Going Back From Whence We Came

I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it's because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it's because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, our sweat, and in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.~John F. Kennedy

Today I went to the sea. The sight and sound of the water relentlessly, so effortlessly rolling on to the shore was relaxing, calming, and healing. Sitting on the beach gazing into the vastness of the water, a reminder that there is something bigger than myself out there, was exactly what I needed. I sat there for several hours watching, reading, journaling. I felt like myself again, which is a feeling that has been evading me for some time. I suppose going to the ocean is where I will go now when I need to reconnect with myself, to find peace and comfort, to remember that I am a part of something greater. 

Its been hard for me to write here. I struggle with how much I want to share, how much I can share. As most of you know, once you fall out of the practice of writing daily its hard to start again. Really hard. I worry that what I write won't appeal to anyone, that if I'm not always positive people will stop reading, and so on. Today I realized, it doesn't matter. I started writing on this blog for me and somewhere along the way I lost that. Maybe a part of it is that I've been afraid to write. The truth has a way of coming out through words and parts of me are afraid to admit that everything isn't ok and that some days are really a struggle to just put one foot in front of the other. 

In a way, I'm going back from whence we came. I'm working harder to find the missing pieces that make life full, to ride out the tumultuous waves of life until I find my way again to peaceful waters. I'm positive I'll be making pilgrimages back to ocean, a physical reminder that life and the world we live in are so immense.  The natural ebb and flow of the waves mirrors the natural ebb and flow of life. The reminder that nothing is constant and there is great peace that comes from knowing that.

Holidays

Finding my Christmas spirit has been a long process this year. (It might have something to do with the fact that its currently 80 degrees and earlier today I saw Santa wearing shorts! Temperatures that warm, three days before Christmas, is something that this Northern can't wrap her brain around.) I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to locate my holiday loving self. However, after spending the last five days watching nothing but Christmas music, listening to my favorite holiday Pandora station, waiting in line for 20 minutes at the post office to ship off presents, and packing for my trip home I’m glad to say that I’ve finally found the spirit that has been evading me.

I head home later today to spend the next week and a half with my family. There will be baking, last minute gift buying, cuddles with my dog, catching up with friends, and just really enjoying being home among my nearest and dearest.

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I hope that you all have found a piece of the holidays to hold on to and can spend lots of time with your loved ones creating new memories and reliving old traditions.

Enjoy the season, friends!

Picking Up The Pieces

When I accepted the job offer in Georgia, I was completely enamored with the idea of living among palm trees and what I imagined would be a vibrant, liberal college town experience that would be quaint and cozy. I thought I would find my niche among the academics and the small town dwellers settling in for an adventure that would last a few years before moving on to somewhere else. Perhaps because I have a tendency to be a bit of a romantic at heart, my judgement was clouded with rose colored ideals of what life in the South would offer.

Within days of arriving, my illusions came shattering down, the picturesque place I had in my head turned into harsh realities, and before I knew what had happened my adventure was turning out to be more of a nightmare. Never good at housekeeping I left those shattered, broken pieces of my Georgia dream scattered about. Gingerly tiptoeing around them, then sometimes in moments of anger and desperation,  forcefully stomping and grinding them into the ground with my heel. Its been over two months and those pieces are still littering my soul and world.

In the past few weeks while finally deciding to sweep those pieces away and rid my life of what could have been once and for all, I picked up one of those shattered pieces and saw a part of myself. The hopeful, optimistic young woman who dared to dream and took a chance but somehow lost a piece of herself after that chance didn't work out the way she hoped.

After finding that piece of myself again, I know what I need to do and where I need to go. Home. Maybe not back to my small hometown along the river, but someplace that's close, comforting, and familiar. A place that will allow me to grow individually but still allow me to remain close to my family. A place where the three rivers converge and friends are close by.

I'm picking up the pieces of my shattered Georgia dream and making new ones,  dreaming of finding a job in Pittsburgh, and doing everything in my power to find my way back North in time for Spring. I was built for four distinct separate seasons and snow. I need grass, not sand. I need rivers as opposed to cotton fields and people who are open minded.

Sweeping out those broken pieces to make room for new hopes and dreams has been wonderful and freeing. I've needed to get rid of those pieces and put those new dreams and intentions out into the universe. As I do, I can feel a peace settle into my soul that's been missing for far too long.

Reconnecting

My trip home for Thanksgiving was absolutely wonderful. After six weeks away from those I love, it was high time to reconnect with family and friends. I cannot tell you how refreshing it felt to be around people who just understand and get me, without explanation.

Since moving to Georgia, I've done a lot of disconnecting. Some of it intentional, but some of it was completely unintentional and happened in a way I didn't expect. When I'm unhappy, I tend to disappear into myself and it becomes hard to share my true feelings, even among my most trusted circle. I've been struggling with how much and what to share and what is better left for the familiar pages of my current journal. I'm still working on it, but I really feel like I'm in a place where I can slowly start to reconnect again-- with friends and family I've pulled away from, with myriad writing, and you, my dear blogging friends, a community I would be lost without.

I am looking forward to writing more. I need to write more. I need to freely open my head and heart up to the universe to declare my intentions, to make them real and tangible, to free myself of my own albatross I've unknowingly been carrying around.

Thank you to all of you have reached out, called, emailed, etc. Your thoughts and prayers over the past few months have been more comforting than you know. Im looking forward to reconnecting with friends, myself, and perhaps most of all, you.

Now tell me, how have you been doing,  friends?

Sometimes I ......

It’s been a while and what better way to get back into the blogging groove with a Sometimes I…. post, right?

