A “way” or “away?” just may be the question.  At times do we want to get away from something or do we want to find a way to deal with something difficult?  There is a big difference I have found in my thinking when I want to get away from something versus attempting to find a way through something.  Perhaps you have found this to be true in your life as well. 

If we are not feeling well, our thoughts may go the path of the “I want this to go away or I want to get away from this.”  Alas, we cannot get away from ourselves though.  It may be pretty difficult to move on to the path of “I will find a way through this” when we are physically unwell for instance.  For some random, mysterious reason my blood sugars decided to go berserk continuously from January 1^st to January 8^th with no mercy.  The part that really got to me at times was the brutally high blood sugars.  Even after 7 years of living day in & day out with type 1 diabetes I still have mini panics with it every so often.  Naturally I am concerned about low blood sugars & keep an eye out for that through frequent monitoring & correct that when it happens.  I cannot stand low blood sugars because I feel temporarily vulnerable & out of commission while I treat them & wait for sugars to get back up over at least the 4 mark (Canadian measures).  High blood sugars though for me are my arch enemy.  I completely loathe being in high blood sugars because physiologically things get all messed up leading to a temporary change in my personality.  I cannot personally tolerate that so for that reason & an infinite list of other reasons I do my very best to keep my blood sugars from going high.  Super high blood sugars I think are like thieves that steal part of my life away at times.  A perfect example of this is robbery of sleep.  Over the 8 continuous days & nights of blood sugar troubles I lost a ton of sleep because you know only too well that when we have type 1 & correct for high blood sugars that we have to check our sugars every couple of hours as well as ketones to see what is going on day & night.  It is exhausting when you are already exhausted.  I always try to keep my attitude in perspective yet it does get more & more difficult I find as one day & night meet with the next & sleep is missing especially for a prolonged period of time…like 8 days & 8 nights.  We might just at times want to scream…”go away” to the high blood sugars & most especially to the beast of diabetes.  As I have shared before, the thing that I detest more than anything about diabetes is the ability physiologically it has to mess temporarily with my personality.  I am by nature a person with a positive attitude & it really bothers me big time that any disease has the power at times to mess with the core of who I am even for a relatively short time frame.  I tend to be a fiercely independent person & it is a real work in progress admitting to others that I am not doing well.  I just cannot find a way though to fake my way through extended high blood sugars in the pretention that everything is peachy.  The conflict though is that I expect a lot from myself.  I refuse to ever fall prey to becoming a victim ever so I am hyper vigilant about watching out for signs of woe is me thinking within myself.  I tend to tell myself to get on with it then instead.  Over the past 8 days though I said these words to myself in a gentler way and that felt exactly right.  Ok, I know I am not a victim yet I did not need to go to the polar opposite side of the spectrum that says, “Suck it up buttercup.”  Instead, my choice was to be realistic & gentle with myself.  Sooner or later with the amount of effort I was putting into getting my blood sugars back on track I knew that my blood sugars would come back into line again…well, you know the squiggly line of type 1 diabetes anyway instead of the trampoline that was being experienced.  In the meantime though I decided to talk to myself in a similar way that I would to a friend going through this.  It was refreshing & encouraging, realistic & nurturing.  It was a new way of going through illness for me.  In behaving this way towards myself instead of admonishing my limitations I found that my thinking travelled from trying to get the grueling high blood sugars away to finding a way to get through the temporary battle with the blood sugars.  This made a huge difference in getting through each day.  It made a difference at a time when 8 days felt like one long day because let’s face it, when we don’t sleep at night there does not appear to be a place holder within each day or night.

Do you find that it is difficult to say the least getting out of a funk especially when you feel unwell?  It can be an uphill battle I think yet that which is worthwhile usually is that way by design.  Over the 8 days & nights of hyperglycemia as an aside my husband & 3 sons were on a Star Wars movie watching marathon.  My husband happily received the complete series as a Christmas present this past Christmas.  He was elated & so were our sons.  They just have the final episode left to watch at this point.  That movie is timeless & it carries a great deal of wisdom within it.  One line by Yoda that I have always especially loved is “do or do not; there is no try.”  When it comes to my attitude that is great advice.  There are of course many things in life that we work at or try & that is legitimate.  When it comes to my own attitude though I am doing or not doing a good job at sustaining a good attitude.  I just happened to watch the Star Wars episode that had that line in it.  Our sons know I love that line & they all laughed & looked at me when the line in the movie came up.  What went through my mind was, “this is timely.”  Even though I was super sick, I needed to find a way through it while being gentle & strong at the same time I decided. 

We do not have to like going through struggles.  The reality though is that storms in life will come & we can either attempt to run away from them or we can find a way to get through them & come out the other side stronger than ever.  Either way it will be a struggle.  In my experience the difference is attitude.  The winning formula that works for me is gratitude.  Everyone is a beautiful original so what works for me may not be the” aha” for you but you will find what works for you.  Then we get to give what we need to ourselves when we go through the struggles.  On no day do I say thank you for any of my chronic illnesses however I do say thank you for the strength that I found out I have within myself that I never would have imagined was there.  And it is easy to say thank you for the beautiful friendships discovered.  I know I am way more thankful for life, for “good days”, for my family, friends, nature and countless other blessings because of the struggles.  No, I am not thankful for the struggles yet I am thankful for the caring, encouragement & love shared because of the struggles.  It does not need to be a perfect day (does one exist) to be profoundly thankful for so many blessings.  I know I need & want to be grateful every day & I will always find a way to do exactly that.  It is for sure more difficult to do this on the days when we feel unwell yet I think it is at those times that I know I need gratitude even more.  It is a beautiful anchor to hold onto while I work my way through the struggle or storm.  It may feel counterintuitive to find a way to find gratitude during a struggle yet I know for me it makes the most sense in the world. 

The thing that I found that I noticed over the 8 long days & nights of high blood sugars this time around was that every single day it was sunny out.  That is unusual at any time of the year.  January generally gets the title, “January blahs” for a reason not the least of which would be that at times it is a month with decreased sunlight.  Strangely & brilliantly though somehow the sun shone every single day during this recent struggle.  It was like a wink from God I thought.  I loved that.  It would be super easy for me to sit here right now & list off the numerous frustrations that I received every day & frankly face every day with my health in one way or another however instead my mind is very much by choice going in a completely different direction.  My mind is very much in the land of listing the blessings that I am grateful for instead.  The blessing that tops my list is the gratitude that I feel about the care & love that I am one lucky rascal to have.  My circle of friends is so encouraging & kind & I am incredibly thankful to each & every one of these gems.  My husband & sons are my angels disguised as people.  One night when I was burning ketones & having to check my blood sugars every 2 hours & drink a ridiculous amount of water my husband set his alarm every 2 hours & checked on me to make sure that I tested my glucose.  He did this without fanfare & by choice because he is my everyday superhero.  Our sons have profoundly beautiful hearts filled with kindness.  They can be rascals yet they are indescribably naturally spiritual & loving.  They get “it.”  The gift of family fills me with thankfulness. 

When I was still not feeling at all well & had managed to get about 2 hours sleep one night the first blessing that caught my eyes when I woke up one morning was our golden retriever who was sound asleep on the floor right next to our bed.  What  a loyal friend & a sight of comfort.  She is a snuggly sweetheart & I love big time sharing our home & family with our goldie.  The next blessing that I noticed that particular morning when I woke up was 2 pieces of paper right beside my pillow.  Both of these papers had creations by our second born son, Brian on them.  The first page had a poem on it by Brian.  Here is what it said, “My Mom’s love is so strong, it can touch the heart of everyone!  My Mom gives my brothers & I each a turn to have our own special time & I love that we each get a turn.  Her abundance of love is so beautiful & powerful.  This is all true but there is more to say & it is impossible to show my mom’s love on paper.  My Mom’s love is like a circle that has no end.”  Then he signed it, “Love Brian” & “p.s.  I can’t even fit all of your love on all the paper in the world.”  The other page was a surprise comic by Brian that he put at the top, “for my dear mommy love your middle son, Brian.”  Several days prior to that I remember Brian asking me what I thought he should draw a cartoon about.  I had jokingly said that it would be fun to see a cartoon about a giraffe having chai tea.  He had replied, “oh no, I am not able to draw giraffes so I won’t draw that.”  The comic strip that he had put beside my pillow that morning was of a giraffe having chai tea at a tea shop.  The store keeper in the comic was insisting that there was no charge for the tea because he just wanted everyone to be happy & put a smile on everyone’s face.  I can sure tell you that the comic made me smile ear to ear.  All 3 of our sons just naturally gave me extra hugs & “I love you Mom” when I was struggling & what a treasure their love is.  These are 3 pretty fabulous rascal sons we share this beautiful messy life with.  I love them big time & big time again to infinity. I like to tell them often that I love them to heaven & back again.   And the list of blessings goes on to not only include family & friends yet also to include:  books, tea, a warm fireplace, soft music, loud music, the warmth of home, 2pm espresso time, beeswax candles, cozy blankets, homemade soup, movies, and more & of course the will to choose to be grateful.

My heart’s hope for you is that when you find yourself going through struggles that you treat yourself as you would a beloved friend.  And may there always be an infinite list of blessings that you are thankful for through life’s entire journey.

Smiles, Saundie :)

In the spirit of one of the themes throughout Star Wars, “may the force be with you.”  The “force” during challenges with our health is the light that we can hold up to realize that we can find a way through the not so great days.  The “dark side” to me is that knee jerk reaction that comes sometimes when I just want to get away from the bad days.  Again, there is no running from ourselves though so finding a way through with care, kindness & love from ourselves to ourselves & from others I think is also “the force.”  The best part about love is that it never ends & it is precious in that it is constantly renewing itself.  It is the greatest gift.  Next Monday’s writing is “Advise or Advice.”

