My heart can barely contain itself as I sit in my family room looking with love outpouring & gratitude that cannot be described in words ever.  A dear homemade book created by my Aunt who I am named after is open to the third page of the book.  This page has a picture of my grandpa MacDonald who was 17 years old in France with the trenches in the background during World War 1. 

Three years ago my Aunt Saundra surprised me with the book that she had lovingly created of my Grandpa’s life.  There are no words beyond cherished treasure to fully say how much I love this book.  Every November I sit with this book & look at that young face…a face that is only 3 years older than my oldest son.  What he & so many soldiers went through…the hell of war that I & so many others will never grasp.  How do you go to war & come back the same?  Perhaps you don’t.  It seems as though there is a tendency for war to not be spoken of too much by soldiers who return home.  Maybe the reason for that is twofold:  the soldiers do not want to bring that world to his or her loved ones and or it is just too painful to speak about.  It is my belief that our loved ones who fought in the wars do not know anything other than to protect us always in one form or another.  It is a large part of who they are I believe.  It is not just during the month of November that I bring this breathtaking book out…I bring it out throughout the year.  There really are no words to describe what it feels like to know my grandpa’s story.

There are countless stories of protectors, heroes… our courageous soldiers.  Every single story deserves to be told.  Many of us have someone in our lives that has either been a soldier at war in world war 1 or world war 2 or any of the other wars up to & including today.  If each one of us shared a story of a loved one wouldn’t that be the beginning of honouring the profound heroes that protected & protect us still. 

A friend of mine shared with me a long time ago that it is impossible to be thankful & unhappy at the same time.  The friend told me that as long as a person hangs onto gratitude every day that no matter what happens in life, joy can be sustained.  Each one of us is a beautiful original so we each can answer for ourselves if we find this to be our personal experience.  I have found that gratitude makes all the difference in the world.  It is also a perspective builder in my life.  This week I received negative news regarding my diabetes management & I felt myself going to that place of feeling a mini defeat.  I never stay there for long yet I also know that the length that I remain in that state of defeat depends upon my own mindset & actions.  If I do nothing & just let time pass nothing for me changes.  That is kind of why when I hear people sometimes say that “time heals all wounds” I think that is pretty much a crock.  In my experience, time can sometimes make things worse without some form of new action.  To me that means having ways to pull myself out of the well of defeat versus just waiting there to be rescued or not.  This recent feeling of mini defeat had an instant & natural antidote.  The answer came in the form of me just naturally picking up this book of my grandpa’s story & looking at his 17 year old face in his Canadian soldier’s uniform with the trenches in the background of the picture.  Do you know what I see in his face?  I see determination.  How do you do that at 17 years old?  I will never understand that.  I look at that face & I think to myself that boy later came home, married my grandma & had children of his own & later became a grandpa to 3 granddaughters & 3 grandsons.  Grandpa MacDonald is within each one of the 6 grandchildren & of course his own children too.  As I look at his face in the photo, I instantly feel strength & absolutely no defeat remains within me.  Strength I have found is renewable.  I will go & look at this photo often especially after today because I cannot believe how strong I feel.  That is powerful to look at a photo from exactly 100 years ago & receive strength!

I do not remember “knowing” my Grandpa MacDonald but I do know him now.  Grandpa died when I was just 2 years old yet I feel his strength & he has been a protector throughout many times in our extended families’ lives.  I have felt his protection & I see the bonds there very much, very strong & without doubt.  My Grandpa’s parents not too surprisingly were from Scotland…the Isle of Skye.  My great grandparents settled first in PEI & then moved to a very small town in Ontario called Lucknow. My grandpa was the first of his siblings to be born in Canada.  The farmhouse & surrounding land that my grandpa grew up on are owned by one of my cousins & to this day family reunions are held there every couple of years.  My grandpa I know would love that!  He was very much a family man.  My grandpa’s given name was William John but everyone called him Jack.  He was the 8^th child of a family of 12 siblings (6 daughters & 6 sons).  Our youngest son was born on my grandpa’s birthday & he has so many of my grandpa’s characteristics including an absolute passion for fishing.  As a beautiful aside, our youngest son Alex (middle name Jack) was at the department store about 4 years ago & he saw a hat & insisted that it needed to be his fishing hat & would I please get that exact one.  I did buy it for him & he continues to wear it to this day.  The first time Alex showed up to fish with my Dad, my Dad was overcome with happiness as he shared with Alex & I that his Dad had exactly the same hat for his fishing hat.  Thanks Grandpa & yes we sure know you are sending your love to the whole family in countless ways.  From a distance can you help to keep your family close to one another?  Yes, Grandpa proves  that this is big time possible!

Two mind stretching, heart stretching things happened this year to bring Remembrance Day to an even more present feeling & grateful state.  The first one was that last March I gave my husband the dvd set of “Band of Brothers” as a birthday gift.  My husband has watched it 3 times already.  He was very surprised when I sat down to watch it with him & then said that I wanted to watch the whole thing with him.  It was difficult to watch yet it should have been that way.  If you have not yet watched this, please do.  It is beyond well done.  The soldiers who were interviewed even stated that the mini series was flawless in its depiction of world war 2.  My Grandpa Brown was a sergeant in world war 2 & it horrified me to watch the dvd set yet I needed to see it to get even a small feeling of how much honour & thankfulness is deserving our hero protectors past & present.  The second thing that happened this year to stretch both my mind & heart was during a recent trip with my family on Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.  Our trip was for 4 days so I did what a lot of parents do in advance of the trip:  plan almost every waking hour of it.  The first morning we woke up & first thing on the list was to visit the War Museum & I had allotted 2-3 hours for that.  After that I had planned 2 more outings prior to dinner.  On the drive to the museum my heart was filled with the honour that I feel always towards our protector heroes & it was magnified as the lamp posts were lined with commemorative flags for the 100 year anniversary of world war 1.  Once we arrived at the museum & my husband & I saw just how engaged our whole family was with the exhibit it became evident quickly that 2-3 hours was not going to do this outstanding place honour.  We were not about to do the almost drive through tour of the museum.  What kind of experience would that really be on many levels?  As a family we all agreed that the other 2 activities would be postponed for another trip in the future & that we would allot most of the day to this incredible museum.  There is a very spectacular display of world war 1 that frankly I could have spent the entire day in.  Every single war from the very beginning of time in Canada to present is represented in the museum.  There were 3 parts of the world war 1 part that literally brought me to tears.  One is that there is an area that has been built as a replica to what the trenches looked like & you can walk through that & get a small sense of what they would have been like.  It is a very real feeling.  Thank you Grandpa MacDonald & all the other hero protectors for living in those conditions of hell…always wet, cold, living in mud with all types of creatures with the unthinkable going on all around them.  The second area is a replica built of Pachendale.  You sure felt like you were there.  I really cannot even write more about it as I cannot do it honour.  If you get a chance, please go & see it for yourself.  The third area brought tears not only to my eyes but also to the eyes of all 3 of our sons.  There is an area within the world war 1 exhibit that you can go onto the computer & look up the sign up forms of all the soldiers in Canada.  I typed in my Grandpa’s name & up came his registration in his handwriting.  It was surreal & profoundly impactful & heart wrenching.  He like so many young men of that time “fudged” his age so that he could enlist.  He was only 17 years old yet at that time was more grown up than I know I will ever be.  The 100 year connection began of course really 117 years ago…on January 15^th the day my Dear Heart Grandpa was born.  What a beautiful legacy he left.  He did not or does not merely leave us each with fond thoughts but rather with a thread of love that is passionately alive.  His legacy is love of family & it remains strong.  Maybe just maybe that is where my sentimental heart truly came from xo. 

Thank you Grandpa every single day for risking your life to stand up for what is right in the world.  Thank you for your love of family.  I can still learn so much from you every single day.  Thank you for having a pioneer’s vision, a love of reading, and sharing your love of fishing not only with your son but to your great grandsons to this very day too!  Thank you Grandpa for somehow being able to right now tell me that defeat is not an option.  That is not who you were & that is not who I am either Grandpa.  The best way of honouring grandpa right now I feel with all my heart is to share the written words shared by my Dad, grandpa’s son:  “I can still vividly see Dad’s silhouette, in his fishing hat & chest waders, with that infamous creel strapped around his waist, working the fly (fishing rod) to the desired target.  Then see his 9 foot split bamboo fly rod bow, after a scrappy  speckle boils the water & strikes his fly rod & the fight is on…so I’m hooked again & look forward to sharing more great & memorable fishing experiences with my precious grandsons.”  Grandpa I am told had a gentle yet determined patience & when it came to fishing he did have a bring it on when it came to a feisty battle or 2 with fishing.  Maybe that is where I learned that a little or a lot of the feisty spirit well directed can be a great thing. My grandpa sustained lifelong health altering effects from the gas from the enemy during the war.  He returned home & was hospitalized & the family was told that he would not make it.  Guess what; of course he did make it otherwise I would not be sitting here today honouring my Dear Heart grandpa in this small yet loving way.  He just did not have defeat within his nature.   Type 1 diabetes is not war yet I admit at times that I have referred to some days as being hellish.  War is hell.  Type 1 diabetes is for sure a feisty fight.  Okay, Grandpa, you are right…no defeat…just give the diabetes too some more feisty fight.

