I posted a mental health check in the Healer Group I facilitate on Face Book. It is called Bolts of Love Healers and it is a place for people to gather to exchange their walk with healing. I was asked by several on the list how I was doing.
Overall, I believe I am doing rather well. I’ve decided to honor what the kids and I need and when we need it, especially now. At present, even though the budget in this house really does run on a week by week basis and my working income has gone to zero I have yet to go into any type of extreme worry.
Perspective keeps me from going over that fear edge. When I was 28 years old my husband moved out. I came home from being out with the children to find almost nothing in the house except the children’s items. I had two children at the time. They were four and six years old. I had a bachelor’s degree in history, two children, all the bills in my name and no car. I sold what little I could find, bought a $1200 station wagon, took out a school loan, made sure I had a part time job, and went back to school full time to earn a teacher’s certification to go with my bachelor degree. By the time I was 30 I was employed full time as a middle school teacher and had arranged our lives so that the kids were at school in the same building as I so that I could manage children, work and school activities.
In the middle…..
I remarried. I was extremely happy. We added two more boys to the family. After some time off I went back to teaching.
When I was 40 years old everything started to change. My husband was often not feeling well, tired or incredibly grumpy. His personality and moods started to change. Doctors said he had allergies, bronchitis and then pneumonia. Chiropractor said he was just working too hard and needed constant adjustments. Christmas Eve 2010 he was diagnosed with stage 4 non-smoker’s lung cancer. The next year and nine months there was no world outside of cancer. I have an entire book written on that time, and the absolute encompassing worry, fear and drama during those months. (Maybe someday I will publish it)
I was 42 when he died. Then life became healing and survival for me and four boys.
Twice in my life my world was held up only by the conviction that there must be more meaning than the drama; that the drama did not have to be the reality. That it was and is possible to make decisions as they were needed to be made and that the world, my own soul, other people, family and organizations are available when necessary. Twice in my life the well-being of others, my children, was enough for me to take care of myself so that I could take care of them. In many ways those four boys saved me from not ever wanting to get up off the pavement. It wasn’t the worry that got us through and it is was not the fear. It was reaching beyond the fear to that spirit and strength available to know that there is only this moment.
I am a few weeks away from 50. I am still learning. Not all my decisions have generated beautiful results. I need to work constantly on my relationships (it took a lot of years before my ex-husband and I could have any real conversation), my level of patience and my tendency to retreat when life’s moments become more than my ability to process in the moment. I have learned, from feeling like roadkill twice in my life now, that there is only up from there. It was no fun at the time, yet in retrospect each of those instances reset priorities, and allowed for every experience to be an experience worth having; even the experience of COVID-19 in the world. “The Spirit of God is always in my and all around me. Love and comfort are mine always. For this truth I am grateful.” (Daily Word Monday March 23, 2020)