Joy in the Journey ~ Theme of my Life

Truly as I sat in the quiet listening to the birds sing outside, hearing the sweet snores of Gracie beside me and seeing Esme and Bella surrounding my chair, I begin to think about this 2017 theme which is

I thought about the last 62 years of my life and the thread of continuity that runs through the tapestry of my life is finding joy in situations that would otherwise have crushed me. I know that I am not alone in this experience, for if we area all honest we will admit that life is tough. There are a number of things which come into our lives like freight trains and somehow we have to find a way through the situation, retaining whatever we can of the parts of ourselves that were damaged.

I began a journey of exploring what I have called the pivot points of my life that could have destroyed my spirit, devastated my psyche and left me in ruins.

• Physical abuse from my mother until I turned 16 and stood up to her and said, "No more."
• Sexual abuse when I was 3 or 4 from a female cousin.
• Sexual abuse from my mother that lasted until I was in junior high school.
• Living with my mother's mental illness and abiding by her rules which meant I did not have a normal father/daughter relationship with my Dad; until he was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, then I set my own rules and lived with her anger for the next 15 months until my Dad died.
• Being in an MVA in March of 1974. I was in the front passenger seat, no seat belts were used in our 1974 Chevy Vega. A friend was driving and I had just handed Shan who was 2 at the time, to another friend in the back seat. That saved his life. All of us fell asleep and we went from the far right Eastbound lane into the  Westbound lane right in front of an 18-Wheeler. He
  stated in his report that he couldn't get over fast enough and we barely missed a head on collision with the truck.

• We hit the culvert going into some sort of business with gray buildings, flew into the air and took a nose dive into the gravel parking lot. My injuries were:

• My four front teeth were pushed up into my nasal cavity when my face hit the dash
• Multiple cuts on my face from glass
• A broken sternum that was fractured more on the length of it than straight across.
• Glass embedded into my abdomen that literally worked itself out for many years.
• A large laceration under my left arm that was so deep the periosteum could be seen, yet it missed the brachial artery and vein...miracle.
• Left knee had several deep lacerations
• Right leg below knee was crushed and wedged tightly under dash
• A broken tailbone
• A laceration to my perineum much like an episiotomy but much deeper. (Made from a stool my Dad had made for Shan, which was situated in between my legs with 6 jars of homemade jam in a box on top of it)
  
• Being psychologically and emotionally and sexually abused by my 1st husband, I was never good enough for him, just like I was never good enough for my mother.
• Having to have a hysterectomy when I was 23, because my 1st husband brought PID home to me from one of his infidelities.
• Being stopped from having any relationship with my Biological Mother, by my 1st husband.
• Being raped by one of the men I was serious about being with after I divorced my 1st husband for infidelity.
• Being abused emotionally, psychologically and physically by my second husband.
• The death of my Dad when I was only 30, he was only 64.
• Living through times of cutting and bleeding myself, not going to say how because I only got the idea from a therapist I had seen who told me how another of her patients who was a nurse bled herself. I would have never taken the practice up if she hadn't of told me about it.
• I know that no one will understand how watching blood takes the psychological, emotional and physical pain of abuse away, but it does.
• Raising our adopted son who was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome was a challenge in and of itself, and it was during a time when I was ready to give up on life because of his behaviors in school and at church (he broke a little boy's arm on purpose just to see if it would break) that I heard the phrase Joy in the Journey at a women's retreat I went to.
• My Mom's death in 1998 when I was 43, and learning that she not only believed that my oldest son was my Dad's son, she told my whole adoptive family that lie and that's why I lost all of them as being my relatives for so long.
• Reconnecting with my Birth Mother, only to have her die when she was 64, I was 46. I was able to be with her the last three weeks of her life, but sadly my half sister chose not to have me as part of her life going forward.
• Having a stroke the summer of 2008 and not realizing it, but having to give up my full time job with hospice because I could no longer 'be present' with my patients.
• Having migraines for days the summer of 2009 which caused stroke like symptoms from which I had to come back from. Having Transient Global Amnesia and short term memory loss was horrid. I taught myself to recover from the slower speech and thought processes, the left sided weakness and laying the couch for almost a year.
• Having my children, who were my life and who I have apologized to numerous times for every single thing I did to hurt them or not protect them, one by one  become my accuser, prosecutor and judge, finding me guilty on all accounts and being locked away from their lives for different periods of time, except for our youngest daughter.
• Realizing that one of our son's is a sociopath and we never hear from him.
• Realizing that my oldest son communicates with me when he wants something. He desperately wanted information about his birth father, who from his inception I believed was one boy, only to find out last year that he wasn't his birth father. The only other person it could have been was another boy, who actually was with me when I got the call from the Dr. that I was indeed pregnant. Thankfully I stayed in contact with his sister all these years and they did the DNA test and it was positive. This man has absolutely no memory of me when we were in high school together. I haven't heard a word from my son since then.
• Agonizing over the fact that there is nothing I can do to have the type of relationship with my oldest daughter that I always thought we would have and could have.
• Realizing there is nothing I can do to heal the hurt and pain that my youngest daughter carries from her childhood and her DNA.
• Living through every Mother's Day knowing I cannot fix any of my children's lives.
• Being diagnosed with Migraine Disease and trying everything in my neurologists book to make them go away.
• Having right knee surgery because my knee was hurting quite bad. It hurts worse now!
• Having two shots put into that knee for the pain I was still experiencing after surgery, only to have it cause peripheral neuropathy.
• Getting Mannitol shots into my calf and foot which made the pain go away~ only to be told by our insurance company that they wouldn't pay for them because it wasn't something they thought should be used that way.
• Being diagnosed with Hypothyroidism
•  Regardless of what my tests show, I still know my body is 'off'.
• Gaining weight due to the hypothyroidism and not being able to walk for long enough periods of time because of the pain in my foot.
• Being diagnosed with lumbar and sacral disc bulges which add to the foot and leg pain.
• Being diagnosed with a cataract forming in my left eye.
• Developing tinnitus and balance issues from being given Cipro for a UTI a couple of months ago. Who knew that Cipro, a Fluoroquinolone class of antibiotics, could cause tinnitus, permanent hearing loss and peripheral neuropathy. Wonderful!
• Now being tested to see if I am having seizures.
• Not being able to work or even volunteer for things because I never know when I am going to have a tinnitus day, which some are bad enough to keep me bed ridden.

So, there you are. Pivot Points from my life that could have just made me give up, or become bitter and angry.

Yet.....there is something that resides deep inside me. It is the ability to somehow, someway find some way to find the good in each situation. I have to, in order to survive.

This really became necessary with the MVA and going without teeth for 6 months while the tissue healed. I had to laugh at it. It became necessary when I had the stroke like symptoms which stayed on for a long time, even today I can see words but just cannot speak them. I chose to laugh and say that the words fall into the white spaces of my brain. I have my MRI from 2009 and I can see the white spaces which are not supposed to be there. If people want to finish my sentences I told them by all means do so. I chose to find the joy in situations. That was my coping mechanism when I was a little girl, and it is the coping mechanism I chose now that I am an adult.

Faced with this new diagnosis of tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and walking like a crooked little woman I found the joy in it all yesterday....

For the Ringing in my ears?

Lily Tomlin "One Ringy Dingy, Two Ringy Dingy"

For the crooked way I walk?

The Nursery Rhyme , changed to female:

There was a crooked woman and she walked a crooked mile,
She found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
She bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Do I choose to live in a world of Joy instead of allowing any of my life's tragic events drag me down into the mire? You betcha. I cannot chose to allow circumstances to take away my joy. No matter what,  I choose to find the Joy in Life.