In honour of my everyday hero, Jack MacDonald xo.

Saundie xo

Tomorrow is officially Remembrance Day yet every day I am big time grateful to our every day protectors.  Next Monday's blog sharing is "Mother Nature vs Human Nature."  :)

How old is a grown up?  Could it be that each one of us either has our own definition to that term “grown up” or perhaps the answer is more of a question mark?  Do some people ever really grow up?  That could be a good or bad thing depending upon how we look at that.  Beyond being a grown up though is a place that I can only describe as grace.  There is the chronological growing up yet I place more importance on travelling towards grace.  Please don’t get me wrong because I am not referring to pinky in the air while sipping tea in fancy dress with ruffles & book on the head kind of grace like out of a chapter of Pride & Prejudice.  Instead I am trying my best to get on & stay on a path towards letting spiritual grace work through me for the rest of my life.  That is a work in progress since I am willful & feisty in nature & also love to be thinking about & working on many things, ideas & projects at once.  To let grace work through me I have found that I have to quiet my mind, thoughts & activities for at least a few minutes each day.  That is easier said than done yet so are so many things in life that are truly worth pursuing.

As I sat down to write this week, two writing ideas came immediately to mind:  diabetes awareness month & Remembrance Day.   Both of them are consistent with the month of somber November.  Ultimately, this writing piece I decided would be in conjunction with diabetes awareness to start off the month of November & next week the writing will be about honouring our troops past, present & future.  November is just naturally a somber month I find.  Do you find this too?  The leaves have usually fallen off the deciduous trees in the area & have been cleared away.  And it is usually bone chilling outside temperature wise.  The visual beauty of nature has a real almost black & white quality about it in November I think. 

It would be difficult to forget that November is diabetes awareness month for me.  I have my endo. appointment to find out my dreaded A1C results, my follow up appointment at the Diabetes Centre a couple of weeks later, World Diabetes Day on November 14^th and my 7 year diaversary on November 29^th.  There are lots of reminders about diabetes every day yet November is a magnification of reminders.  Wow, 7 years has gone by in a blink of an eye.  Letting grace work through me with diabetes is also a work in progress.  Let’s face it, when we have either ridiculously high or low blood sugars it is beyond difficult to potentially be our best selves.  My patience for instance decreases as my blood sugars go beyond 14.  And my ability to put a coherent sentence together when I dive under a blood sugar of 3.4 is like a tightrope act on a trampoline.  The thing that I detest most of all about living with type 1 diabetes is the too high or too low blood sugars that come along even with profound diligence that mess with my personality.  Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde come to mind.  The change in my personality was the prompter that sent me originally to my doctor to find out what was going on with my health 7 years ago.  For sure my vision was brutally blurred yet it was the unexplained personality swap out that freaked me out the most 7 years ago.  I love how I feel when I am experiencing the beautiful zone of blood sugars between 5-8 because I am myself totally.  My husband shared with me last week that he can tell when my blood sugars are high because I do the Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing.  He did not refer to it that way…he was more gracious than that.  Let’s call a spade a spade though.  He notices the personality swap out when my blood sugars fall off the rails in either direction.  I really cannot stand it that type 1 has the capacity to mess with my personality.  I fight it though big time & most of the time I win through gritted teeth.  It is a conflict though.  It is the conflict between just letting myself be me but then I have to ask myself what that means.  On the one hand I want diabetes to leave my personality alone & let me be the me that I was & am when I have healthy blood sugars.  On the other hand, the conflict is with myself because I realize that I need to accept me even on my “bad days.”  That does not give me license to not try to rise above the urge to be abrupt with others when I am riding a blood sugar beyond 14.  The 14 though is temporary but the physiological needs that I have from a diabetes perspective while fighting the high blood sugars are real.  The 14 and up are the ungrown up part of diabetes…what I like to call diabetes having a meltdown.  I am not having the meltdown but diabetes does & during that time it is a mini Hell.  The other part of it is that after riding the 50 foot wave of high blood sugars for hours or sometimes even days, suddenly out of no where my blood sugars do the limbo & go low, lower, lower, lower & then the coaster ride of up & down & up & down go on for a while.  Let’s face it too & that is that all the while, life goes on.  We still have places to be & commitments.  We have that grin & bear it thing going on.  It is physically & emotionally exhausting I find.  It does not get any easier with time or new diabetes gadgets.  Ok, ok, ok, enough about all of this.  How about the grace part of living life with diabetes?

Do you find people inspiring that despite his or her challenges & struggles continues to grow in grace?  I sure do!  Those are the everyday heroes & they are out there in huge numbers.  I love that these everyday heroes living with a struggle embrace life, send out ripples of love & show us courage daily through the way they live their lives.  And I love a hero who is brave enough to be honest through it all.  For example, I know & love many every day heroes who admit that they are having a difficult day & share what is going on yet are Herculean strong in spirit & love & care for others.  They are unapologetically themselves.  Remember when we were each in kindergarten & we were asked to bring in an old shirt of our Dad’s to put on over our clothes for painting projects?  Well, we are still in need of some type of metaphorical over shirt, not for paint but rather for life because life is messy.  It is beautifully messy.  Diabetes is messy & we are each beautiful originals living individual beautiful messy lives.  The support though through inspirational people in the world living with struggles magnifies the beauty of just how tough & rugged the human spirit is.  I am not diabetes & diabetes is not me.  And my body is only a small fraction of the person that I am so even when diabetes decides to punish my body,  I know my spirit is stronger.  And the strength that I have had & do have the honour of witnessing of other Dear Hearts fighting type 1 diabetes is indescribably inspiring. 

Part of grace I think too is being the type of person that is not a chameleon in terms of treatment of other people.  To me that means that I try not to mold myself into a different type of person when I am with different groups of people.  Not everyone is going to like each one of us.  That is too bad, disappointing yet reality.  Why change or pretend really to be someone else so that others will potentially like us.  We are who we are for a reason.  Why be a carbon copy of someone else, a faker or a sell out?  I have had countless situations where I have been in the company of people who are uncomfortable being around me now that I have type 1diabetes.  Here’s my silent response…”get over it.”  I am still me only I am now having to do the heavy lifting for my pancreas. And for sure there are times when I need a few minutes to pull myself back together if I have had a low blood sugar or do basic diabetes management.  The truth is that some people in my life would be a heck of a lot more comfortable around me if I could just not have diabetes around them.  That is pretty ungrown up behaviour & again, I am just not going to pretend one way or the other.  I like to just naturally fold my diabetes management into the day so if I need to do a glucose test when I am in public I do not shine a spot light over that however I also do not excuse myself out of some sort of shame & go to a restroom or some other behind doors place. 

A few weeks ago our family enjoyed a trip to Ottawa & Montreal together.  We like to return to the Ottawa area every couple of years for a few days as my husband is originally from there & the area holds a cherished place in his heart & by extension for our whole family.  If you find yourself looking for a hotel to stay at within a short drive of downtown Ottawa, the Hampton Inn is an extra special spot.  It is not so much the rooms or facilities that make it extra special but rather one of the ladies who prepares breakfast.  Her name is Hilary & she is a lady who allows grace to work through her.   She is fully herself & exactly the same way with every single person.  We had the beauty of experiencing her warmth & welcome & humour shared with every single guest that came by the breakfast area each morning.  She had that incredible & natural way of treating the businessmen, the children, the politicians, and others exactly with the same level of welcome.  She made a fuss over absolutely everyone.  With her Irish down to earth charm & humour she just has a way of being fully herself in a world where perhaps we don’t see nearly enough of that.  And she asked every single person’s name & the next morning remembered every person’s name.  That is impressive to me in more ways than one.   There was no mini class structure at work in that breakfast area.  The children were treated with just as much warmth, welcome & red carpet treatment as the politicians & businessmen & women.  And frankly each person was given a proper humourous scolding when they did not know how to make the self serve buffet style waffles in the waffle machine.  And she anticipated proper manners with the words please & thank you being the words in huge use.  What a bright example of being a person of grace…someone who shared her real self with others warmly.

And I can say with a huge smile that I have some incredible battle buddies who show me daily what letting grace work through them looks like.  These shining lights bravely fight the uphill battle that frankly is type 1 every minute of the day yet are fully themselves & are always offering encouragement to one another.  So whatever the age is that is the answer to the question of how old is a grown up, the answer to me is not really that important.  To me, I would rather look to the every day heroes fighting daily struggles fully themselves & fully encouraging others.  That to me is the presence of grace.