How is 2015 turning out for you so far?  We are 12 days into the New Year so the year is young.  I would add a “thank goodness” in more ways than one to the former sentence.  To get very honest, I am in resistance mode big time so far yet like the waves that we watch from shore, the waves go out to sea & they return a little differently each time.  That is life too I suppose.  Things can look so similar or the same yet I don’t think that is true.  Each moment is a new moment with a life all its own I believe.  Sure, we can repeat behaviours or words over & over again but we still do not freeze time or stop some small change from happening over time.  We can either fight the waves or enjoy the ride.  Either way, it is a choice.  One is about living within the struggle & the other is about embracing life & making the best out of any given day. 

The work in progress so far that I am finding for 2015 is that I know that I need to learn ways to let some things go.  It is easy I find to let go of the urge to take down one calendar & put another one up & declare that the newest year will be the best one yet & make parallel resolutions.  Please don’t get me wrong; if this is is something that others do I say power to them.  It just does not fit for me.  I don’t buy into declaring that a year will be better than ever simply because I have changed the calendar.  I do believe that everything will improve on any given day of the year if my mindset is healthy.  I can do that on January 1^st or I can do that on February 23^rd or December 31^st or any day in between.  This is great news because frankly if I was basing 2015 on the calendar year so far I would be writing the year off based on how it is going so far.  Every day there has been some form of poke or agitation &  type 1 has been having a meltdown.  Releasing or resisting the tendency to write the year off is a decision that I stand behind thankfully.  Last January I remember things did not start off smoothly either however I hung on to the belief that it was going to be one of the best years yet.  It was not & it was at the same time.  It was not good at all health wise from a physical perspective yet emotionally & spiritually it was a beautiful year in 2014.  I made many beautiful new friendships last year & I felt deeply grateful for long time friendships too.  I got to grow into myself more again last year & my level of comfort with being real carries with it a peace that I want for everyone.  The peace was there all along I realize yet for me it seems that I needed to go through & get to a place & time in my life where I could accept this gentle gift of chosen peace even within a messy, beautiful, chaotic life. 

For most of my life I have lived close enough to walk to a lake.  It has always been a comfort to stand at the shorelines & watch the waves roll in towards me like a majestic hug.  The water within the waves mixes together & each time the waves return, they are renewed.  It is soothing to watch & to listen to & it is mesmerizing.  It is calming & grounding & I kind of feel like I am part of the water contained within a wave in that I am just one part of our human family.  The neat thing though is that I feel neither small nor large within this wave of human family.  I just know that if I do my part without fighting what I at times may perceive to be undercurrents it will all make sense.  You know I love quotes.  There is one about drops in the ocean or a large body of water that reminds us that we each are like drops of water but that every drop matters & without each drop combined there would be no ocean.  The next time any of us are tempted to shrug our shoulders & say in one form or another that what we do or have done makes no difference, let’s all be reminded of the ocean.  What each of us do or do not do makes a difference.  What we send out into the world makes a difference.  In an instant gratification culture we may be standing too close to the masterpiece to be able to see the beauty yet it is big time there. 

Although I have not & will not set this formally as a New Year’s resolution, one constant message keeps coming at me in one form or another this year.  Perhaps this message has always been tapping me on the shoulder & yet lately I have finally opened up my eyes fully to see it.  The message telling me to fully discard comparison & get in front of it every chance I get or make.  Does comparison encourage less than or more than thinking?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  Does it create a bond or does it divide?  My steadfast belief is that comparison leads to division.  There is already way too much division in the world so why would we want more of that?  Please do not get me wrong as I am not talking about healthy competition.  I love to be challenged to be a better version of myself and frankly need to be taken to task if I am not doing or being my best self in one way or another.  And realistically if I were obviously going to enter into a competition with someone who regularly participates in marathons, I know what the chances are in the other person finishing the race with a better score than myself.  That is okay & understandable.  I know that I have not & do not train for running so I would not expect to win a race over someone who has & does train.  Humbly, one of my missions in life is to embrace each day in becoming a spiritual athlete.  In doing this I find that certain things during the day seem to flash like a neon sign.  The neon sign so far in 2015 that keeps flashing over & over again for me to see is “get in front of comparisons leading to divisions within our human family.” 

Health is an easy example of comparison leading to division or feelings of isolation.  The number of times during the last 7 years that I have had people say, “Oh you have type 1 diabetes…oh well, at least it is not cancer.” “What?” That is the word that  goes through my mind.  And it is a good job that there is not a bubble captain over my head because a number of responses would have exclamation marks behind them.  To put it politely though, the thing that I have found it that the people who do not tend to make callous comparison statements about health are people who have faced cancer themselves or have or have had someone profoundly close to them face cancer.  What I have found instead is people with the most incredibly compassionate hearts that go ahead & bless others even though they are going through a battle of hell.    About a month ago I had a person who does not know me very well at all say cavalierly that they heard that I have psoriasis.  Quickly they added, “oh well it could be worse; you could have either cancer or diabetes.”  Again, it is very good that a bubble captain of my thoughts did not appear above my head.  Suffice to say that I am going to choose to forgive this person in absentia for just not knowing any better because even when I questioned the thinking they did not see anything wrong with what they said.  I try to keep up on topics relating to many things including updates in the health areas that I have challenges within.  It is consistently surprising to me just how combative & divisive a number of articles are about things in the gluten free world.   I get it that it is challenging to give up certain foods & that it takes a great amount of effort especially when we go out into the world to try to eat while avoiding gluten or any other foods.   Things got combative once again  this morning when the author of yet another article began to say that people with food sensitivities or intolerances had it better or worse than people living with celiac disease.  Here we go again I thought to myself…comparison leading down the slippery slope to division.  We see the world as we are naturally although we can choose to try to understand someone else’s view or put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.  That is a choice.  Thank goodness for choices.  When it comes to giving anything up in life what I have found works for me is to replace one thing with another.  That is just what works for me.  I don’t like feeling like I am punishing myself for something that I did nothing to cause like type 1 diabetes, psoriasis and celiac disease.  Okay, so once I found out about each of these chronic diseases I realized that food would be a factor & some foods for example would be best either limited, consumed at certain times or replaced.  I am going to do everything in my power each day to feel as well as I possibly can.  Giving up wheat was not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be for example.  I have found some yummy recipes that replace previous ones.  Is it complicated?  Yes, it is.  Is it worth moaning & groaning over daily?  To me, I choose not to go down that road or participate in a pity party for one.  My mindset is to just get on with it then.  These are the cards I have been dealt health wise & I don’t have to love them but I do need to find a way every day to live the most meaningful, loving life that I can.  And it is up to me to be genuinely grateful every single day.  When blood sugars are high, then it is a bigger stretch to go to the place of gratitude.  I would not fool myself into telling myself on days like that that I am grateful for my health but I can always go down the path of being authentically grateful for my family, friends, a warm roof over my head, healthy foods to eat, gorgeous wooded areas to walk within, pathways of beauty leading to the Lake nearby, peaceful music & an endless list of other things.

We can look at a shoreline & see grains of sand or quick sand. That reminds me of life too.  The grains of sand put together form community & community can easily equal support & encouragement.  Quick sand on the other hand represents to me that sinking feeling of caving in.  I choose not to cave in on myself when I face days of struggle.  Instead I see myself as a grain of sand within chosen communities that I have found encouragement & love within.  I can reach out on difficult days like a grain of sand & gather together in beauty in strength or I can cave in on myself in feeling sorry for myself in isolation & succumb to the quick sand.  It is all a choice.  It is not easy either way however one way leads to community & the other to division. 

In the spirit of community, how about this coming week you & I make some time to literally list out the people & things that we are thankful for.  That is what I plan to write about next Monday.  Thinking about & writing down my list of gratitudes I know keeps me far away from the quicksand.  And that is what I want for you too…to join me in being part of the grains of gentle sand instead that build community.  Together we are strong.

Smiles,

Saundie  :)

May you always know that you matter...it takes every drop to make an ocean & it takes every single person's talents to have a world filled with beauty & meaning.  What you think & do matter.  And it is okay to reach out for help.  That is what we are meant to do...that is love.  Next Monday's writing is called, "A Way."

What is your communication bliss?  Is it “snail mail” or chatting on the telephone, texting, status posts, in person chats, writing or something else?  Some of us are outgoing & some of us are reserved.  We need both of this in the world big time.  When I was a little girl I was perceived as profoundly shy because I barely said a word.  The thing is though is that I had so much to say yet it took me many, many years to find my voice.  Courage found though I think is courage found forever.  It is like we can wake up one day & make little steps towards being a wee bit braver & the little steps add up over time.  I remember feeling frustrated with  unspoken humour, expressions of sensitivity, and sharing of ideas, hopes, and more remaining trapped within me for at least a couple of decades.  It took a while for the brave girl within me to open the door to my life & be a full participant in this beautiful messy life that is a daily gift.

What can halt us sometimes from expressing ourselves or letting our stories unfold with others?  I can remember the many reasons why I remained silent for many years while I was much younger.  Some included feeling like what I might share would be unimportant, scoffed, or might bore others.  So I kept quiet for a very long time kind of with an imploding story inside.  Have you felt this way too at times?  It may not make a difference whether we are naturally more outgoing or more reserved…there is a story within each one of us.  There is nothing like a heart to heart connection don’t you think?  When I say story within each one of us, I am really not talking about the need or desire necessarily to attempt to write the next great American novel but rather just to allow our stories to be shared in one form or another with at least one other person in our lives. 