Sometimes I just need to spend the day in my pajamas, watching Netflix and completely zoning out to everything going on around me. I’ve been overwhelmed lately dealing with things in my personal life, sending out resumes, and still learning various aspects of a new job. Yesterday, I called a mental time out and did nothing but lay on my couch watching Brothers & Sisters. It was wonderful.

Sometimes I get really excited to go home. I fly home to Ohio (well, really, flying into Pittsburgh and driving to Ohio) to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my family. This is a much needed trip home to see my loved ones and just recharge my batteries. Moving 700 miles away from home, totaling my car, and my stepdad having a massive stroke has been hard. Really hard. I cannot wait to give my mom a hug and force my dog to cuddle with me. And of course, eat lots of delicious home cooked food for Thanksgiving with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents.

Sometimes I feel guilty for being 700 miles away from home. With my stepdad’s stroke, the lives of my mom and even to a degree my brother and other family members have been changed drastically. Being so far away means that while I worry and feel alienated at times, my life has gone on in a very normal fashion. I’m not sure if its good or bad to be so far from everything that’s going on.

Sometimes I drive through my small Georgia town and think, if the first month or so had been different, it might be the sort of town I could actually grow to like. With Christmas decorations up, the downtown area (or square as they call it here) is almost reminiscent of Stars Hollow, very quaint and quirky. As it is, I’m over Georgia – the people, the views, etc. And once I’m over something there is no going back to the other side.

Sometimes I really miss the four distinct seasons of the Midwest. I left Ohio at the beginning of fall, leaves were just starting to turn and that fall chill was just beginning to seep into the mornings. When I moved here, the temperatures were still in the high 80’s and 90’s so it was a shock to my system, which has never experienced 80 degree weather in November. Last week, there were Christmas decorations going up on the campus where I work. Considering that I was riding around with my windows down and wearing capris, this just seemed wrong.

Sometimes I really intend to update my blog more than once a week. I start the weekend thinking that I’ll be really ambitious and schedule posts. Then I get sidetracked by sending out resumes, Netflix, finding a new recipe to try, or taking a nap while it rains. Since my mini-hiatus I’ve really missed the blogging community and the past few days have had a strong desire to get back to it, full force.

Your turn! Fill in the blank. Sometimes I __________________________.

Leaping

Last week marked the one month point of me starting my new job here in Georgia. While things haven't turned out the way I had hoped they would, I'm finally starting to find my way though the disappointment by learning to celebrate the fact that I had the courage to leap. Leaping into the unknown by moving to a place where I know absolutely no one was a big test of my faith. I knew it would be, but I failed to realize just how big that test would be. But I did it anyway. So many people always have a what if....and I didn't want Georgia to be my what if.

I had people in my life tell me that Georgia was too far away and that I wouldn't like it. I shook off their doubts and kept packing boxes. Even after all the disappointments and frustrations, I don't regret taking the leap. I absolutely needed to shake up my life and in the past month, well, my life certainly has been shaken. I needed to move here to prove to myself that I had the courage to do something big. I needed to step out of my comfort zone in a huge way. There's so much magic and beauty in the simple fact that I took a breath and stepped of the ledge not knowing what was going to happen.

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I'm choosing to celebrate, That I had the courage to leap. That I had the courage to swallow my fear and head into the unknown, even if that unknown has been completely different than I imagined it to be. That I'm strong enough to not be defeated by this, instead I'm making new plans, charting a new course, working on finding a new ledge to leap off of into the beautiful vastness of life's possibilities.

Stroke

There are moments and events that change the course of your life. Events that happen that cause your entire world to shift, to knock things so off kilter that you wonder if anything will ever be right again. Events that happen so quickly, you don't even recognize it as your life. But, somehow, it is. One such event happened to my family's life this weekend.

On Friday, my stepdad had a massive stroke that required him to be life flighted to Pittsburgh. There was an unsuccessful procedure to try to remove a blockage in his brain. Numerous CT scans, MRI's, and an emergency operation Sunday morning to remove part of his skull to alleviate brain swelling. There was severe damage done that may leave my stepdad paralyzed on the left side of his body.

Even typing those words they seem really foreign. I'm still having a hard time grasping and processing what happened to my stepdad, my mom, my family and comprehending that our lives changed so much in the span of a few hours. But it did. This did happen whether we asked for it or not, and now, we're left trying to go forward, navigating down a road we never imagined we would be walking down. Taking things day by day seems really daunting so I think most of us in my family are going hour by hour or minute by minute.

My family is really amazing and we've been blessed with an incredible support system in the way of family and friends who are like family who are going to help us get through this and hold us up when we're too weary to go on. We're reminding each other that sometimes battles are won simply by putting one foot in front of the other and that small victories need to be celebrated more than bigger ones.

These next few days, weeks, and months aren't going to be easy. There will be a lot more tears shed. Some days it will seem that there is no light at the end of this tunnel and we will think we simply can't go on or take one more step. But we will. Eventually there will be a light at the end of the tunnel and that one more step will be the one that gets closer to that light. We are survivors and fighters. We are a family. A unit that together  is so much stronger than this circumstance. 

While things may be incredibly upside down and off kilter now, this is our life and we're going to live it, to see it through until things are right side up again. We will survive this and I know, in time, we are all going to come out of this so much stronger than we were before.

Several of you have been sending up good thoughts and praying, please keep it up. My stepdad is still in intensive care and has had a bumpy road. To those of you who sent emails, tweets, text  messages and called -- thank you. They meant so much to me and made me feel like I wasn't alone. I am so incredibly  lucky to be a part this amazing community who provides support in ways I never thought possible.