Smiles, Saundie :D

Oh man, I just got back from receiving my A1C results & sustained a mini defeat in that even with the unbelievable work that I put into diabetes management over this past 4 months my A1C went up.  Okay, I will just feel the feelings that go along with that however I will dust myself off very shortly again & fight this beast of type 1 & pray for the cure for you & for me.  Next Monday’s sharing is in profound honour to all our troops…past, present, and future.  And in the meantime, may grace work through you & may you allow yourself to be unapologetically, beautiful original you :)

Call it play, sharing time together, hanging out or something similar, don’t you find the joy within friendship?  It is my steadfast belief that none of us are meant to live solitary lives. We are likely to find incredible connection when we have that knowledge that we are not alone & better still that we are cared about & loved.  Ah, that is better than a warm blankie at least for the heart, right?

“I will play with you.”  What if you did not hear those or other similar words for over 2 years?  What if you felt like a loner for 24 months continuously?  When we moved to the area that we live within just over 8 years ago, our oldest son experienced a combination of things that caused my heart to hurt for him.  I would take on anything in the place of our sons.  I know God gave me a profoundly sensitive heart & I feel everything with such intensity.  Then having children really magnified this & having type 1 has magnified the magnification.  When we moved here our oldest son was 6 years old, and his younger brothers were 2 & T minus 4 months (I was pregnant with our youngest son).  Our oldest son was preparing to go into grade 1 & was naturally nervous about going to a new school where he would not know even one other person.  I would love to say that it all worked out for him in the end at his new elementary school however that would be fictional.  For all of grade 1 & grade 2 our son was left out at his school & worse than this, he was bullied big time…big time from grade 1 all the way through grade 8 by 2 children specifically.  Whenever I would be over to the school to drop something off or have a meeting during recess, I would observe the exact same thing happening.  What I saw was our son trying to ride under the radar or kind of just get through recess without being targeted by the bullying behaviours.  I would see him pacing up & down the asphalt area that the younger kids were strictly told to play on.  My heart hurt to see this.  Finally in grade 3 things started to look up for our son when he made 2 very fine friends who remain friends to this day.  Even with the new friends though, the bullying continued relentlessly.  I would always think that I would give so much & in fact did offer many concrete ideas to the school officials in an effort to affect positive change, build bridges & make improvements for kids being bullied all to no avail.  What I did see was a great deal of “cya” & political talk yet more than that a lot of denial that there was & is a problem.  The feisty gal in me found & finds that deplorable & unacceptable.  I tried carrying a boulder of change up a steep hill however certainly got discounted every single time by the school officials.  It was still very much worth every effort that I made.  The point is that our son knew that he was not alone…that his family cared & cares for him.  I am not here to fight his battles as he is very much a capable & intelligent young man, however, I will stand in front of bullying behaviour when I see or know about it for anyone anytime period.  It can be disheartening to try to affect positive change when you are involved with people who are busy doing everything possible to sweep difficulties under the rug & claim that there is nothing negative within the environment.  There was never any elephant in the room.  I can afford to get disheartened however I am no quitter so I do not let the wind stay out of my sails for long. 

When suffering of any kind comes into life for the people in my life that I love, my mind just naturally goes to the place of finding meaning in the suffering otherwise I suppose I just might not have the attitude that I have or I guess I just would not be me.  Everyone is a beautiful original so that is just what works for me.  It is a lot easier to find the meaning within challenges or things that are causing suffering in my own life.  Would I like to avoid suffering?  Of course I would however guess what, that is just not realistic when you are living with several chronic illnesses.  I have no time for denial or pretention but I do make time for trying to take suffering & turn it into something loving if possible for someone else.  What I am talking about here is for example reaching out to others who feel misunderstood who I see are going through something that I have either gone through or am going through.  Plain & simple, my life is about love & compassion.  Here’s the thing though & that is that as a parent it is painful to see our kids go through suffering whether it is physical or emotional in nature.  I would take on all of that for our sons if I could.  That is the heart of a Mom or Dad.  I wondered what possible good frankly would come from all that bullying & nastiness that our son went through during his elementary school years.  What is it about the conflicted nature of some human beings with the need to throw things at others who appear to be different from them yet at the same time over & over again you hear people saying that everyone is special or different & that should be embraced.  What is with the lack of walking the talk & that being okay these days?  Are people listening to what they themselves are saying?  And what is it about others at times wanting to dull someone else’s light in an effort to make themselves seem to brighten his or her own light.  That in my opinion never works & there is a reason for that.  I tend to believe that bullying behaviour often comes from a place of lack in the person doing the bullying.  Then the bullying targeting happens & the person being zeroed in on is pulled down in an effort to make the person doing the bullying stand that much taller.  I have & do see it in children & also in adults.  It is not ok, not ok, not ok, not ok.  The point is that out of those targeted behaviours developed a fine young man who is incredibly compassionate, understanding, encouraging & humorous & that fine young man is our oldest son.  He took those abusive words from the kids doing the bullying & did & does naturally reach out to others who need to hear that they are absolutely amazing even if they are hearing discouraging words from other sources.  Our son almost inherited the ability to see b.s. like it is on glass.  He has an instant perception about deception behaviours or faker talk.  How cool is that.  He has that thing where he can & does say, “I get it, me too or I have been there too & you are not alone.” 

Our son literally x’ed off the days during the last year of elementary school.  Best of all though is that now that those days are behind him & he has moved onto high school, he has a new lease on life.  It is incredible how an environment can be spiritually & emotionally toxic & once you leave it, the clouds lift.  That is exactly what happened for our son.  He is beyond joyful this year in the high school he attends.  Of course if you ask him if he likes school, he will maintain the boy code & deny that he enjoys it however his demeanor gives him away.  He has made over 50 new friends & he sure is an encourager to his peers.  He knows what a bad day feels like.  Life for him or for any of us is not perfect yet he is doing pretty great this year.  His marks are fabulous & initiative & group work are super.  I am beyond proud of him.  He is a fine person & I am honoured that God chose me to be his mom.  Our son has found his way, is fitting in nicely yet being fully himself & is finally happy at school.  The best part was last week when our son told me one evening that one of his new friends said something that really made his day.  He said that one of his friends told him that he is a good guy.  I hope our son brings that friend over to our place one time soon to hang out.  Of course I will not say anything but I will say thank-you with baking & in boy world I think that is may be better than a hookie thank-you :)

Perhaps even as adults each one of us in some way can relate to that feeling of being left out at times or even being bullied at other times.  I find that life with type 1 not to mention the other chronic illnesses that have followed have meant that I have felt pretty different from the crowd many times.  Feisty me says “so what” though.  Different is not good or bad in my mind.  It just is what it is.  If a person is naturally eccentric then power to them.  If a person is a faker than my attitude is cut it out!  For crying out loud, God made us each for a purpose that is all our own so why not find out what it is & go ahead & lovingly each live our missions.  Enough trying to dim one another’s light in this world.  Enough pretending.  Enough abuse of any kind…there has already been too much.  Enough over the top ego & putting other people down in this world.  I say, bring on being exactly our best selves instead & encouraging that in one another.  Most people have challenges & sufferings.  They & we do not need to be alone in that unless we choose to be.  We have a choice to reach out in kindness to one another, do nothing or worse make excuses & convince ourselves that we are ok with doing what we are or are not doing already.  We are a human family. We can come into one another’s lives & be encouragers whether we have type 1 or another 365.  I would personally say that we “get it” even more so we can take that & magnify our encouragement with others.  We are meant to live as a community.  We all deserve to hear the words, “you are exactly my cup of tea.”

Smiles, Saundie :)

This "tea junkie" ironically has not yet had a single "cuppa" at mid-day yet when I do sit down to experience that first glorious cup of tea of the day, I will be smiling to think of all the people in my life who are exactly my cup of tea...battle buddies, friends, family, people who even just smile for a once only time.  I encourage you to get beside someone that is struggling with feeling a sense of feeling left out.  You may be surprised who that may be in your life...let's all pick up the phone or better yet get together with others & literally tell them that they are our cup of tea!  Next Monday's writing is "in the ether."  :)

Have you found yourself in the eye of an unseen storm in life that is potentially setting you on the path towards being turned into a victim.  Perhaps it happens to most of us at one time or another.  It may be a part of life that although we try our best to steer away from, at times we get pulled into a tornado of problems that now need attending to.

Some of us may even look at our initial diagnosis of type 1 diabetes or other “365” challenge as an unseen storm.  These type of diagnosis’s may elicit a myriad of responses.  Even though it was 7 years ago that I was diagnosed, the experience is still fresh in terms of how it felt to hear those words.  The emotions naturally followed & there were so many of them understandably.  I remember vividly wondering why it happened.  What did I do to deserve this?  What did I do wrong to cause a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes I wondered.  I even started down the road of blaming myself for not being more attentive to preventing type 1.  Thankfully at the same time as I was going through all of those feelings, I was also reading absolutely everything that I could get my hands on about type 1 diabetes.  It took me no time at all to come to realize that there was nothing that I could have done to prevent type 1 from entering my life & that I did not do or not do something to bring on this disease.  Once that was understood, I took a look at my question of why me.  It did not take me more than a few weeks to know with all my heart that not only would that question never receive an answer but that to keep asking it of myself was potentially emotionally draining.  Did you go through that realization too when you were first diagnosed or when you heard the news from one of your Dear Hearts about his or her diagnosis?