As an aside, one of my favourite ways of sharing my feelings is to write of them.  I cannot imagine not writing in one form or another.  As a little girl I loved to read & I loved to write short stories of my own.  I would write them & because I did not have much confidence I would destroy the stories after a short time so that no one found them & thought that I was silly.  Now I realize that being a little silly is absolutely medicinal.  That is why I try to look for humour in almost all situations.  Making a commitment to write once or twice a week was a stretch initially.  One part of me still sometimes panics a wee bit & thinks “what if I cannot think of anything to write this week or find myself forever out of ideas?”  Two inspirational giants come to mind instantly when those “what if” thoughts come to mind.  One is Maya Angelou who I have admired for over 2 decades.  She had so many true to life quotes that just fit so many times.  The one I am thinking of is the one where she says that creativity cannot be lost but rather creativity leads to more creativity.  The other inspirational giant that provides an antidote to that kind of “what if” thinking is Matthew Kelly.  Last Spring I had the delight of attending one of his conferences & he shared so much wisdom with all of us.  There is one that fits this type of” what if” situation.  Matthew shared that God does not necessarily find the most beautiful, intelligent or most anything person & work through them.  Instead, Matthew shared that God works through those that make themselves available.  I have had several experiences that sure point to this as being true.  I can remember less than a half dozen years ago sitting on the sidelines of many groups & projects in my community…watching safely from a distance…not even giving a toe dip into making our new community truly home by giving something of my heart to it.  Little by little though I found myself saying that I could not find a reason to not come forward & offer a hand.  And I found myself involved in some exciting activities way outside my comfort zone that gave me big time butterflies & went ahead & got involved anyway.  Instead of coming up with a zillion reasons why I was not good enough, I just went ahead & offered to help.  And I made new friendships that I know are lifetime friendships.  I hope you have many of these experiences too & lifetime friendships. 

Within close friendships, don’t you find that our stories are shared so beautifully?  I love it when my friends share their stories with me through laughter & tears.  I love that my Dear Hearts feel that their hearts are safe with me & mine I know is safe with them.

There are so many ways of sharing our stories.  Sometimes we may find ourselves simply reaching out via social media with a short sentence about how our day is going.  We may share that we are having an especially grueling day or a joyful or celebratory day.  When we reach out with this honesty we are sharing a piece of our heart.  I love that we have so many different types of communication so that we can feel connected to one another.  Friends who have known me as an adult & not when I was a kid usually tell me that they think I am kidding about having once been painfully shy.  I am big time ok with that.  It just means that I ripped the lid off the real me & there’s no going back.  I am pretty much an open book when it comes to my story.  The thing that I love best though about any part of my story so far is that so many times through sharing an experience it has deepened friendships & helped in that feeling of “me too” connection.  The thing that bothered me the most during my shy days was that gnawing feeling that I was the only one that felt the way I did.  That felt pretty lonely.  Just over 7 years ago when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I remember that alone feeling for almost 2 years when it came to my health.  I found myself becoming quieter than usual though never silent.  I felt alone with diabetes.   I so much hoped for connection with someone else who understood the daily challenges of diabetes.  Through little steps outside my comfort zone over the years I am no longer alone.  My heart’s hope is that you do not feel alone either or misunderstood or silent.  My heart’s hope is that you are sharing the stories within your heart with Dear Hearts in your life.  You matter & your story matters.  I have made some of the closest friendships during the last 5 or so years.  It takes courage opening up to others yet the blessings of doing this cannot be measured ever.  There are stories to be shared & lifetime friendships yet to be & that is a beautiful thing to think & smile about.

My heart’s hope is that you go ahead & share the story that is inside of you.  Your story matters & you matter.  Your story will make a difference.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Happy 2015 Everyone!  I will admit that I have had the feeling of being poked at every day so far this year however the year is young & I am a fiesty gal so I will never throw the towel in on action or attitude to turn this year around big time.  Next Monday's writing is percolating already.  Blessings for a gentle week for you & please share the story inside of you with someone dear to you :)

Rave Reviews

What if we could write our own review each year of our life experiences over the past 12 months? Oh right, we can if we want to.  As a humorous aside, sometimes when our oldest son is either giving grunt like responses or zombie non responses, I like to say one of two things which kind of get his goat.  One is  “good talk son.”  The other is “dear diary, today I got to spend time with my mom;it was the best day of my life…”  I only mention the aside because we can choose something as simple as journaling our year which can sometimes help clarify our own thoughts. When I was growing up I had several old fashioned diaries that I would drone on in about well, boys.  Then I would lock the diary with the dollar store like key that came with the diary convinced that it was as secure as Fort Knox & then as an extra layer of security I would usually hide the diary under my mattress.  I kind of wish I had saved the diaries because they would be a hoot to read now but each time a break up occurred my go to action was to destroy my diary & all evidence of the angst.  Those were the teenaged years & everything seemed like a huge deal.  I am sure that is the most natural thing in the world.  My hiding places were so stereotypical that I am really laughing about it now.  

I like to do a mini review of how the year is going 3 times a year:  once at the end of December, again in February and then sometime in the spring or summer.  I like to ask myself how it is going. Do you find that in one way or another that you do the same thing?  And when I do these wee reviews I like to drink massive amounts of coffee & tea interchangeably.  That is exactly what I am doing today...coffee, then English Breakfast tea, then espresso, then chai tea, then dark roast coffee again & so on.  It is a tradition, a ritual or something along those lines & I kind of embrace the whole kit & kaboodle.  

Here we all are just 3 days away from the beginning of a brand new year.  It sounds extremely cliche to say that this past year has flown by yet it sure has.  I distinctly remember January 1, 2014 & the feeling of hopefulness especially convincing myself that it was going to be a super healthy year.  Perhaps the foreshadowing of the year though was that we ended up inviting our oldest son’s most pessimistic friend over for dinner.  I am kidding of course about the foreshadowing because I am zero percent superstitious.  It was a fitting start to the year though as I look back.  It is such a blessing that we can only live one day at a time & we do not know what each year will bring.  2013 had been a challenging year frankly & I was good & ready to write 2013 off & bring on 2014.  In hindsight, my eagerness would not been diminished had I known then what I know now.

You know the symbol that has an intermix of black & white?  That sure represents life.  Of course 2014 was not all good nor all bad.  It had a mixture of both.  Is this what you found too?  Last January straight through until the end of March included one cold bug or flu bug one after the other.  I wondered if I had any immune system at all at that point. You will know exactly what I mean when I say that we don’t simply fight flu or colds or any other virus but rather we have to figure out the parallel strategies for high blood sugars that go along with viruses.  It is like doing double battle.  I will admit that when I come across the odd person here & there that whines about having the sniffles but is otherwise healthy my nonsense meter goes to maximum.  Most of us know someone like that & if there were a bubble captain above my head it would likely say something like“get ahold of yourself man!”  Colds & flu with diabetes can turn into dka & that is big time scary so diabetes gets the front seat while fighting any kind of virus.  It will not be ignored that’s for sure.  Enter March break & the list of fun activities that our sons & I had listed out.  Day 1 of March break I woke up with the absolute worse sore throat of my life to the point that it was brutal to even swallow & there was no sleeping through it either.  I had come down with strep throat I soon learned.  I had never had strep before & sure thought that the whole memory of it would be far behind me once the antibiotics set in.  10 days later I woke up covered in sore red spots which were misdiagnosed for 4 weeks.  Finally I Found out that the strep had caused me to get psoriasis which runs in my family.  Of course I thought I would just put the prescription on them & they would be gone & a distant bad memory.  In life I have so often found myself in the outlier zone & guttate psoriasis was to be no exception.  I am still fighting the fight with this & I will find a way to make it go into remission no ands, ifs or buts. It is the one & only visible chronic illness that I have & it is frankly the one that I feel most able to make go away at least for a while. None of the chronic illnesses are better or worse than one another but I feel most able to find a way to get a break from psoriasis so that I can focus on the others & better still on living this beautiful messy life that is all my own.

Okay so January to March were a challenge health wise.  At the same time last February I decided that I had had quite enough of the nausea & stomach agony that had plagued me for 4 years & had not been properly diagnosed.  I went through it seemed like every test known to man but in the end it was worth it. At the end of last June I found out that I have celiac as well as dairy allergies.  That explained a great deal & it was a relief to know this information so that I could do something about it all.  It is complicated preparing foods but so worth it & on a very positive note I love to cook & bake so I had found ways to make treats that fall within the celiac as well as the dairy allergies & my tummy feels amazing for the first time in 4 years.  I know this way of eating is lifelong for me but I do not feel badly for myself in the least.  I can manage this & with a great attitude.  It means that I have to take the meals wherever I go but it is like a travelling picnic & I get to stir in the love for others to share the meals too & tasting is believing for them that gluten & dairy free can be delicious with practice.  Lets face it, type 1 diabetes is the battleground of preparation for complicated right.  So 2 new chronic illnesses made their debut in 2014 but I am going to be just fine with those as well.  I don’t have to like having 4 chronic illnesses but I do need to make a choice about how I am going to live my life with them.  There is no pity party for one for me I decided 7 years ago.  It is a beautiful messy life no matter what gets thrown my way.

The thing that I have learned along the way & continue to learn is that when I focus on gratitude I really live my life with profound joy even though there are health challenges.  The great thing is that I can be very real about it all.  I can admit when some days are going south & yet still find something every day to be grateful for...family, friends, the changing colours of the leaves on trees on a Fall day, a fresh winter’s soft snow fall, and the sound of my children’s laughter.  It is all big time messy beautiful.  In that spirit, I took the bull by the horns last summer & every single day my sons & I did something small that we had never done before.  And there were lots of days that I felt unwell but bigger than that I still had the joy of simple experiences with them anyway like racing after them with the garden hose & getting a good soaking myself if I opened up the back door & got nailed by one of their super soakers.  I prepared picnics with the new celiac & dairy free friendly ingredients & some of the dishes were given huge thumbs down by our sons.  That is ok.  It is a learning experience & some of the gluten free dishes tasted awful like the pizzas I made up.  we have laughed about the dishes that were total mishaps but we have developed some awesome recipes along the way too that the boys have declared taste better than the “normal” recipes.  That is cool.

