and be that mom that could give her children the gift of herself while they were young and impressionable. There were also things about being a stay at home mom that I didn't realize were part of the package. The isolation, the housework, the redundancy, days of whining, cranky, thankless children, worrying, sleep deprivation, etc. I didn't realize the days of the awesome payoffs of being a stay at home mom were often very few and far between.

I had a really hard time dealing with becoming a mother. Somewhere between the trauma that was my first childbirth experience, the hellish recovery, the postpartum depression, and feeling like nobody really understood what I was going through, I became anorexic.

When my daughter was about 11 months old I was finally able to admit that I had a problem and seek treatment. I did pretty well with it and by the time she was 2 and a half and I became pregnant again I felt like I was in a good place to have a healthy pregnancy and did everything I could to make sure that happened. And it did. My son was born healthy and happy and I was hopeful that this crappy part of my past was behind me.

I was wrong. Anorexia came back with a vengeance. I was a little quicker to get help this time but it was a harder fight. I felt like I was never going to be normal again. I felt pretty hopeless and everything I did in treatment at first was for my kids and my husband. Making sure I did it for them was the only way I could keep going. I had no self esteem and could not really fathom doing it for myself. There were some pretty dark times but, for the sake of my kids, I persisted. I was told that it would eventually get better. That you had to do the work before you could see the rewards.

Slowly the rewards started to trickle in. Every small step was celebrated. I really believed that if I kept going and got better that I could put this all behind me. That I could be ok and I could put this all behind me. It's been 3 years now and I came SO CLOSE. And then once again anorexia has come knocking on the door and I answered. But this time I couldn't understand WHY. I have worked so hard to move past this part of my life and it keeps coming back. WHY?!?!? I have learned to cope with things that I thought were a problem. One might come up once in a while but I'm pretty good at beating those things back. So then WHY is this happening again???

Then this morning as I was going through my list of stresses and what potential good could come of those things, something hit me like a ton of bricks. None of these things is REALLY the problem. None of these things is what keeps me on this endless cycle that makes me feel like I'm chasing my tail.  It is the fact that I've been trying to find myself, when all along I know who I am but can't be that person. I was raised to not be that person. It was engrained in me when I was growing up that the minute you have a family you cease to exist. From that point on you live for your children and do only what is best for them regardless of what you do or don't want.

And I really think that is why Ed (eating disorder) stepped in. To cope with the fact that in a day I went from a person to a care vessel that doesn't mean anything to anyone. Or at least that's the way I saw it and largely still do.

The problem with this revelation is that I don't know if there IS any way to fix it. Just time. Once the kids are grown up maybe I can regain a little bit of myself. I dunno. If there is ANYTHING left by then. I've been encouraged to do things for myself before and never have followed through. I think that is why. Because I truly believe that it's not acceptable for me to do that. But I tell people I will try just to appease them. And for a minute it makes me feel better to think of the possibility.

that's all I've got for now.
TTFN

Runnin'

Just got back from a run with my hunny :) I'm really glad he is trying this out with me. I'm so excited that we can do this together. We are just starting out still. This is our 2nd week. And we are in barefoot shoes, So the process is very slow but I don't really mind. We can only really go up and down our street right now anyways so It's a good start.

I've been thinking way too much lately. Some days it's good. Some days not so much. Today I decided I'm lonely but I SUCK at letting people in. Sometimes I'm reserved for good reason but other cases I can't really even understand myself. My husband for instance. He is always ALWAYS there for me no matter what. But I have a dang hard time getting support even from him if it is not in exactly the way that I want it. But I don't realize this is going on in my head. So I get irritated with him and shut him out. Then I don't even really understand what happened I just know that now I am irritated AND lonely. I hate my brain sometimes.

The kids are going to be out of school in like 5 weeks. I don't feel prepared. I don't know what I'm going to do with them all summer. It shouldn't be that much different as neither one of them is in school full time anyways. But GAH!

And if anyone knows where I can find some decent sand toys let me know! I've been looking around at the big box stores but nothing has really made me go ooooohhhhh yet. Maybe nothing will. They are just sand toys afterall. Maybe mediocrity is where it's at.

Reading the hunger games (finally!) and haven't seen the movie yet so no spoilers! (Not that anyone really reads this anyways. lol.

Off to read.
TTFN!

The Journey of a Thousand Miles.....yadda yadda yadda

Ok so I haven't posted anything since November. Where do I start? I've been thinking a lot lately about schools. The school we have Riley in is amazing and I couldn't ask for more and I really believe in what they're doing. And although I'm no expert and I do believe different types of schools can make a difference for different children, I haven't heard any raving reviews about any other schools here locally lately. I've talked to a couple of other mommy cohorts about the schools they have their little ones in and it amazes me to hear the things I do. One wasn't happy because her son wasn't being challenged enough. Upon a little more conversation I find out her son doesn't know a thing about alphabetical order in the middle of first grade. Another one was upset because her daughter was still doing things that were way too easy for her in kindergarten. Through all of this I just kept thinking how grateful I am for finding the school we did. I'm still a little worried about whether or not Jack is going to be ready for kindergarten at the younger age or not. He is SO close to the cutoff date and still is pretty immature in a school readiness sense even now in preschool. But we will just have to wait and see what will be best for him come next year at registration time. No sense in pushing a decision when he still has a year to mature, right?

I have also been thinking about seasons of my life a lot lately. In a couple of different ways I think I've been WAY off balance here. I'm living too much in my past seasons and not enough in my current one. And comparing the two. I really need to find out more of what my current season has to offer. Also I'm pushing away winter. I can see spring just ahead and I'm really eager to get there. I've even felt a few warm spring-like days lately and I'm getting really impatient for the change to just happen already, which just throws me farther back into winter. I need to be more patient with myself and just be where I am knowing I have the intention of moving forward slowly.
(I don't know if that'll make sense to people but we shall see )

Figuring out what I need my purpose in life to be has been a fun one too lately. I won't go in depth with the thought process again but it's been there, burning a hole in my brain and I still don't have it figured out. I'm sure I will in due time, I'm just not there yet.

But in the meantime I think I am going to try to make rice krispy treats with the kiddos tomorrow and just be happy for where I am, and try to remember that one saying that goes something like.....the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.....or whatever it is. I'm just going to be happy for where I am tomorrow. And at that I bid you goodnight
TTFN