The point for me was that I made a decision to stop asking the question, “why me” when it came to type 1.  Everyone is a beautiful original so every person’s thinking will vary which is natural.  For me the “why me” was the road towards becoming a victim.  I am not a victim.  I will never be a victim.  Not only will type 1 not lead me down the roads towards choosing to be a victim, but I choose to be a gentle warrior champion about everything in life.  Until there is a cure for type 1 & all other chronic diseases, yes we are stuck with the struggles of managing our health 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Is it fair?  No, I believe it is not.  Unfortunately to live too long in the world of thinking that life will always be fair is not a spot that I find does me much good.  Most of us will agree that very bad things happen to amazing people & very good things happen at times to people who based upon their behaviours are making very dark decisions.  It is not up to me to judge those situations.  What I do have possession of are my choices when it comes to which ones of my thoughts to challenge & replace. 

Someone profoundly dear to me went through the eye of the storm for more years than I have had type 1 with another struggle.  While it was not a health struggle, this person was being swirled around emotionally.  And the loved one was being thrown quite quickly towards imposed external victimhood.  If others try to put us in the role of victim, what do we choose to do with this?  For my Dear Heart, my guidance has been to encourage my Dear Heart  be a gentle champion & refuse to put on the cloak of victim.  For those of us who are familiar with the Giant hero, Viktor Frankl, we can reference him easily in these types of situations.  Sometimes we cannot do much about our environment.  Frankl was imprisoned in a concentration camp.  He could have easily taken on the role of victim & made his life about that.  Would we have come to know him as we do had he made that choice though?  Would he have made the indescribable contributions to the world that he did had he not made the decisions that he did?  The answer will likely be pretty obvious to most of us.  If we translate Frankl’s discarding of victimhood even in a concentration camp, to my loved one’s situation who also feels a form of imprisonment, then profound wisdom can be attained.  Viktor Frankl teaches us through his experiences in the concentration camp that we always have freedom of will.  He goes on to describe his knowledge that even with the atrocities that were happening to him & to those around him that were also imprisoned, he had the freedom to choose his thoughts & attitude.  He refused to be reduced in any way as a result of what happened to him while he was imprisoned.  And he shared this hope with the prisoners around him.  Then he shared this gift with the entire world once he was free from that environment of Hell.  My Dear Heart has heard me reference Viktor Frankl countless times.  My heart’s hope is that my Dear Heart did & continues to find some comfort in this giant of a hero. 

There are times when the first thought that may come to our minds is “why me?”  What do we do with that?  In the case for instance of a chronic health struggle, is there ever really an answer that would satisfy us?  My answer is “not a chance.”  To my way of thinking, it is bad enough when we are in a situation where we may be potentially walking towards taking on the role & label of a victim.  Beyond that though is the place where I really put my gentle warrior skills to work.  That place is when someone is being externally either labeled or pushed into potential victimhood by someone else.  What if the people pushing another towards victimhood are entrusted adults who are in a position of providing an example for minors?  Again, gentle warrior ship is the answer I find.  With free will comes the freedom to choose dignity and the ability to discard labels & pushes towards victimhood when others try to impose these.  Is it difficult & exhausting?  Yes it is & that is why I believe we need an army of gentle warriors present in the world.  Do these gentle warriors happen on their own?  When we stand up to imposed external victimhood, we may just be well on our way.  Being a gentle warrior is not about doing what is easy or provides a blast to one’s ego.  To me a gentle warrior has a focus on doing the thing that is right out of love in an effort to send ripples of championship out into the world.  This storm just may be one that we are in for a while.  My Dear Heart did feel defeated at times but one thing that will never be felt is that of being alone.  Soldiers rely on one another.  In our family, we literally have a saying, “don’t leave a man behind.”  There are times when each one of us may feel exhausted & run down to the point where we take a look at the road towards victimhood.  Thankfully, we each have one another.  Perhaps if we went out into the world each day with the attitude of lifting up at least one person a day in the spirit of “not leaving a man behind”, we could see some improvements little by little in the world around us.  If we keep doing what we are doing or not doing, what do we think the world around us is going to look like in 10 or 20 years?  Again, we get to choose to embrace doing something or doing nothing. 

My heart’s hope for you is that you know that we always, always have free will to choose to be a champion & not a victim.  We all get tired.  Hey, I get tired.  Let’s make sure that we don’t “leave a man behind.”  That spirit is vibrant in the type 1 groups that I have the honour of being a part of.  That spirit can be shared with others as they struggle too.  There are struggles yet we do not have to choose to fight them alone.  We are after all simply walking one another home each day.

Smiles, Saundie :)

I never keep track of when the official anti bullying campaigns are running because in my opinion, anti bullying is something that ought to be promoted & positively auctioned daily.  On a profoundly happy note, my Dear Heart did not fall prey to embracing victimhood throughout bullying that lasted 8 years.  Thankfully, that environment has changed & the reign of bullying is over finally for my Dear Heart.  There is still so much more for all of us to do though since just talking about or worse doing a political “cya” does not help others out there that are being bullied daily.  My heart goes out to families experiencing any type of imposed victimhood.  Next Monday’s story is yet to be written xo

Have you heard the saying, “if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap?”  This is said in levity & is not meant to be literal at least as far as I am concerned.  My family heritage is Scottish on my Dad’s side & English on my Mom’s side.  That makes sense then that I have a huge addiction to tea & scones & shortbread then…ha ha!  Okay, there are times when the word “crap” perfectly describes a situation.  It big time describes how I have felt physically for the past 4 years.   For so long it was such a mystery but the pieces are starting to fall into place & I am grateful for this.  The severe pain, nausea, weight up, weight down, and balloon bloating of my abdomen had gotten to the point where it was starting to drive me buggy.  It felt like some sort of nasty alien had decided to reside in my tummy. 

The thing with medical diagnosis is that it sometimes seems to become a thing of elimination of things that we do not have in an effort or journey to get to the diagnosis of what we do have.  A ton of time can go by in the arriving at a diagnosis in some cases.  And I will say that there have been many times over the past 4 years that I have felt like a “head case” of sorts with some of the reactions that I have received from medical personal along the way.  It is like pushing a huge boulder up the hill to try to find out what is going on in our insides & not simply be dismissed along the way as a little “nutty.”  Simple is not a word that describes most of our lives & I sure know that this is true for me.  I find myself as an outlier in too many situations to count & health is definitely a huge outlier for me.  If there is a tiny chance that I will get something, I would bet on the small chance because that has been the result for me so often when it comes to health diagnosis’s along the way.  For sure, I get diagnosed with things that usually kids get diagnosed with so often.  If a medical professional tells me that it is unlikely that I will have this or that because I am an adult I just laugh & state that we had best look at those diagnoses first then.  “Unlikely” is a word that kind of has little to no meaning to me due to the health experiences I have had along the way.

Last February I could not take it anymore…the constant, relentless pain, the buckle over kind of pain, the like morning sickness nausea with no end and more.  Have you ever assertively begged someone for something in your life?  It sounds a little contradictory in a way perhaps.  That’s what I did last February though.  I went to my family doctor & assertively begged him to help me to find out what the heck is going on inside my body that is causing this pain & nausea so that I can fix it & get on with living my life more fully.  Now I am an “eggs in many baskets” kind of gal & take life by the britches so I also made an appointment the next week at my Naturalpath’s & spoke with her about my situation as well.  We each make our own health decisions & what is right for me is not right for you…no one size fits all so I am just describing my experience & not suggesting anything medically to you.  For me, I love choices so I love putting Eastern & Western medicine to work for me & then I decide which parts of each to put together for my health plan.  I was referred to a new G.I. specialist last April.  He is absolutely outstanding & I have big time confidence in him.  

Last May, my Naturolpath suggested to me that I would benefit from having a food allergy test done to see if that may be the problem or at least adding to the problem.  If you are unfamiliar with that test, it is just a blood test via a lancing device so no sweat whatsoever for a person with type 1 diabetes who is used to doing blood tests about 10 times a day, day in day out.  What was one more?  One more meant to me the difference between potentially receiving another medical puzzle piece or remaining in the dark & wondering.  The testing is in my opinion expensive however so are a lot of things that some of us choose to partake in that are at times just pleasure bearing short term experiences.  It is all about value in my mind.  I valued the information that this test could potentially give me so I went for it.  And I am glad that I did

 The results of the testing really explained so much.  The Doctor shared with me first of all that she had never seen a reaction to dairy that is so off the charts elevated before.  I don’t eat a great deal of dairy but she told me that even a little will send the gut into a tailspin.  So much for cream in my coffee for starters & baking with butter.  Life goes on.  Goodbye cheese pizza.  Top that off (no pun) with the fact that I am also intolerant to wheat, gluten & yeast & pizza is not exactly impossible but let’s just say undesirable as I would have to replace basically everything in & on it with something dairy, wheat/gluten & yeast free.  As an aside I have a list of no no foods for the chronic guttate psoriasis that I have been sporting (or should I with a sense of humour say instead “spotting”) since last March including no more tomatoes, red meat, nightshades in general & more & that really leaves pizza out.  I don’t love pizza that much except for that feeling of being left out when in certain social situations.  Almond for me is off the charts as well.  That is a bummer because it was the go to snack in the afternoon.  Adieus filberts one of my guilty pleasures.  I use to love hazelnuts especially in chocolates.   Ah, no problem on the lima bean allergy front though.  I don’t think I have ever knowingly eaten one so the news that I would need to give those up was met with laughter.  Yes, the lima beans are the comic relief it would seem.  The news about saying goodbye to eggs was disappointing.   The irony is not lost on me that I am someone who loves to bake & now there is not one thing in my recipe box currently that does not contain either milk, eggs, butter, nuts, yogurt, yeast, wheat/gluten, or cheese or a combination of many of these ingredients.  I do however have a couple of new Paleo & gluten free cookbooks that have been in my stack of books unopened for some time that have alternate recipes.  Best of all, the super healthy things I seem to be fine with like fruits & veggies.  Better than that, I seem to be fine with coffee & tea.  Had I heard that I would need to give up tea it would not have been pretty.  Sometimes it is complicated though &  I end up having to prepare one set of meals for our sons & my husband & another one for myself which is a grind.  Having said that though, it is the Fall & that is the best season to enjoy local fruit & veggies so I am going to enjoy them even more this year. 