At the end of last summer, my husband & I decided that there just is no perfect time in life to do some of the things that we have on our wish list.  We had been planning on doing a small family trip back to Quebec for over a year & it had landed in the “someday” zone over & over again.  We decided to just go ahead & plan it out for Thanksgiving weekend.  It was complicated health wise yet I was big time up for the challenge & I am so grateful that we went ahead & had that trip with our sons.  It was a beautiful time together full of laughs & happy tears too.  Touch wood but I also learned of a proactive antidote I think for colds last summer & started to take it every morning & this is the first Fall and early winter in 7 years that I have not had a single cold.  Maybe I have just been lucky but either way I am incredibly thankful.

The rave review continues for the month of December which is pretty rare.  I kept my perspective leading up to Christmas season for the first time ever.  I was in a take it as it comes mode which frankly is a first.  It was not a perfect December just like I am sure that it wasn't for you either. Two family members ended up in the hospital with serious conditions this month yet I continue to have faith that full healing will happen for both family members.  I am grateful that we have hospitals within the area with such specialities & that the family members were given warning signs so that they could get prompt medical attention.  

There would have been a time when I would have gotten bent out of shape about a lot of things around Christmas.  It was not this way this year even though the day was beautiful messy.  I woke up at 4am Christmas morning with the shakes & sweats in a full tilt low blood sugar but bless my mom & dad & our sons for letting me have a sleep in.  That resulted in dinner being served the latest that I have ever served any dinner which was 9pm.  We were all ok with that though with a late lunch, snacks & perspective.  My husband went to his parents place on Christmas afternoon when they were both ill for many hours yet that is the gift of being part of a family & that is that we each help one another no matter what.  I feel beyond thankful to have a family to love & love me, a warm roof over my head, healthy meals and incredible friends.  That is one of the ravest reviews of them all...new friendships & older friendships strengthened.  I have made some spectacular friendships both new & ones that traveled with me prior to 2014.  I am big time thankful for all these friendships.  If you are reading this right now please know that I consider you to be within my circle of friendships too.

So here I am sitting here with coffee & tea buffets happening in a chain drinking sort of way & I am giving this past year a rave review even with the new health challenges.  Even though my blood sugar is stinking out at 14 right now & my neck has gone into spasm because I must have been stressing more on the inside than I realized & I feel brutally tired, beyond this I still feel joy.  As an aside, my Grandpa MacDonald had written home to his family during WW1 that he had tea with some “older broads.”  That stuck me as funny because the gals were in their forties which most of us would agree is not old but to him at just 17 years old I am sure it would have seemed that way.  I realized that I had never used the word “broad” in that sense in my life yet when the term comes to mind it hits me as describing someone pretty strong.  Well, here’s a first...I consider myself to be one blessed & strong “broad.”  I never really realized just how much we can truly handle when it comes at us one day at a time.

My hearts hope for you is that you have countless blessings in 2015 & take it as it comes & know always that you are always strong enough.  Some days the strength comes from angels disguised as people.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Next Monday's writing is yet to be written :)

Yikes, it is 3 days until Christmas.  Are you ready?  Are any of us ever really ready this time of the year or do we simply just keep going until we run out of time?  Our messy, imperfect Christmas celebration is coming together in a way that I am simply & finally okay with.  I chopped off the bottom half of my to do list & unceremoniously ripped it up & giggled as it hit the recycling bin.  And my attitude is finally, so what.  So what if everything does not get done.  It really will not matter 100 years from now, 100 days from now or 100 minutes from now.  I am cutting myself a break so that I don’t have to enter into that pretend zone of having it all together & it feels amazing big time.    The most important parts of Christmas I am embracing big time & the rest of it is just not on my radar.  Man, it has been a process & a lot of years to get to this point finally.  How about you?  How is the stress out zone going for you this year?  My heart’s hope is that you can give yourself a break in one way or another unapologetically. 

The holidays can be complicated even when we try to unravel it all.  The more people involved in our Christmas celebrations, the more potential layers to confusion, chaos & stress at times.  Do you know some folks that are just a big ball of travelling stress?  It can be exhausting spending time with that type of behaviour I find or worse, the doom & gloomer who puts a what if this or that goes wrong spin on everything.  Come on is my attitude.  Type 1 diabetes has taught me a thing or two over the years about not going down the road of doom & gloom.  I am not interested nor do I welcome the upteenth story of someone’s 6^th removed relative who had horrible things happen to them due to diabetes.  How is that supposed to be helpful on any level? And really, is there another chronic illness that you can think of that people tell you the worst thing that could go wrong versus offering either silence or encouragement?  I cannot think of another one.  But diabetes is different it seems.  People often feel like they should offer some sort of dramatic doomish story about diabetes.  I use to grit my teeth & silence myself in response but no more.  Now, I take people to task on those types of stories of doom & gloom & ask them why they would think that is appropriate, encouraging or human to volunteer such unkind words.  Sometimes I think people have to be startled into reality by being told that what they are saying is just not okay.  How would that person like to hear such uncomforting words?  They would not I am sure of it.  So my motto is kind of “hold on, cut it out” & that type of thing.  Those of us living with diabetes know the reality of diabetes only too well & do our best to manage a disease that is like a moving target.  It is a beast to manage & manage is a misnomer anyhow because what works one day may go totally hairy or awry the next day.  There are a zillion variables that can cause blood sugar fluctuations.  What will manage diabetes?  A freaking cure would.  That is on the top of my Christmas list again this year…a cure.  95 years ago Sir Frederick Banting gave us hope in the form of insulin & that means life while we are waiting for a cure.  Insulin though is a balancing act because it is either our salvation or our demise.  In just the right measure, it gives us in range blood sugars at a given time & other times can lead to frightening results.  So it is not the cure by a long shot obviously.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for insulin every single day & I respect it too because I know I cannot take it lightly or without complicated math or without concentration.  And I wish for a cure for the countless other chronic illnesses that continue to plague our world as well as an end to hunger, homelessness, violence & loneliness in the world.  If Santa puts that on the sleigh, there will be more than a little rejoicing.  But Santa needs help.  He needs help from people with the bravery, talent & more of “elves” throughout the world.  The “elves” I think that will cure the countless illnesses will be moms & dads & brothers & sisters & friends of people living with these diseases.  It all starts with caring about the people living with these beasts of illness versus following a money chain.  There is no motivator stronger than love I believe.  For parents who are in the unique position of being doctors who have children with chronic illnesses, the motivator to cure must be beyond description.  I believe this is where our collective Christmas miracle one day will come from in the form of cures.  In the meantime, my steadfast thought in action is that we need to continue to encourage one another & be lovingly human to one another.

As I mentioned, one of my mottos is “ho ho hold on.”  Over the course of the past month there are 3 examples of holding on that I will share with you.  We are only human so sometimes we hit bumps along the way with diabetes.  I am usually a “good diabetic” in that I make sure that I have one or 2 fast acting sugars & a couple of slow acting sugars in my purse for emergency lows.  My purse frankly usually feels like there is a brick in it with the various supplies I need to carry.  You will know what I mean.  A couple of weeks ago I dipped into my purse while I was out when I tested my blood sugars & saw a dirty rotten 3.4 looking back at me.  Unfortunately I forgot that I had eaten the last of my emergency fast acting sugars on a previous day while in a low.  I have had more lows in the last month because likely similar to yourself I have been on the go more hours of the day than usual while preparing for Christmas. Anyhow, instead of silently verbally beating myself up about my lack of preparedness I just went & lined up for a juice at a store.  Does time really stand still?  It sure feels like it when you get behind someone in the check out who somehow manages to complicate a simple transaction.  That was what was going on in front of me.  Inside my brain was screaming out a myriad of phrases in not so sugar coated language.  When I finally was able to pay for & inhale my juice I was grateful.  Man diabetes is annoying.  It is also invisible so people around us at times give us some very strange looks when we are shaking or sweating (in the middle of winter in the cold) or we cannot put a coherent sentence together.  This leads nicely into story number 2 this month.  I had my cleaning appointment at the dentists (oh joy) & stress sometimes sends my blood sugars high & other times it sends it low.  You just never know & that is problematic to say the least.  As the cleaning progressed I could feel those unmistakable physical characteristics of an on the way low.  Hold on I told my body.  Hold on for 15 more minutes blood sugars & then I will test you & try to fix the situation…just hold on.  Diabetes of course is like a 2 year old having a tantrum…hold on is just not going to cut it.  Ah, the shakes & the numb tongue were in full force by the end of the final 15 minutes of holding on.  Thankfully my sense of humour though was still with me.  I told the hygienist that although it was about to look like I was drunk (at 10am) that I have type 1 diabetes & that I needed to test my sugars as I was sure I was in a low.  The hygienist like so many other health care professionals as well as just people in general assured me that she knew all about diabetes.  I really did not want to hear her take on diabetes during a low blood sugar.  How about you?  I tested & sure enough a number in the 3’s appeared on my glucose meter.  “Don’t worry”, the hygienist told me, “I am going to go get you a juice box.”  My purse was across the room & my thought was that if she could just hand me my purse that I would grab my fast acting & all would return to “normal.”  Before I could get the words out though she was gone from the room to get the juice.  I work hard at leaning on others for help as I am fiercely independent.  Over the years though I have come to realize that relationships cannot be one sided with me giving of myself & then refusing to let others reciprocate when they want to.  The thing is though that when it comes to diabetes care I really have come to realize that being independent about looking out for myself is pretty much bang on because I really cannot afford to entrust my life to someone who really may not be in a position to help.  This was the case I realized quickly when the hygienist returned 5 minutes later with a glass of water instead of juice.  In my mind I was thinking that I would be very well hydrated but that was all with the water so I simply thanked her & got up & got my purse & took the fast acting sugars that I had in my tortoise of a purse…it really must be bigger on the inside than the outside with the stuff I carry in it.  The third ho ho hold on story happened just this past Saturday night.  I was at Mass & because I have celiac as well I receive only from the chalice.  The majority of people choose to just receive the body of Christ & this of course occurs before the chalice so you wait behind these folks.  The trouble is that sometimes I end up going back to my seat in the pew after the people that were behind me in the line so I have to catapult over them to get back to my seat at times.  Last Saturday night though when I returned to my pew the 6 or so people that had originally been behind me had already seated themselves & were praying on the kneelers so I did not want to disturb them.   I was really surprised at how much though I was freaking out on the inside realizing that I was separated from my purse for the remainder of Mass.  What I was freaking out about was being separated from my glucose tester & fast acting sugars.  Ho ho hold on, Saundie, it is not that long & you will be okay for 10 minutes I kept reassuring myself.  My blood sugars were fine I found out afterwards but the panic of being separated from my diabetes supplies was daunting.  Ho ho hold on has been happening in one form or another a lot lately.

