I have a natural tendency to look on the bright side of life (whistle…) Twenty two years ago, this very week, I gave birth to my baby girl. When my boyfriend and I found out I was pregnant, in college, it was overwhelming and there were many tears. However, not even a week after we had the confirmation, and the adamant choice to continue with the pregnancy, we found the positives. We were sitting on the floor of the university library, he leaning on the wall, and I nestled in front on him, his arms around my still-flat belly. Suddenly one of us realized, “We get to name it!” And we both smiled mischievously, and the fun side of parental responsibility came to fore. We joked around for a bit, but soon enough he said her name, and we both knew it was the one. Find the happy.
But 2017 was a tough one.
First of all, it’s none of your business, and second, of COURSE I didn’t vote for him!
As was evident in my previous post, I finally embraced anger and despair. This was good. Good for me. “Don’t hold things in or they will turn into cancer,” was one of my grandma’s dying words. (The other was a full on swearing session to Stephen King because he wouldn’t finish the damn Dark Tower series before she died. Steve, if you’ve been haunted by a Sicilian ghost, now you know why.) I keep things in. There’s some good reasons in my past for this, but that survival strategy no longer serves me. I know, I know, I know that Cushing’s was caused by a growth on my adrenal gland. But when I first found out the news and needed a surgery, I talked with my young nieces about it. My eight year old asked, “But Aunt Becca, will it grow again?” Although I could honestly tell her that the whole gland was coming out so no, the fear that another could grow on my remaining gland is there. The question to myself is, “how did it grow in the first place?” Like my grandmother’s firm belief that some secrets caused her ultimate demise, I’m searching for how I can alter my life to keep another growth from forming.
Yeah, yeah, meditation. I know. I do that already.
I started 2018 with a guided meditation on letting go of the past year and setting positive goals for the future. In the beginning of my previous post, I stated that my memory of the past year was filled with a cloud of despair. I know it is a human tendency to focus on the negative; it’s a survival mechanism. But it’s not me. I’m the whistler on the cross, remember? Thinking back to my view of 2017 was like an image I recalled from biology class that showed what our body parts were in proportion to how touch sensitive they were. It’s a freaky image.