When I received the allergy results last June, I made a conscious decision to take time to digest the information that I received & not do what I usually do:  be 12 steps into the future with questions.  This is a step by step process that has been going on for many months so I am taking it one bite at a time & making a concerted effort to do 2 things:  live in the present & elect to have a glass full kind of attitude about the food changes needed for better health.   I just need to focus on doing my part & look at what I can have versus what I need to give up.   

It is a relief to find out that the pain & nausea are caused by these identified foods.    That answered the “what is going on” & short term it did complicate menus but hopefully will continue to pay off big time in me finally feeling better & that is absolutely amazing. 

Being a person with type 1 diabetes & receiving these results gives me the home team advantage.  I am already proficient in reading food labels out of necessity.  That is a great thing because I  need to know if milk or any dairy, eggs, gluten & nuts are in anything I eat & avoid those things.  Those ingredients are in a lot of things so it means to me that I will be more inclined to make everything by hand versus out of a package & that is a great thing health wise anyway in my opinion for myself & my family.  Also, I believe that my blood sugars have benefited from eliminating some of the listed foods.  I will continue to keep track of my before & after glucose numbers to see what the trend is blood sugar wise.  That can provide motivation to stay on track too I think.

As always, I am a believer in abundance thinking versus a more of a Mr. Snuffaluffagus approach of “oh bird, I have to give up this or that.” Within a few weeks of receiving this list of food allergens, I received 2 more lists of additional foods to also eliminate.  One of the lists was from results from G.I. testing.  The other list is from the guttate psoriasis which is permanent for me (unfortunately) & has ranges of discomfort & visibility.  The hugest culprits for huge psoriasis flares are stress & certain no no foods.  In adding these additional 2 lists to the allergens list, the overall big master list of foods to eliminate is super lengthy.  Then there is type 1 diabetes & the effect that eating differently has on that.  I am having a lot more low blood sugars for instance.  And I have replaced a previous go to fast acting sugar as it has allergens in it.  Ya, it is complicated.  I can handle complicated though with help & humour.  Type 1 taught & continues to teach me to keep walking through complicated every single day.  I choose to do everything in my power to feel as well as possible with or without type 1 and whatever else I have on top of that.   Do I expect it to be easy?  Of course not.  Neither is type 1 diabetes care.  Neither is psoriasis yet type 1 has taught me repeatedly that I am one tough cookie…egg free, dairy free, gluten free of course!

My heart’s hope for you is that when you seek the answers to health challenges that you find the answers.  And I hope that you live the fullest, most joy-filled life that you choose to lead whatever health curve balls find their way to you or I.  Join me...be a gentle yet tough cookie!

Smiles, Saundie :)

Is it going, going, gone?  No, sadly, I am not referring to type 1 diabetes…yet.  Instead, this is in conjunction with summer.  I don’t know what it is about this past summer that feels so much different from previous summers.  I found that it is set apart though from others.  Most of our family activities were simple & continuous & just right.  It felt though at times like it was a game of beat the clock.  But it is the same clock so why would this be?

Have you found that there are times in your life when time seems to be flying by beyond belief?  It must be perception because as I described the feeling that I could not quite capture of time zooming by this summer like never before my engineer husband looked at me for the zillionth time with a quizzical look.  And I waited for it & it came.  What “it” was included the statement of fact from my husband that time is the same measurement all the time.  Okay, he & I kind of laugh at & with one another a lot.  We laugh because we perceive the world around us so differently…through contrasting eyes & that is a great thing.  The big things in life though we naturally end of meeting up on beautifully so that is what matters most.  The wee things like the sense of time going by faster or at precisely the same measurement are well…small things.

Here comes the moment where I admit that as a mom that although I have absolutely loved having our sons home during summer vacations that in prior years I was ready for the switch to routine come the first week of September.  It was not so much that I was looking forward to it coming but I was ok with it being a natural part of the changes in the seasons of life & seasons in general.  I did not fight it in other words.  This year even a month into the school year, I am for the first time ever still not at peace with the conclusion of the summer with our sons.  I wonder what is different this year.  You know, I don’t actually know right now.  What I have come to realize though as I grow up is that I don’t have to know.  Rather, it is more a point of coming to be okay with whatever the present brings that matters more to me these days.  I will get there but I am not there yet.

Although I am not renowned for being organized, the one thing that I did do differently this past summer was that I did up a list of activities & maps to the outings with the boys.  We got through 99% of them & near the end of the summer I was going at a breakneck speed to try to jam in the last few.  It was a great kind of exhausting.  My blood sugars showed their outrage many times especially on the especially hot days which for me cause my blood sugars to skyrocket when I spend a lot of time outside.  One day I even had a rare thing happen with my infusion set that caused hours & hours worth of anguish.  My tubing got snagged on a water gun & did detach from my body but was hanging on by little more than a wee bit.  I did not realize that the snag had caused the part of the infusion to actually be outside my body thus delivering insulin to the outside of my body instead of the inside.  I have not had very many infusion set incidents happen over the years.  When they have happened I have had the wherewithal to have a look at the infusion to make sure it was still secure.  Not this time though.  Why would that be?  I will tell you truthfully that it was because I was in public & the thought of anyone seeing me pull up my shirt ever so slightly on my waist & look at the infusion is private to me.  My pump being on the outside for the world to see is one thing but my infusion is another.  Everyone is a beautiful original so you may have a different perspective on this.  Some people who sport infusions will wear a bikini & will be comfortable with the infusion showing.  It is whatever a person is comfortable with that matters I think.  There is no one right answer.  At the time that the infusion came loose I was distracted & did not go to the logical part of my brain that would if I were at home direct me to check my infusion just in case.  I was distracted by the lack of routine, the feeling of being caught up in the fun at the water park with our sons & I was in total relax mode.  The next time I checked my blood sugar though I realized that something must be causing a problem as my blood sugars had jumped 13 points even though I was exercising & not eating & it was not overly hot outside.  That was the point that I went into trouble shooting mode.  One of the things I thought then was about whether my infusion & tubing were okay.  I checked & this is when I discovered the bandit infusion.  That meant the boys & I had to go home so I could put a new one in & correct & correct some more. 

On a lighter & more positive note, the first week of July, I implemented my doctors’ lists (3 different lists from 3 different doctors for 3 different chronic illnesses that I have on top of type 1 diabetes) of foods to remove from my diet & felt better in terms of the previous 4 years of abdominal pains.  What a relief.  There have been a couple of flare ups with the abdominal pains over the past 10 weeks but they are pretty easy to explain with the possibility that not all ingredients are present on labels at times & possible cross contamination.  I pretty much cannot eat anything other than something that I have prepared since my list of foods to eliminate is pretty lengthy but it is worth it to feel well finally.  On a frustrating note, the guttate psoriasis that is permanent for me has gotten worse even with much effort on my part.  I have resigned myself to going back on heavy duty medications for that again which is unfortunate.  I won’t give up the dream of becoming “spot free” though!  Enough of that road down the “woe is me” place I refuse to visit let alone live in.

Our sons are water babies.  Maybe you can relate if your kids love the water too or maybe it is you that loves water sports.  The vast amount of our summer was a variation on anything outside that involved water.  They got their money’s worth & more out of their play water guns which seemed to be perpetually packed in our van aka the “dogmobile.”  We drove to countless places that we had not yet discovered before & we had a riot most days together. 

The thing that has always struck me as being so cool about kids is their easy going ability to make friends everywhere they go.  Our sons are pretty comfortable with talking to kids that they don’t know & organizing outside games at the drop of a hat.  I miss that about being an adult.  Kids can travel way outside their neighborhoods & comfort zone in meeting new friends. 