My heart’s hope for you is that the only ho ho hold on that you have this Christmas season is the ho ho hold me a little tighter & longer in hugs & squeezes from your dear loved ones.  Blessings for a gentle & beautiful Christmas season Dear Hearts xo.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Next Monday's writing is yet to be written.  Blessings for an absolutely blessed Christmas filled with love xoxo

I would love to share something that has stayed with me.  I heard the words a number of times this past month.  The precious words came from our youngest son, Alex.  He has asked a number of times lately if I realize that when I read either on-line notes, hand-written notes from others or am talking to a Dear Heart on the phone that I smile.  He asked me why I do that.  I did not realize that I do that.  He told me that when I am keyboarding that he often sees me smiling & wondered why I was smiling.  As cold as technology can be, it can also be a gentle space of warmth too if we create it that way & enjoy it in that fashion. 

Did it take you long to join social media?  I found that I had a perception for many years in my mind of what Facebook would be like & based upon those thoughts, I had decided not to join in that or any other social media for a considerable time.  Finally, a couple of years ago, I challenged my thoughts.  It was not a great feeling to realize that I was basing my decision on something other than facts.  My decision was being based upon emotions without any basis.  Then I decided to do the social media toe dip & create a Facebook account.  Long story short, I wish I had done that sooner.  The feeling of being connected is lovely.  The inspirational words & pictures each day are a treat.  Hearing about how Battle Buddies are doing & smiling & thinking, Yes Dear Heart, “me too” has felt like a warm blanket of connectivity.  There are so many groups to join & we get to have a feeling of “me too” in such a profound & comforting way.  Our oldest son has helped me to top dip into texting too.  The texting has been a comfort in a different way.  With Matthew growing older that means that he is out with his friends more & more.  It is a peaceful feeling as a Mom to be able to check in with him when he goes out.  He knows that I like the emoticons & he will often send me a photo from his cell of a silly furry creature & that makes me laugh & he includes that he has not been captured by wolves or anything & is okay.  As an aside Matt & I  have a wee bit of an inside joke.  The next town over from ours has a plaza that recently received a gift of several sculptures outside of one of the coffee shops.  Our sons & I always laugh when we drive by that area.  The sculptures are of goats & one of the goats is on top of a very high pole.  It is unusual & it makes us laugh.  We often will joke that the goat must be on top of the pole so that the local wolves do not get him.  That evolved into the check in texts to our oldest son of “are you okay Honeybunches or are you with the goats?”

There are so many gentle & priceless treasures that we can give to ourselves.  Do you like to come in from outside on a cold day to either your home or a home of a loved one to a warm fireplace, and a nice cup of either tea, hot chocolate or cider?  How about that feeling of giving ourselves the treat of quietly reading a favourite book or listening to gentle music?  Then there is “pet therapy” where we snuggle in with our furry friends to pat fur & feel the peace of our furry family members.  As a bit of a humorous aside, our goldie has a funny habit that she finds comfort in.  We have decided that it is a strategy that she has.  Like so many pets, our Bedford (golden retriever) loves to sleep whenever possible on the family room loveseat.  She has one of the cushions contoured for her large body.  When she gets up on the cushion, she prepares for her sleep by first licking a huge area on the couch.  We had never seen a pet do this before.  It dawned on us that she may be doing this so that she will have the whole couch to herself for a long time since no one wants to sit on a dog saliva covered cushion!  She is quick about it too.  Needless to say that our couch gets cleaned extremely frequently as a result.  And when guests come over, we encourage Dear Hearts to sit on the chairs vs the couch.

You may find that the month of December could be described as anything other than gentle.  Each year I have tried to mold the month into a gentle one.  Admittedly, I have fallen short each year in that regard.  Still, I will continue to make the effort to turn the sails on that one.  This year I find myself being closer to being present in the moment even with the endless to do lists.  Each day is an opportunity to ground myself in perspective.  Some things simply will not get done this year.  The sky will not fall as a result of that.   The key though is to choose to do the things on the list that matter most of all.  Will certain things make a difference in the lives of Dear Ones?  Will certain things make folks smile & feel loved?  Yes, some things will & other things will not make a hill of beans difference.  If we are going to wring out every bit of our energy then why not concentrate on the things that matter most since we have a defined amount of time after all.  No pun but one of the things that I have already chopped from my list is some of the Christmas baking.  It was difficult to axe some of this activity from the list since I love to bake.  I had to ask myself though if it was worth taking all the time to do the amount of baking at the expense of being unavailable to invite friends & family over & be present with them or make phone calls with a smile on my face.  The boys & I will do just one baking fun project together.  It is more for the laugh that it will bring for them.  We will make a few dozen gingerbread ninja cookies & decorate those together.  Our sons do love to decorate cookies.  That will bring joy to their hearts so that part of the baking will remain on our list.  Countless trips to the mall is not going to be an option this year.     And for sure I will be in the card section yet again crying heartfelt tears as I find the just right cards for Dear Hearts.  I always know when I have found the right card for someone dear because tears make an appearance.  The lady at the card shop is so used to me by now.  Oh well, dare to feel everything, right!

This past week, like yourself, I have been trying to squeeze in more activities than ever before.  It was wonderful to get together with a group of gals for a Christmas lunch whether we felt we had the time or not & have some laughs, a delicious lunch & tea.  A Grinch did show up in the form of extremely high blood sugars following the lunch.  If you have type 1 too, you will share the frustration of trying to estimate the number of carbs in Christmas foods without much of a guidepost.  The lunch was so much fun & it was delicious.  The darned Grinchy blood sugar numbers for 4 hours after the lunch were brutal.  I had majorly underestimated how many carbs were in the lunch dishes & how fast or slow acting the carbs would be.  I had to do a lot of corrections.  Thankfully I have my pump however the evening was a write off since I was sitting at a blood sugar of 20 & was profoundly sick for about 4-6 hours.  Still though, the grinchy type 1 cannot be allowed to prevent us from being with our loved ones.  Even with the evening blood sugars, it was still worth it to be out with Dear Hearts.  Next year, when I get together with this group of gals, we plan to go to the same restaurant & I will call ahead & ask about the ingredients so that I have a better chance at coming in closer with insulin calculations.  It will be a mathematical Christmas lunch ha! Ha!  Seriously though it is difficult to ask at a restaurant about what is in the dish.  Most of the time even when we do ask, the server through no fault of their own has no idea at all.  We need to open up a type 1 restaurant with the carb content right on the menu…how cool would that be?  It is my heart’s thought that even in the face of difficulty that we can choose to wrap ourselves in comfort.  Last night I put on my comfiest jammies, made my favourite tea blend, got a soft blankie & snuggled in on a spot on the couch that had not been christened by our furry girl.  Although it took time & effort, my blood sugars came back into range again & while this was in the process, I felt the comfort of having a home filled with countless simple comforts. 

This morning as I was reading (and smiling) while reading posts from Dear Hearts on Facebook, there were some encouraging words there.  We can choose to have technology work in a way that can be comforting. Dear Hearts made & make an incredible difference on challenging days.  Each one of us has our own set of struggles.  My experience has been that I am blessed with a circle of Dear Hearts that live love out loud by sharing their beautiful hearts with kindness & understanding.  What a beautiful difference.  These Dear Hearts have me absolutely beaming this morning.  I stand very much corrected on my perception of what social media would be like.  It is whatever you make of it.  I feel the warmth & love from Dear Hearts.  We cannot practically always be physically with one another yet we can be connected by hearts by kindnesses shared via technology.  The most gentle, soft & comfortable things that I can ever imagine being wrapped in is the care & love of Dear Hearts through heart connections.

My heart’s hope for you is that the love & kindness that you share comes full circle with an exclamation mark right back to you & snuggles you in soft, gentle comfort always.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Have a smile filled week & may peace be with you.  Next Monday's sharing is "Ho Ho Hold On."  :)

Some people say, “Happy Holidays”, others, “Happy Hanukkah” or “Merry Christmas” this time of the year.  Although we are unlikely to wish one another a Messy Christmas, it may be something that at times fits the season.  Please don’t get me wrong…I embrace the best parts of Christmas.  I believe that we make Christmas what we want it to be.  If we choose to make it about giving into marketing trickery/commercialism then that is what it will be.  If we choose to somehow find a way against all the forces out there this time of the year to get a little quiet each day & centre ourselves in the waiting & anticipation of joy then that is hopefully what we will find.  The thing is though that whether we embrace the season with either a buying frenzy mentality or a reflective spirit, it can get messy either way I have found.

