I am an honorable veteran of the USAF, retired civil service (FAA) and a graduate of medical laboratory science (AS), and previously received an AS in Liberal Science (business/psychology). I hope someday to find cures for cancer, til then, I hope to help doctors heal. The first 50 years of my life were a warm up of sorts~ warming up to being part of a broad loving family, a diverse community, finding me, experimenting, living, loving, nurturing, raising 2 fantastic young adults, surviving death, healing!
My greatest two miracles and accomplishments are adults in their own right and I am so proud and honored to be their mom, their cheerleader, sometimes their listening-vented-to outpost, and always forever their biggest fan. Both of their parents are intelligent and they come from a long line of very intelligent families on all 4 sides. They had the very best that we could give them, and sometimes the worst. I will always feel as if I could have done something more, made life easier, mitigated some of the pain and the meanness life sent their way. That they are who they are today after their first 20 years each ... is a testament to the moral fiber and fortitude from which their ancestral blood runs deep.
I hope the next 50 are an active pursuit of practicing selflessness, love & life at full throttle. My marriage disintegrated and I had no idea why. To this day, I still really do not have answers. When the other just walks away and in private discussions, there are no answers ... it is very difficult. I drowned myself in whiskey when I was not working or being mom. Thank god for my miracles and their love for me, because they are the ones that were there when I was too drunk to know what I was doing. They put me to bed. They made sure I woke up. Eventually, they dragged me out of the bottle. Their love sustained me more than any wholesome food or powerade could. Their compassion and their unflagging belief in me was more necessary to my taking the steps to healing than any bits of the years of therapy I had already experienced; all the advice books in the world that I had absorbed disappeared with the whiskey cells.
When I started on that path of facing myself in the mirror and asking the difficult questions. I was alone. I had dogs and cats. But both of them were off to college. So alone it was. And I could not have chosen a better place to really immerse myself in the healing of Me. I got angry, I cried, I felt guilty, I cried, I got really depressed and I really cried. All the while I kept working 40-50 hours a week. Then laid off for lack of work ... ouch. Okay keep healing. Then required surgery and death on the table. To this day I have NO clue why or what brought me back. I do know that oftentimes, when a death event occurs and the person returns, life changes. I know it did for me. I found another job. I worked my tailend off and continued to heal. Not just physically, also emotionally and mentally. I had to let go of well over 20 years of pain, anger, hurt, so much love, and loss of trust. And I did it. I made it to the other side of that tunnel of healing - the 5 steps of grieving the loss of something bigger and more important than yourself. Then another layoff, this time the company cut 30% of the personnel across the country. Oh my ... what to do. Evaluate and deliberate. I chose going back to college. Medical laboratory technology. Was supposed to be a wide open field to go into and with the baby boomer generation about to retire, maybe it will be. I have yet to see.
I know that today, I am nowhere near to being the person I was 2, 5, 8 or 28 years ago ... Profound changes take place and I embrace them. We all should. The economy and recession caught me unprepared. That I did not see it coming is a testament to being so entrenched in work and healing that I was unaware of the outside world. Poor daddy , I love you and it was completely my fault I never saw it coming. I had good training from you and Grandpa - I just had my head in the trenches. I keep thinking to myself, that there is very little lower that I can sink. I have lost everything. Except the house and car. I lost all my friends when I lost my marriage. For awhile I lost my kids when I lost myelf. I lost my life and got it back. I lost 2 jobs back to back in 3 years. I put myself through college after exhausting Pell 3 quarters out of 7 ... and helped pay for my daughter's wedding. I am at the edge of leaping into the future by finding a new job , and hopefully a new location to live, maybe a new state to live in.
I know that my arms are wide open. My eyes and ears and heart are open. My mind is open. There is definitely a lot of experience now, that was not there even 15 years ago. It is true that the wondrous Lotus Blossum, that is revered so much in eastern spiritualism, only grows in MUD. This is why my 2nd tattoo is a Lotus Blossom at the top of my base chakra - for growing from the mud of my first 45 years. My third tattoo is the celtic tree of life and is at the base of my neck between my shoulders - where I carry my ancestral roots. My fourth tattoo was after I survived surgery. A red asian phoenix for have risen from the ashes of my past. I have 4 more. They are all quite meaningful for significant moments in my spiritual, personal, emotional growth.
Maybe someday I will be the Ann Landers online ... hahahaaa ... until then, I try my very best to be positive, loving and receptive to the Universal messages that come my way. I pray for others, I offer up salve style messages for those who are hurting and I try to always always be kind. Kindness does have its limits. I will pass the Universal Love and Light onto every soul that comes my way. I do not ever want to take steps backwards though. I can understand when Life sometimes stops me in my tracks, makes me think about the directions I should go or decisions I should make. But never do I want to go in reverse. Forward on, today moment by moment and then take it from there. ~Namaste~