To share with you one special memory amongst many, one afternoon our younger sons & I packed up our dogmobile & headed to a neighborhood that we had never been to.  It has a brand new park with a massive soccer field behind it & a water splash pad in the same area.  It was lovely.  There were oodles of kids playing in the park.  In no time our sons had made friends with a group of kids in a similar age bracket.  We almost did not go to that park or any park that day because like many days last summer it was chilly.  The day was not one that would have pointed to it being one that you would want to get wet outside on.  The thing is though that we were motivated to make some fun happen that day anyway.  The group of new friends ran through the splash water & had their water gun battles.  Then they started playing soccer & then got into a game of manhunt.  They were energized, laughing & having simple, old-fashioned fun.  I could hear the laughter of our sons & I still smile ear to ear about that.  And the group kept playing & playing & I got to watch the sun set over the lovely neighborhood.  And I had such a beautiful memory of being able to play outside until dark with my friends when I was a kid.  That stays with you, don’t you think?  And I thought that normally the practical side of motherhood may have set in & I would have let the boys know that we needed to go home long before this.  It was not like that at all this time though.  We had packed a picnic dinner & so really what did we need to rush home for I realized anyway.  For sure it was getting chilly but not to kids who are running & having fun.  For me feeling a wee bit chilly was not much of a price to pay for the laughter that I heard from the playmates that still echoes in my memory banks.  And it also paled in comparison to the beauty of the sky as the sun began to set.  Yes, to watch more sunsets right outside is the answer.  What is the question?  It doesn’t matter.

My heart’s hope for you is that when you venture outside your neighborhood or your comfort zone that you reach deep inside yourself & pull out the child that lives within each one of us & make a new friend & feel that sense of belonging.  Oh, and definitely, please join me in watching more sunsets outside. 

Smiles, Saundie :)

Blessings this Thanksgiving weekend.  Enjoy the crunchy leaves under your feet & God's crayon box in full use outside.  Next Monday's story is "The "What" that went to "yikes" & finally "Phew."     :)

“That’s too good to resist.”  “I just could not resist.”  How many times have we all heard these statements?  Perhaps we hear this a lot if we are parents.  Our second born son’s nickname is “sugar bear” because he absolutely loves sugary treats.  Perhaps you too have been given the line, “I accidentally ate those cookies for breakfast, Mom.”  It really is just another form of saying that there was a choice not to resist doing something.

Is resistance always a bad thing?  In my mind I believe that so many things can be looked at in different ways.  Resistance seems to be used most often as a reason to give in to a temptation.  It may imply that we just do not possess the will power or fortitude to not do something.  Does that make sense though?  What if resistance were looked at as well through the lens of self-discipline or care for others & ourselves? 

For sure there are some things in life that are out of our hands at times.  We can make decisions & choices that are healthy & positive yet receive less than great results.  An easy example comes quickly to mind where type 1 diabetes is concerned.  It is about A1C results.  We can work our butts off day in day, day out, even moment in moment out making the decision to eat healthy foods, check our blood sugars vigilantly & very frequently, make correction decisions, exercise, give our minds & spirits nourishment & still have stinker A1C results.  Fall is my very favourite time of the year with one exception & that is that unfortunately during the Fall I have to have A1C results done yet again.  I know I am fortunate because I only have to get A1C’s done twice a year at this point.  Honestly though I am annoyed big time that even as I write these words every blood sugar is being calculated inside my body towards this upcoming lab & A1C result.  Then getting the results is a lot like being called into the principal’s office when you did not do anything wrong.  During this A1C time period, I have eaten in a very healthy way, exercised, checked blood sugars, corrected, tried to look after my overall health & well being but still I already know I am going to get disappointing results.  I am a realistic optimist.  Although I am no “mathie” I sure can see the trends & averages stored in my assorted glucose meters strongly indicating that my A1C is going to stink.  No bonus points for trying…that is the rub with type 1 right.  It is a punishing disease mentally & physically.  I hate getting A1C results big time.  And I hate thinking about it twice a year.  As much as I try to think of A1C results as information that can be used to make future decisions, realistically the reality is that there is not much that I could have done differently during this time period.  My body got slammed by hives, psoriasis & countless colds that sent my blood sugars soaring & diving all over the place putting me in a lot of chase mode.  The great news is that at least with my pump I could get in the “game” chasing the sugars.  Without my pump I believe I would have felt pretty powerless.  This is just my own personal experience.  Everyone is a beautiful original so that is not to say that many people with type 1 who do multi injections have this experience.  Everyone finds what works best for his or her body & lifestyle.  There is no one size fits all for people living with diabetes after all.

Can we resist getting sick?  That may sound like a weird question.  In my experience the answer is no & yes.  Let’s take colds or the flu for instance.  What can we do to resist or prevent these nasties from invading our bodies & not only giving us the cold or flu itself but also messing big time with our blood sugars?  Our answer is probably the canned one that we hear from the medical community of washing our hands more frequently, perhaps not shaking hands during cold & flu season with others and staying away from others who are infected & if we get colds or flu to stay home.  I don’t know about you but I cannot believe how compromised my immune system appears to be since I catch everything going around in record time & with a vengeance even with big time precautions.  So that is kind of a yes to resisting that kind of sickness.  Another kind of yes answer to resisting getting sick pertains to the hives that I am still battling 3 weeks later.  Could this have been prevented?  Well, Yes, I suppose so in my case since the culprit that got these dozzies started was stress.  If I had not worried in excess & taken a more “zen” approach to life then it is quite possible that I would not be covered in itchy spots & painful welts.  Getting to “zen” is a work in progress due to my nature however I am working on taking a much lighter approach to life’s challenges.  Worrying is worth resisting for me at least.  The no answer to can we resist getting sick is easy to answer.  Type 1 for example is something that none of us did anything at all to bring on.  Another example of a no answer is psoriasis.  It is already in my extended family genetics although I did not learn this until I was diagnosed with this beast of a disease myself.  Could I have prevented myself from getting psoriasis?  No, I could not have because it was just a matter of time before what was silently simmering due to genetics came to a full boil.  The boiling point for me happened to be getting strep throat last March.  So as much as I would love to have been able to have resisted getting type 1 & psoriasis, somewhere along the line both were already simmering & ready to come into full being into my adulthood.  No woe is me yet also I do not ever beat myself up over what I did or did not do to get stuck with these unfortunate beasts.  And I don’t let anyone & I do mean anyone at all try to tell me that any one of us suffering with these diagnoses’s brought them on ourselves in any way.  That’s where resistance again is a great thing.  I resist big time the voice in my head that says “just let it go.”  Instead I speak up for myself & for all of us living day in & day out with type 1 & other autoimmune diseases. 

How about resistance about behaviours that we allow from ourselves or others that is not good for our emotional well being?  That is my Achilles’ heel big time.  Specifically, my work in progress is my lack of resistance to using the word “no.”  By nature, I love to care for others.  I love to see others happy.  I love to do things for others that will bring a smile & some joy.  I love it big time & I love it too much which might sound odd.  I love doing these things & being these ways out of balance to the point where I let myself get drained dry & exhausted.  And I have cared in some situations where I have allowed myself to get used & manipulated.  The over use of the word “yes” & resistance to using the word “no” when necessary have lead me to getting wiped right out & in turn pretty sick on top of that.  And I realize that I the only person that pretty much received a big no was me when I have let my “yeses” get way out of balance.  The “no” to myself came in the form of:  no time to do the activities that re-energized me, no to quiet time to think straight or just be, no to going to activities or being with people that are inspiring & encouraging, no to proper amounts of sleep, just a lot of “no” to the best choices.  This saying no when healthy & needed is a huge work in progress & a big struggle for me.  I am big time determined to come closer to the “yes”/”no” balance.  It is worth it to try.  In the meantime, I will cut out beating myself up over my past lack of success in this area.  The past is over.  The slate is clean.  I resist bringing all the past baggage with me everywhere I go like a heaping garbage bag.  I resist beating myself up.  It is the easiest thing in the world to be our own number 1 critics.  Let’s resist that big time!

Call it resistance, discipline or determination with truth…to me it is all a work in progress & that is okay.  The good news is that the tortoise won the race.  We each live one day at a time so we get to take the race that way too. 

My heart’s hope for you is that you give yourself encouragement to resist the things that don’t bring you wellbeing without self criticism.  And while we are at it we stand up for one another too by not letting others criticize us or blame us for how our health has turned out.  We stand together, strong, with truth on our side after all.

Smiles, Saundie

May this week our references to "I just could not resist" pertain to:  taking gentle care of ourselves, saying yes to planned quiet time & another yes to unapologetically saying yes to re-energizing ourselves.  My yes in progress to these things is in the form of a wee family getaway very soon to Ottawa & Montreal to experience some adventures that we have put off too long.  Blessings for the week ahead as we approach Thanksgiving very soon.  May every day be cherished in one form or another with gratitude.  Every day contains some thanksgiving after all :)  Next Monday's story is "Discovery & Belonging."