Life can be messy.  If we happen to layer on a Norman Rockwell view of the holidays how does that work out?  I confess that for more years than I can remember I really bought into the whole picture in my head of what a perfect Christmas looked like.  I wiped myself out & came up short each year.  For sure I had fallen for the Norman Rockwell Christmas picture of perfection big time for a long time.  My first year with type 1 diabetes though broke that snow globe of a picture in my head & although I would never want to relive that Christmas ever again, it did I realize provide something lasting that our family has turned into something awesome.

As I have shared before, I was diagnosed with diabetes on November 29, 2007.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I was misdiagnosed since although I had type 1 diabetes, I was misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes & medical treatment went accordingly.  Oral medications for type 2 were prescribed & I followed the medical instructions to a t.  And I got sicker & sicker & my blood sugars stayed sky high because I had type 1 & needed insulin.  Everything that year was exhausting in terms of preparation for Christmas.  And my heart was heavy because the diagnosis was new & I was freaking out since I had so many questions about what this would mean for my family & for me.  My endo. at the time was not exactly open to questions let’s say to be polite.  It was a bad experience on top of a bad experience.  It took me 6 months with that first endo but I finally did find a new endo & she is fantastic.  You know I believe firmly in a happy middle & ending…yes, I actually insist on it so I am thrilled to share that I absolutely am over the moon happy with my endo. now.  Okay, back to December 2007. 

If you have experienced sustained high blood sugars, I do not need to describe what a day looks like just trying to do anything at all.  It is beyond exhausting.  Putting up the Christmas tree was exhausting & making & decorating cookies was exhausting & well the outside decorating did not even happen that year.  As a Mom with 3 small boys at the time I had to keep going & more than anything I did not want my diagnosis to steal the joy from their Christmas under any circumstances.  There seemed like an ocean of tears behind closed doors that I made sure our little boys did not see or hear.  I was still of the mindset that they would have their Norman Rockwell Christmas celebration come hell or high water.  What a mess that Christmas was when I remember it.  Our 2 younger boys don’t remember it at all since our youngest son was a baby & our middle son was just 3 years old at the time.  Our oldest son remembers it as a very happy & funny & eccentric Christmas.   My heart is glad that is the way that he remembers it.   Maybe the foreshadowing of how the celebration was going to go is best portrayed in the photo with santa of our 3 sons that year.  Our youngest son, a baby then, was crying in the photo, and our oldest son looked like he was falling asleep.  It is kind of difficult to look at this photo even today as it brings that year back very vividly.    To get very real, it was a gut wrenching experience literally.  If you have ever taken Metformin you will get exactly what I mean by that.  Prior to going downstairs with my husband & our sons I was spending a lot of time with “Heuy” on the “Big White Phone” hurling due to the side effects of having been recently put on a “trial” of Metformin 3 days before Christmas that Christmas morning.  And I also remember being told that because my blood sugars were not coming down that maybe I might have “juvenile diabetes” however that was unlikely as I was an adult.  And I was told that on January 2^nd if my blood sugars did not come down that I would have to begin injections as the endo at the time was then beginning to wonder if I might have type1 diabetes.  If you don’t have diabetes, imagine the worst stomach flu that you ever had & imagine it lasting & then imagine flu in general & then multiply that by at least 10 times & imagine it not going away…that is how I would attempt to describe sustained high blood sugars.  It knocks you on your kester big time.  If Lake Ontario was low that year, I will admit to drinking an incredible amount of it in 2007.  You know exactly what I mean.  So we did our stockings & I put on a happy face for my family through the beast of type 1 during Christmas of 2007.  It was our first Christmas in our home.  We purchased a home with great “bones” & lots of potential & it really felt like home from the moment I walked through the door.  My husband & I knew that it needed some TLC & that we would & could work away at that.  I have always been someone who believes that if you love someone or something enough, miracles happen.  I felt that way about our home instantly.  I love it in our home with our family & we still have projects to do on our older home & I am forever laughing at the mess at times however that is life & I am finally ok with that.  Our home is about 45 or so years old & had been neglected over the years.  We are either the 7^th or 8^th owners of our home & so it is quite an eclectic combination of decorating.  I kind of love that though & we have added our touches too of course & will continue to.  This home has been witness to the tears, the laughter, and a lot of sounds of our sons playing.  It knows how messy life is & how that became magnified at the end of 2007.  Our home though also knows that it houses warriors within it.  Our family does not give up any day & we never will.  Sometimes our celebrations may appear to be kooky to some but they are just right to us because we have learned that diabetes for sure throws curve balls & you have to move to catch them.  Plans sometimes have to be modified…the fun however & the love within any celebration remain strong & flourishing.  Diabetes is insidious because it refuses to be ignored & it may as well have had a fog horn in December 2007.  Just before we were about to put the turkey in the oven, our very old & dilapidated furnace  decided to konk out.  It made an unmistakeable “I am giving up” rattling noise that was so loud that I am sure that our neighbors could hear it.  Thankfully, my husband has “the knack” (wink, wink engineers…you will get the Dilbert analogy here) & he went downstairs to fight the good fight with our furnace.  As I often joke with him, all he seems to need is an elastic band & a wet suit to get almost anything mechanical working again.  That is a wee joke in the spirit of the show McGuyver & how the engineer in the wild can just somehow figure “stuff” out.  I big time appreciated the frustrations that my husband was going through & that left me with running between “Huey” & our 3 young sons on my own that day & well, the turkey went back into the refrigerator in the meantime…well until Boxing Day.  Here’s the very good news & that is that was the one & only year that we did not have company for Christmas.  I would not have wanted to subject anyone else to the bad Country song of a Christmas that we were experiencing.  Through it all though thankfully our kids were totally oblivious to the “challenges” that their mom & dad were having.  The only place open on Christmas day around our area that we could find was a very greasy Chinese Food spot so we ordered that for Christmas dinner which our oldest son thought was a hoot & great.  It was disgusting but maybe it was not as bad as I thought since I was already hugely nauseous compliments of Mr. Metformin already.  Let’s put it this way though & that is that we have not revisited that restaurant again because life is too short & precious to have another greasy experience like that one.  Once our sons were in bed after that Christmas, I was able to let myself shake my head at how not Norman Rockwell the day had been.  And at that moment I realized that it was definitely time anyhow to give up that Norman Rockwell picture of Christmas.  That picture was not realistic before diabetes & it sure is not realistic now.  Now with each Christmas I look at the to do list that most of us will agree is too long for each of us anyhow to realistically complete.  I look at it & laugh knowing that there is not a chance I am going to knock myself out to make it all happen.  Instead, I embrace my own version of Christmas which is messy beautiful.   That means for instance that if I have a low blood sugar before we are about to put the main course on the table that we instead bring out the desserts (gluten/wheat & dairy free this year) & start with dessert.  You can imagine that I will not get any flack from our sons should that happen.  Oh my, imagine cutting into either your dessert pie or cake or whatever delectable you have created prior to dinner & when dessert time comes, that dessert has a piece missing & does not look perfect.  Imagine…I can & I think isn’t that beautiful messy & absolutely my new version of Norman Rockwell. 

Let’s redefine perfect.  To me, perfect is beautiful messiness in life.  Perfect means, I am okay with rolling with whatever the day brings.  Best of all, there is no pretending to have the Norman Rockwell Christmas.  Life is messy, and Christmas celebrations can be messy & when you layer on the beast of diabetes, it can all get pretty magnified.  I choose to back away from the Norman Rockwell fantasy & instead embrace a picture of just being okay with my own messy version of the holidays. 

My heart’s hope for you is that you know that you are loved big time.  Please be with your loved ones during the holidays & just focus on what truly matters…love.  The rest is just stuff.  Love absolutely lasts forever.

Smiles, Saundie :)

Please be gentle with yourself & if you can please just be okay with messy beauty too.  Be at peace.  Next Monday's writing is "Comfortable, Gentle Softness."  :)

What is the deal with the wearing of masks way beyond Halloween?  Is there a great deal of dawning of masks throughout the entire year by many people?  We each answer that question for ourselves.  Maybe it is the passage of time that has brought this to the forefront of my mind.  In so many ways I have always been an old soul of sorts.  And I have always found people watching to be kind of fascinating.  I like to get to know many different people & listen to what makes people really bubble over.  And I like to watch also from a distance at times & more or less create a story in my mind about strangers who are just passing through…or maybe I am the one passing through. 

Do the Jones’ actually exist?  Sure, we can open up our telephone directories in the town or city that we each live in & I bet you that you will see oodles of the name Jones listed in the directory.  We are not really talking about actual Jones’ but rather the age old saying of “keeping up with the Jones” which most of us will be all too familiar with.  Does the activity of trying to keep up with the Jones begin at a young age?  We each may have our own answers to that question.  My answer is that I think so.  With Christmas very much in the forefront of my mind with just a matter of weeks until its arrival, I think that keeping up with the Jones has perhaps always been a component of the season unfortunately.  Kids tend to be pretty impressionable.  The commercials for the toys come on tv for instance earlier & earlier every year prior to the Christmas buying season.  Then there is the whole need for some kids to impress their friends with what they want to receive under the tree.  The wish list seems like it has gotten further & further away from the true meaning of the season with the desires for kids to have the latest & greatest technology along with the costly price tags of most of these items.  Meanwhile, kids I believe have not changed that much in that the biggest smiles seem to come from the simplest of experiences like tobogganing as a family down a neat local hill & hot chocolate made from scratch on the kitchen stove or looking at freaky bugs & leaves & rocks on a walk in nature.  Last Spring some friends & I attended a speaking engagement with Matthew Kelly who is one of my favourite authors.  One of the gems that Matthew Kelly shared with all of us was “you really cannot get enough of what you really don’t need.”  In other words if folks find that there is something missing in their lives they will tend to fill it with something…anything…many anythings & somethings.  And when that does not work, the pile of stuff simply gets larger & the cycle continues.  The accumulation of stuff may be about keeping up with the Jones or it may be about finding peace or maybe something else.  Does it ever work?  The thing about stuff that I have found is that I have to be vigilant to not get too attached to things & more than anything if something can be enjoyed with someone else then it means more to me than something that I keep to & for myself.  That is one of the reasons why I really enjoy gift cards because I save them until I am with a Dear Heart & then we both enjoy them together.  It becomes a memory as well so that is pretty cool I think.  To get very real, although I never got full entrenched in the world of keeping up with the Jones’, I have certainly fallen prey to some aspects of it.  My first car for instance I really enjoyed because although it was a used car it looked very shiny & impressive.  I was in my early 20’s & still finding my emotional sea legs so it still very much mattered at that point what others thought of me.  As I continued to experience life & grow up with each passing year I realized that in so many cases the people that we think of as the Jones’ are often up to their eyeballs in debt trying to maintain “the lifestyle” & are less happy with so much than folks who had a meager amount of anything.  Stuff has not & never will equal joy or peace I believe.  To get to a point of not needing to impress others (can we really anyways) is liberating I have found.  To just be unapologetically ourselves is an absolute treat I think. 

There are some things that I cannot bare to think about living without & at the centre of all these things which are really not things at all is love.  We each share our love with others & the world around us in different ways.  If I had to put a name on my rascal type of love shared, it would be, “gentle warrior.”  When I was a kid & even into my 20’s I let myself get steamrolled over.  You know the saying, “doormat?”  That was me.  I did not want to be a bother to anyone & I wanted to help others yet would never dream of accepting help from anyone.  Most people around me thought I was living a very ideal life.  Wearing a mask though I have found has never lead to anything other than a separation from me & those around me.  As I grew up I learned to accept that not everyone was going to like me.  Well good grief, no kidding.  I had tried to knock myself out because my unconfident younger self at that point wanted to be liked by everyone.  That is a different form of keeping up with the Jones’ I believe.  The more I dedicated myself to that endeavor, the more miserable I felt inside under that mask.  Over time I learned that I could choose to put that all behind me & do something for myself that would last a lifetime…beginning with taking off the mask.  That meant that I chose to befriend myself finally & be myself unapologetically…vulnerably & fully.  There are no words to say how there was no looking back from that point on.  There are times in life where we each look at forks in the road & make a decision at that juncture that has lasting impacts on ourselves & those around us.  I chose over a decade ago to become a gentle warrior in every aspect of my life.  Thank goodness for that choice because 7 years ago when type 1 diabetes came into my life, I did not have to pretend that I did not have diabetes.  I did not have to crumble under some sort of fragility at having something less than perfection enter my life.  Life is messy & life with type 1 diabetes is brutally messy…messier still when we have those literal mishaps like spilled insulin & a blood test that looks more like the scene of a crime than medical management.  Diabetes is what it is.  Diabetes is far from perfect.  My blood sugar numbers are messy & far from perfect on any given day.  As an aside anytime I get a 5.5 on my glucose meter I announce it to my family & they always clap & cheer.  I love that big time!

I do not plan on leaving this earth leaving a legacy other than being messy, rascally me & giving every ounce of love that I can away.  And I will do my part of giving away love in a gentle yet fierce way.  When I love, I love with all my might.  My hugs are not for the faint at heart.  I may be a gummy bunny low blood sugar treating gal but when it comes to making sure that Dear Hearts know that I love them, the cuteness of it all pales in comparison to the unapologetic, vulnerability that I choose to share in telling others that they matter & are loved.  Sure, you can blush all you want when I tell you that you are loved & why I think you are the bee’s knees.  Your blushing is not about to deter me.  We can be embarrassed about sharing vulnerable feelings yet come on, join me anyways & push through that to the place of no masks at all.  That is the place where we get real & share our real selves.  Guess what, our real selves are pretty freaking “tea”riffic!

Smiles, Saundie :)

Next week's sharing is not yet created.  My heart's hope for you is that you go ahead & be your amazing self in a world where there is a real need for that & go ahead & love unapologetically past your own blushing & others xo.

Are polite adults allowed to say, “Just get over it?”

What if everything we are thinking were to appear in a bubble caption above our heads for others to see?  In some ways we may consider that to be both a good & not great thing at the same time.  For instance each one of us may find that during those times that we meant to tell a loved one that we love them there would be no missed opportunities.  In other ways though the rascal within us would come forth if we had that bubble caption.  If there is one thing that type 1 diabetes has taught me though, it is to be me.  That means that I risk being thought of as an over the top sentimental gal or at other times a feisty advocate.  The things said or left unsaid can be haunting I have found.  I have done what I can with the past things said & left unsaid & each moment I get to make that choice in the present tense.  I love choices big time. 

During the month of November (Diabetes Awareness Month), 2 things come to mind that would appear in the bubble caption above my head in a polite yet feisty way:  “What?” & “Get Over It.”  Let’s start with the “what” first.

“What?”  That is my answer to something that happened one year ago on World Diabetes Day (November 14, 2013).  My Battle Buddies & I were big time enthusiastic about sharing via social media & with anyone who was breathing that it was World Diabetes Day.  It means something to us.  We were each encouraging everyone everywhere to wear blue.  It was the Blessed Mother Teresa who said that “we do no big things, only small things with great heart.”  That is what hearing or seeing non-diabetic friends or family wearing blue on November 14^th means to me.  It means something & it touches my heart not just for me but for every single person fighting the feisty fight with diabetes day in & day out.  What if I told you that the small symbol of support of asking others to wear blue was ridiculed last year?  Maybe you too would say “what” or a less polite variation of this too.  I have heard it said that dogs see in black & white.  When I ask our dog she just won’t say so I am not sure if this is true or not ha ha!  Do some people see in black & white on big blue day?  This person in particular did I believe.  The individual is a fine, fine person who advocates for another cause profoundly passionately.  Her cause is extremely worthy & she is passionate about her advocating for her cause & I commend her for this.  She became very perturbed though on November 14^th when she read several things about it being world diabetes day in her social media news feed.  She decided to voice her displeasure about the attention that world diabetes day was receiving.  She went on to state that she could not for the life of her understand why people were paying attention to diabetes when there are other things out there that need attention too.  “What?”  In my mind she missed the point & frankly I felt hurt by her attack on our celebration day…a day we celebrate Sir Frederick Banting’s birthday.  Why do we celebrate November 14^th?  We celebrate because we are literally alive because Sir Frederick Banting created insulin…not the cure yet insulin keeps us alive with type 1 diabetes.  I will never apologize for celebrating that!  Here’s how I think…I have 3 sons & I know first hand that love multiplies & does not divide.  In other words I love each son at 100% vs 33%.  It is the same with worthy causes.  Just because I advocate passionately for diabetes does not mean that I would ever discount another cause.  I support this lady’s cause as well big time.  It is not black & white…diabetes advocation does not compete with other causes.  I want us all to win.  I decided to forgive her in absentia because she just did not want to let go of the way she was thinking.  If people were thinking about diabetes then they were not thinking about her cause was the way she was thinking.  That is too bad because I strongly do not believe that is the case.  I know for a fact that people with diabetes get it…they get what support & encouragement feels like.  I have made some of the most compassionate friendships within the diabetes community &  I know there is room for every cause to receive support and encouragement.  It is not black & white or either or.  Black & white thinking I believe leads quickly to separation & it does not need to be that way.  I wonder sometimes if some folks come from a scarcity type of thinking.  Perhaps they believe that there is not enough love or support to go around.  Love though I know multiplies & is renewable for a fact.

Bubble caption number 2 is in conjunction with the “diaversary.”  Do you know when your own diaversary is or the diaversary of someone you love?  Everyone is a beautiful original so some folks may choose to forget the date of his or her diaversary yet other people embrace the day with joie de vive.  Friends within our diabetes community understand the term diaversary & if we are celebrating our own diaversary then it is met with profound encouragement.  When I announce my diaversary date to many people who do not live with diabetes they get a wee bit freaked out often.  Ah, have we not swept that under the carpet?  Is it polite to wish someone a happy diaversary or make mention ever of the beast of diabetes?  Oh my goodness, that is where the bubble caption above my head comes out of “get over it.”  Yes please wish me a happy diaversary on November 29^th because I am freaking alive!  That’s what my diaversary means to me.  I am of course not celebrating diabetes.  I am celebrating that I am fighting the fight, getting back up every time the beast of type 1 knocks me on my butt, growing stronger & appreciating every single day with greater gratitude & enthusiasm.  A lot of people are too freaked out by me being excited about my diaversary to think to realize that I am celebrating life.  They don’t want to say the wrong thing perhaps so they say nothing at all.  That’s a lost opportunity in my mind for a human connection.  Getting over our own level of comfort for the sake of someone else I think is a great thing.  It’s a choice though.  Type 1 has taught me not to be timid about saying what is in my heart to others.  I thought this way before I was diagnosed with type 1 & type 1 has magnified the need to connect heart to heart.  Words left unsaid are a pity.  If we have the chance to help put a smile on someone else’s face, that is a privilege & a gift.  How can we not?  I wonder sometimes if others have not had to fight daily to sustain life or watch someone they love do this maybe they just don’t get it.  I think the capacity to get it is within each of us yet it is a place beyond our comfort zone most likely.  There is no point travelling the world I believe if we don’t travel past a comfort zone to a place that human compassion resides.  I will be celebrating my 7 year diaversary this November 29^th with energy to spare!  I guess with each passing year I am turning into more of my own personal type of rascal of sorts & I like that.  I like that a lot.  I really don’t have time for nonsense or leaving things unsaid.  So I am a bolder, zanier, over zealous version of myself with each passing year.  I am more than ok with that.  And to get very real, my enthusiasm I believe has often lead others to think that I am much younger than I am & I am pretty ok with that too.  Smiling, I think, takes at least 10 years off our faces & I smile more than I see a lot of people smile.  I smile on days that my blood sugars are cooperating with me (like today) & through gritted teeth on the days where my blood sugars are roller coastering like mad, I smile through tears some days & I smile while chain drinking shameless amounts of tea each day & through belly laughs on other days.  I don’t smile because I am a lunatic or in some sort of state of fake out denial.  I smile because I am alive for goodness sake.  I smile because I love & am loved.  That is reason enough.  Love absolutely lasts forever. Love absolutely multiplies every single time.  As a cute aside, when our sons were toddlers they each liked to watch Winnie the Pooh.  I remember the episode where Eyeore is bummed out & Winnie decided to cheer him up by having a “happy tail adversary.  They all sing the tail adversary song to him & he gets pretty cheerful.  I confess that on November 29^th when I celebrate my diaversary the “have a happy, happy tail aversary” song goes through my mind only with the words… “have a happy, happy, happy diaversary!”  That would be a strange bubble caption for people to see ha ha!  A sense of humour though was given to me as a gift & I have found that it also has multiplied over the years big time.  Both my Dad & my Grandpa Brown gave me the gift at a very young age of the appreciation for humour.  Maybe that is why I enjoy the thought of the bubble caption in the first place.