Maybe just maybe the first 2 weeks of most new experiences in life can be woe or whoa depending upon our will.  I can make choices & take action in certain directions yet sometimes the net result is not what I would have ever asked for.  Will then is simply the choice to decide upon our state of mind or attitude in any given situation.  When things are going well, isn’t this easy?  And of course when rough waters blast us, the determination or our choice over our thoughts or how we are going to live our lives can turn us into victims if we are not vigilant.  I totally believe in this so much so that my whole life follows the firm foundation that I have the will to choose my thoughts, and give my struggles meaning & decide not to be a general pain in the butt even when I am going through challenges.

When we think about the first 2 weeks of any given list of  thoughts, where does your mind reside for a significant amount of time?  I like to think that I balance my thoughts out between the sentiment of remembering & taking the best parts of my past with me, being present in the moment (albeit this a continuous work in progress) & being prepared for the future that I see in my mind.  When I ask myself about thoughts about the first 2 weeks quickly the images of many memories come to mind as well as future dreams.  From the past, I smile to think of the first 2 weeks of university, the first 2 weeks of being newly married, the first 2 weeks of life with each of our 3 sons, the first 2 weeks of new jobs, the first 2 weeks of living in our forever home & the first 2 weeks with each of our golden retrievers.  With a heavy heart I also easily remember the first 2 weeks after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, the first 2 weeks after the loss of loved ones, the first 2 weeks after being diagnosed with psoriasis, the first 2 weeks of finding out about all the food allergies.  The first list of the first 2 weeks for sure falls into the “whoa this is joy!”  The second list (through will over my attitude) is constantly being kept at bay from falling into the category of “woe is me.”    Today, I will share with you the first 2 weeks that is closer to the present moment.

Our oldest son just started high school this past September.  It is turning out to be a fabulous experience.  Although Matt is keeping the “boy code” of not admitting in a direct way that he is loving high school, his demeanor says it all.  He has been talking non stop about his days each day.  Ah, finally, gone are the days of the grunt or surly body language ever present throughout his elementary school days.  I am beyond happy for him.  He is working really diligently & I am profoundly proud of his iniative & hard work.  Yay, the first 2 weeks of his high school have been excellent.  This is the first year that our 3 sons have each been in different schools.  Like so many parents out there, it is challenging getting the boys out the door on time to each of their schools.  Our sons had not even had to ride a school bus to school previously since we always lived within walking distance to the school.  That has changed for 2 of our sons this year.  I kind of thought of the bus at best as a footnote when we were preparing for the beginning of this new school year.  The reality is that both of our sons that are taking the bus have already learned through natural consequences that the bus driver is not their mom because there are no verbal prompts to get on the bus on time.  In the first 2 weeks, our sons missed the bus 3 times.  This is not a huge deal but does add to the chaos & I have found myself taking more than a few deep breaths before responding  to minor aggravations like the missed bus or telephone tag & stuff that is just that…stuff that happens…stuff that happens to all of us.  Our youngest son, Alex is an old soul living in a little boy’s body & he is responsible & mature & kind & organized.  He is at the same school this year & he is doing just fine with the exception of his frustration about how difficult reading is for him.  It will come with practice & time but he seems to put pressure on himself to be further advanced in reading than he is.  His job this year will likely be to lighten up a little.  And it is my job to help him with that along with the other mom stuff each parent does & that is the most natural thing in the world.  While I am helping Alex lighten up, I will also tap myself on the shoulder & tell myself to lighten up at the same time.  Our son who is our second born son is a sweet, wired, impulsive, science loving fellow.  He has a very cool talent for picking up languages & saying the phrases with an accent that would have you believe that he was from the country of origin that he has learned the language from.  He is at a brand new school taking extended French.  He is having ongoing challenges as he has recently been diagnosed with severe ADHD, anxiety disorder & tourettes.  Each day of the first 2 weeks with him riding a school bus for the first time & attending a new school for the first time have been exhausting with new problems to solve each & every day.  Trying to get a learning program in place has been like banging our heads against the wall largely due to murphy’s law.  Although my husband & I started the process of setting up a meeting at the new school to partner in development of the learning plan, one thing after the other happened to delay the meeting.  Three weeks can go by in the blink of an eye & the wheels metaphorically can fall right off the bus.  That is what has happened.  Our 2 younger sons get out of school at exactly the same time so that complicates things yet parents are creative entities aren’t we?  We figure out oodles of things while tackling a zillion other things.  Can we admit that it can get tiring though?  I have never pretended to be anyone other than myself, a flawed human being living a beautiful, messy life of love.  The thing is that we always find a way for our kids & of course everything will be absolutely fine for our dear heart son even though it is taking a longer chunk of time than hoped & has caused greater stress than we would have ever invited as parents for our son, and our family.  Please don’t get me wrong, the school is absolutely fantastic.  The person who co-ordinates the learning programs has a family member who is extremely ill so in the overall picture, our personal stress level pales in comparison to that.  It is all going to be okay. 

The first 2 weeks of this school year were ones that although I kept intellectually telling myself to just keep things in perspective, my subconscious went on overdrive.  It gave my mind a barrage of worries…worries about our middle son’s well being.  Let’s face it, a piece of a parent’s heart goes with his or her children always.  Worrying profusely though does not provide one iota of positive outcome.  I know this, I have lived this & I am still learning this big time.  I have learned this the hard way & I am still learning this the hard way.  I kept trying to reason with my worrying thoughts during the first 2 weeks of this school year & I thought I was doing not too bad a job at this.  My body disagreed.  The mind –body connection can be powerful in my experience as far as my health is concerned.  It does not mean that if I think warm, fuzzy thoughts that I will have picture perfect health, yet for sure if I go down the spiraling well of worry & negative “what if” or worst case scenario thinking then my health almost certainly will become poor in one form or another.  Boom, at the end of the first week of the school year, my body got slammed by my subconscious wringing of hands throughout that 7 days.  The psoriasis on my legs flared worse than when I was first diagnosed after the strep throat last March.  Then, right on top of that, my blood sugars naturally did their angry dance upwards with continuous high, exhausting, Lake emptying blood sugars.  But my body was not finished with me by a long shot unfortunately.  On top of those 2 things, I got double over with agony abdominal pains for 3 continuous days.  Then was on top of that on September 6^th in the form of a scream from my body I totally broke out in hives.  Maybe these are hives on metaphorical steroids because they are big time brutal.  These are the hives from hell part 2.  Why part 2?  This is only the second time in my life that I have gotten hives but both times they have come about from the same source & I have gotten them in a beastly way.  I don’t do anything small time hence my favourite saying of “big time”…big time though, that is also how I am getting hives & the impacts of that!  So now I am entering into week 3 with these hives.  The hives are from stress so my mind sure knows how to do a number on me.  The last time I got hives I was in first year university & I came down with hives during end of first semester exams.  I remember the absurdity of sitting in my philosophy exam writing an essay answer on providing proof that pain actually exists.  It took all my mental fibre not to refer to exhibit "A" as the fact that I was covered in hive welts over 90% of my body while writing the exam.  Hell, ya, pain existed then & it does now too.  Anyhow, my mind spiraled so much the first time I got hives that I ended up in the hospital for a week.  So, when I broke out in hives this time around, I sure have reasoned myself into not freaking out so badly that I take already bad hives & send them into overdrive.  The itching pain has been relentless & has taken over my life pretty much over the past couple of weeks.  Here’s a question for you.  What do you think the number of nights without sleep for you would be the point where you begin to feel like you are losing it?  The number for me I know through this latest bout with hives is 10 nights.  For 10 nights I slept a total of 1-1 & a half hours a night in 15 minute increments.  It just about drove me berserk.  I tried everything to get some sleep & I sought help from both Western & Eastern medicine as well but ultimately no one & nothing has been able to help so I have had to ride out the duration of these hives with an I hope these are just over soon attitude.  The last couple of nights I have managed to get 4 hours sleep so I am beginning to feel more like myself.  And I have a greater & magnified appreciation for the simple joy of uninterrupted sleep.  Still though through all of this I refuse to go to that place of woe is me.  I wish that I could be super Saundie & say that I have felt over the past 3 weeks that I have met these challenges with a “Whoa, don’t mess with me” constantly.  That would not be accurate especially on the day that I was driving home from the doctor’s with tears streaming down my face in exhaustion & discomfort.  The best I can truthfully say is that I admit that my health has messed with me…whoa, it messed with me yet I have known all along that I will get better at least with the hives & would later be able to say “whoa, I appreciate feeling better again.”

Will over our thoughts was best described by my all time fully human hero.  His book has pulled me back into perspective during challenges every single time since I was 20 years old.  Even his first name says it all…Viktor…  We have the choice to become a “Victor/Viktor” or a victim.  So, no woe is me.  Yes, it messed with me but I am still standing, fighting, hoping, believing & knowing that light always gets the last word.

My heart’s hope for you is that during those times when you feel messed with that you remember that you are a victor too.  We each have that within ourselves. It is definitely within you.  Whoa, you & I are fighters, believers with hope, with a "whoa, we choose to be victors" way of living our lives.  We get knocked down yet whoa, you better believe we get back up big time every time!