Here’s what I advocate…love.  Okay, so that leaves no one out.  No one gets left behind.

My heart’s hope for you is that you embrace all celebrations with your own spectacular You ness!  Let's go ahead & celebrate even through the "what" & the "get over it" situations that come along too!

Smiles, Saundie :)

Happy Diaversary to all of us...we are here...that is worth celebrating...100 years ago we would not have been...celebrate for goodness sake that we are alive!  Next week's story is "Gentle Warriors."  :)

What do you think about as you experience another Fall season?  Is it your favourite time of year or is there another season that speaks to your heart?  Why is that?  Do you feel in step with Mother Nature during some times of the year & not as much at others?

I love Fall big time!  I love it until every last leaf has fallen from every last tree & then I feel a sense of melancholy & I think maybe even a sense of inner conflict.  Nature has to know what it is doing I am sure.  There is such a cycle of renewal evident it seems like in spring, summer & in another sense during Fall I believe.  Winter though is by far the season that I experience resistance with nature the most.  I would love to see the trees actually hang on to the leaves that look like they have been hand painted.  I would love to have a perpetual Fall season yet maybe that is just because it is wishful dreaming.  Perhaps if I could have this wish come true, maybe, just maybe I would tire of Fall.  I will never know.  The thing about Fall that I could learn so much from is that near the mid-way point of Fall roughly the leaves turn their beautiful myriad of colours & then they let go.  That is one thing that I have struggled with for as long as I can remember…letting go.  I have trouble letting go of good things & bad things really to my own detriment.  My challenge with letting go has proven to be a hindrance in moving forward towards better & new things at times & just plain acceptance at other times.  It could be that my sentimental heart has turned me into a naïve target at times yet still I refuse to give up on anyone.  Not giving up on others is a great thing yet being pulled under water is another thing.  There is a situation that I found myself in beginning about 3 years ago & I know in my heart of hearts that I have to find a way to love from a distance.  I will help anyone that I can as long as they are truthful & are putting in the work needed.  When I offer up support to link folks up with professionals who have the expertise in especially the area of addictions & offer to drive them, and other things as long as they put in the work & they instead say one thing & do another…well, I need to find a way to love from a distance.  My experience has been that while I know the signs of manipulation, I get in neck deep before I know it when it comes to doing too much for some folks with addictions.  I have found that it is a work in progress finding a way to start to let go & of course leave the door always open & offer a bridge to professionals in the field yet let go until the person takes on what they need to do to help themselves.  It is big time tough to be a part of honestly.  That is okay but it has taught me along with the season of Fall that letting go can be a very natural & renewing thing for the other person & myself.  I cannot keep the leaves attached to the trees & keeping certain folks attached to me does not help them to do what they need to do to be their best selves.  Letting go can mean not holding onto the stiff upper lip too hard at times too.  It can mean sometimes getting into my car after a tough interchange with someone who is a little not quite in their best minds & just letting some tears go.  It does not have to mean that I am too soft or anything like that.  It can mean that I am just letting that moment & situation at that time go. 

Yes, I still fight Mother Nature in that I am still most apt to hang on at all times instead of discerning when it is best & right to hang on & when it is right to let go.  When it comes to type 1 I find that I have a constant tug of war going on inside of myself to hang on & let go all at once.  It can be difficult to know when to cut myself some slack & when to push myself to do more in an effort to reach my A1C & other health goals.  My body really has not been cooperating with me more & more.  In the last year I have been bombarded with 3 additional autoimmune chronic illnesses to fight in addition to type 1.  Please do not get me wrong because not for one second do I feel sorry for myself.  I do not bother anymore to ask myself, “why me” either.  It serves no good purpose for me.  I just know that on any given day I will be strong enough…not by myself but I will have strength from somewhere when it is needed.  The thing that I haven’t let go of though with the additional autoimmune 365’s is the exact same A1C goal that I have always had.  Recently I received my A1C results for the past 4 months & they were not even close to my goal & man had I been working hard.  I had hung on big time to my goal.  When I got the results I felt a sense of the wind coming right out of my sails for a full day.  I hung on so tight that I inadvertently felt so much self disappointment upon getting the results.  My endocrinologist is an amazing doctor & she is so respectful & encouraging, professional & gracious & she was quick to explain to me what the other autoimmune illnesses do to my blood sugars.  I have super high expectations for myself though.  I am still admittedly hanging on to my goal for next time.  What I will let go of though is blaming myself because I put in the hard work every minute of the day.  I am giving it my all so it is time to let go big time of the beating myself up over numbers not achieved.

Here’s a different kind of question.  What if we belong to a  support group that “behaves badly” towards one another?  I belong to support groups for type 1 & find them all profoundly encouraging.  I don’t just sign up for every single one though.  I usually ask a friend who is already in that group what the tone of the group is first.  Since I have only been diagnosed with my other series of autoimmune illnesses in the last year, I do not have any friends to ask about the support groups for the other groups of autoimmune illnesses.  I guess I decided to go on a fishing expedition of sorts.  I like to get myself up to speed as fast as possible when I have a new diagnosis so that I can understand the beast & do as much to make myself as healthy as possible.  I like to learn from many sources at the speed of light.  I feverishly joined a lot of support groups amongst other things to get myself up to speed on the real deal.  It still strikes me as a strange thing when folks attack one another verbally within support groups.  What is the point of that? It makes zero sense.  Why belong to a support group & then become combative & just plain mean I wonder, wonder, wonder.  No, it is not okay with me.  Again I will say that 99% of the groups that I have belonged to have been & are big time fabulous & supportive of all.  Oh that 1% though of misery.  Yikes, big time yikes!  I have only withdrawn from a support group 2 times.  The first time was when a lovely person was being scorned & put down & the other time was just last week in a gluten free support group when a small group of folks started bullying & verbally abusing a bunch of other people.  It was so strange.  The verbal abuse went on for hours & hours especially towards this one mom yet stretched out to other people too.  I realized that I would simply state my position that this behaviour was not okay & then leave the group.  I am not interested in being any part of such a group so I just let that go.  There is a time to let some things go.  The thing I keep being told over & over again by my health team & others in my life to let go of is stress.  I am not trying to invite stress yet I know I am not doing my best to let it go either.  That is worth putting more effort into.

The thing that I love about Mother Nature & the seasons is that even within the bleakest late Fall or winter days, the hope of renewal is there.  The spring comes again & we see new growth again.  And we see something else which is so brilliant.  We see so many plants that although only planted once seem to sleep for a time & then come back to life again.  The leaves let go but the promise of new leaves coming back is there Mother Nature knows.  I don’t have the best luck with indoor plants in particular.  Outdoor plants though seem to flourish despite me which is a great thing.  I remember a couple of years ago that I did not quite get to bringing in one of my outside mint plants that was in a small planter outside before the snow fell.  Oh well, I thought, the mint is a goner so I will have to buy a new plant next spring.  The following spring, that mint plant shot right back up in the planter outside & has since become a huge plant that I have split many times over & it continues to do so well.

Maybe just maybe I could learn something from that little mint plant too.  If the essential things needed are given then it will do its best to flourish.  That is what I try to do within my type 1 diabetes care day in & day out.  I do the dozen blood tests day in day out, eat in a healthy way, exercise, take insulin, correct & try to keep my other autoimmunes in check.  If I let go of some of the self imposed stress that this over achiever personality of mine has then maybe I can let more light in.  Yes, I am going to let in the light. 

My heart’s hope for you is that your strength, hope & determination are always renewed no matter what season we are all experiencing.  May we each give to ourselves what we need to be our healthiest selves in all seasons.

Smiles, Saundie

Ironically, this morning we woke up in our area to a blanket of snow on all the trees & the leaves have not even finished falling yet!  When there is snow on the leaf pile outside you know maybe even Mother Nature is in transition.  My hope for you this week & always is that you experience joy in every season.  Next week's writing sharing is entitled, "Are Polite Adults Allowed to Say That?"  It will be my 7 year "diaversary" on November 29th & you know I will be celebrating the gift of another year of messy, beautiful life :)