Smiles,  Saundie :)

Whoa, we are in this together.  If you & I get knocked down from time to time, friends don't let friends stay knocked down.  And I have to come to learn how to become a better friend to myself so that even if no one else is around when I get knocked down, I pick myself up.  I want that for you too.  May you always feel that whoa, I choose to be a victor within you every day.  Next Monday's story is yet to be written.  xo

Dear Hearts,

A week ago my skin started having a reaction beginning on my legs that I thought was likely a flare up of my psoriasis but over the course of 7 days the problem spread from my toes to my neck & I am in fact covered in hives.  They are insanely itchy & so sleep deprivation has set in big time as I have only had 12 hours sleep in a week.  I am no stranger to hives since I got them so severely in first year university that I was hospitalized for a week.  I suppose I do everything big time & hives seems to be like this too...yikes.  My hope is that I get some relief & some sleep soon so that I can put a sentence together soon.  This week there is no new story to share but I really hope to feel well enough soon to have one ready for next Monday. 

This is not a woe is me but rather just to let you know why there is no new story this week.  My heart's hope is that you are well & loving the skin you are in. 

xo  Saundie

Have you ever given yourself a time out as an adult?  Have you found at times that too much of something even enjoyable loses its sparkle without a form of continuous gratitude?  We can begin to or even totally take certain things for granted over time.  What could the antidote be to ensure that this does not happen?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  How about if we are spending more time enjoying an activity than we feel comfortable with?  Is it difficult to cut back on that activity?  How attached to that activity are we?  Do we ask ourselves these questions from time to time?  Realistically, because there are only 24 hours in each day there is in my mind kind of a type of time budget that I try to spend wisely each day.  Frankly some days I do a better job at that than others.  That is just a part of being a human being so I don’t beat myself up over that.  I just take an honest look at what the day looked like & how I spent the day & do better the next day if I am not thrilled with the truth.

It is especially easy for me to give myself a time out at least for six weeks out of the year.  During that time frame there is something that I have prepared myself to give up that I really enjoy.  In place of that I add other things that are acts of service to others.  It is like spiritual training not unlike athletic training.  It is similar in that in order to try to get better at something you really have to throw yourself into it with everything that you have to break through to the next level.  For the past couple of years the thing that I have given up is Facebook.  I really enjoy my time on Facebook so I knew that I would miss it & that is a good thing in many ways.  I love feeling connected so I admit that social media is especially attractive to me as it is an instant & constant way to stay connected to others.  How much is too much though?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  For me during my “time out” from it I surely realized that I need to balance things out a bit better.  It is one thing to look forward to connecting yet it is another thing when I realized that my Facebook time had become part of my morning ritual like coffee.  And like the potential addiction powers of coffee, social media can become addictive too.  Picking up the phone & planning a day & time to meet up with Dear Hearts balances out the potential addiction to social media at least for me.  Having a book with me while waiting for appointments versus checking in on social media means that I tend to jump ahead on the stack of books that I  long to read.  It all just reminds me about balance & that I don’t need to rely on technology every minute of the day.  When I pick up the phone or write a letter or read a hand held book I like to joke with our sons that I feel like a pioneer in today’s society.  The pace becomes gentler & my thinking becomes clearer & it is a peaceful feeling.  After the 6 week hiatus each year, I always really look forward to reconnecting again on Facebook yet just like old friends & new ones, I will treasure both our technological advances in connection as well as the old-fashioned ones of being in person visiting with Dear Hearts or writing paper & pen letters or reading from the lovely stack of cherished books I have at home.

If your cell phone rings on a wooded path does it make a noise?  If it does is it at all natural?  It is again a balancing act for me when it comes to my cell phone.  I really don’t use it that much.  It was purchased for emergencies like potential flat tires or my husband or sons needing to reach me immediately.  Also, I really enjoy listening to music on it.  Other than that it is just not that big of a deal to me.  Although I always take it with me when I go on walks I kind of don’t want to because I really find it detracts from the peace of the walk if it rings especially if it is say a call from a telemarketer…kind of an unnecessary interruption.  It is difficult to get away from the noise of everyday life.  It can be a challenge at times finding a pathway to walk on that you don’t have to hear the roar of cars.  It is so worth it to me to just find a quiet piece/peace in nature to get away from the noise of life & just think & appreciate the surroundings of nature.  I absolutely love that I live in an area where this is pretty easy to do just this.  And I am incredibly grateful for this every single day rain or snow or shine. 

What is with the news?  What happened to the news?  Is it just me or does news in the media just not resemble what it once did?  Growing up I remember the evening news being objective & provided in a fairly direct way.  Today though I find that when I listen to the evening news I am inclined to turn it off part way through the broadcast most of the time.  It is not that I don’t want to know what is going on in the world.  I care about what is going on in the world & who it impacts.  The thing that drives me up the wall about media news today is that it seems to be more about dramatic effect than the news that is being reported.  Many times a tragedy is reported in any part of the world near or far complete with dramatic music & filming& worse of all in my mind, the reporters seem to be caught up in promoting the drama side of the story that he or she has created for the purpose of entertaining viewers.  Other people’s pain is not entertainment.  The news then in its dramatic noise can be like the telephone ringing on a wooded path.  It can steal peace.  Again, I am not suggesting for a second that it is not a necessary & good thing to know about what is going on around us.  My thought is simply that the news needs to be reported in an ethical & caring fashion versus the dramatics for the sake of entertainment.  We have oodles of entertainment already in my opinion so the news ought to be separate from that.  Media will ultimately provide to viewers & listeners that which we allow.

Echoes, shadows & noise can visit in different manners.  If we have type 1 or another “365” health challenge then we hear & see echoes, shadows & noise surrounding  us often likely.  The echoes, shadows & noise come in the form of reminders that the health challenge follows us everywhere we go.  If we walk along that wooded path, do the echoes, shadows & noise of type 1 diabetes come with us?  If we go into low blood sugar, that could be a noise, even a scream at us that it walks with us everywhere we go.  The shadow of type 1 may include not just a regular shadow but a shadow that looks like it is carrying a suitcase of provisions just in case we need them.  The echoes that go through our minds may include our worries of how our health will endure throughout our day in day out management of type 1.  At times these shadows, echoes & noise can attempt to steal away our peace.  The antidote for this though I have found is the absolute belief  that there is something bigger than diabetes or me or my body & my peace returns a thousand fold. 

The echo or reminder also to me with this permanent diagnosis of guttate psoriasis resonates in my mind & in my vision as out of my peripheral vision I still see these darned spots on my arms & legs.  The echo of the day we were diagnosed with type 1 may be with us yet as well.  The shadow of diabetes follows us in our daily activities whether we invite this shadow or not.  There is something bigger & stronger though than these shadows & noises & echoes of type 1 diabetes.  This gives strength in spades & peace beyond description.  It makes it not only possible but so much more to put one foot in front of the other with determination each day however the path unfold or the day brings I find. 

When the shadows, echoes & noises of type 1 appear we can find ourselves feeling a whole range of feelings.  We are human so some days we may feel stronger than other days to fight type 1 & its onslaught at times.  There are days when a super long walk in the woods is medicine for my body & spirit in combating the type 1 beast & its shadows.   Other times sharing time with others who have the same shadow following them is medicinal.  Then there are times when a hug and or an encouraging word is just right.  Other times a belly laugh is what is needed.  Sometimes a good, unapologetic cry is the prescription.  The list is endless.  Today I happened upon something else that I had forgotten is helpful in the fight against the type 1 beast.  It was something that I had purchased shortly after I was diagnosed over 6 years ago.  I bought it because for several weeks immediately after being diagnosed with type 1 I found that I was having panic attacks at bed time.  It was due to a fear at that time that I would not wake up because I did not trust that my body would react properly to insulin.  Thankfully, the panic attacks subsided after a few weeks after a profoundly loving conversation with 2 Dear Hearts who reminded me of what I knew all along & that is that I am stronger than I will ever know & that I am not in this alone & that each of us are way more than our bodies & they reminded me how much I was loved.  I hope you have someone in your life to remind you of all of these things too.  It is an indescribable gift.  About a week after the conversation with these Dear Hearts just over 6 years ago I found a Cd by Dr. Richard Surwit about meditation specifically for people living with diabetes who are having difficulties relaxing prior to sleep time.  Every night for a month I played the Cd & slept like a baby.  Then I found that I was fine to just go to sleep at night without the cd so I tucked it away for a future time.  Today I just happened to find the cd.  Over the past number of months my sleep has been of a poor quality.  It has been due to physical challenges versus the emotions that I had felt upon diagnosis.  Tonight, I plan on listening to the cd before sleep time again.  I feel confident that it will be helpful again so it is like receiving a gift twice in a way & that is pretty neat I think.  After all, it is not okay to let echoes, noise & shadows prevent us from having a peace filled sleep & thankfully I have the antidote for that. 

Can we have peace amongst the shadows, echoes & noise of type 1 diabetes?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  My heart’s hope for you that the answer that we share to that question is “yes we can & yes we do!”

Smiles,

Saundie  :)

May you find peace that far exceeds any shadows in your life.  And may you always have a Dear Heart to share the journey.  Next Monday's story is yet to be written.