Finding The Good Part

My son left for college this morning and through the constant ache in my heart I’m finding the good part to help me through this very long, slow-moving day. My mind has been reliving the moments that are a part of me forever. I can smell his sweet baby scent from the back of his neck that I inhaled daily from rocking him even when the books said I should be putting him down. I still feel the pit in my stomach watching him learn how to crash onto the front lawn riding his BigWheel. I can hear his raspy little voice telling me that I was a princess as he watched me put on my makeup and jewelry. I could fill pages with moments like these. I could also fill pages telling how life plays a cruel trick letting our children jump from one milestone to the next in the blink of an eye. Instead, I am going to tell you the good part. My son and I are very close and have a wonderful relationship. He’s also going to college! Thinking about him going to college and what he has chosen to study brings me to the good part of having MS. My son wrote a paper in high school about seeing me in the hospital and watching me recover from relapse and flares. He wrote that seeing these things helped him to know what he wants to do with his life. He changed focus in school and started classes in health science and became very active in HOSA, a club that prepares students for careers in the healthcare industry. My son is now a BioChemistry major and is planning on continuing on to med school to become a doctor. While my MS took so much away from me, it gave my son invaluable direction. This is the good part of MS for me. What are the good parts of your trials and are you willing to see them? I will painfully miss my son and MS will take pieces of me that will hurt emotionally as well as physically but finding the good parts and holding on to them have and will continue to make it all easier.

Emotional Hoarding

There’s a show on TV called Hoarders and it’s about just that, people who keep so much crap in their house that they literally can’t get into rooms and sometimes even find dead animals buried beneath the plethora of….everything! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about hoarding. What do people keep and refuse to give up and why? While I am not a hoarder of things, I’ve recently realized that I am a hoarder of unnecessary emotions. There are too many things I care about that I really shouldn’t. I know that stress isn’t good for anyone and with MS you physically feel stress and that can actually be quite scary at times. I know this intellectually but the hoarder in me can’t help itself. I carry so many feelings of worry, doubt and frustration that’s doing nothing but making my face numb, my toes burn, my mouth forget how to say words and my legs wobble- equally embarrassing at times as frightening. Some of the emotions I’m hoarding have to do with my MS but most of them have to do with really ridiculous things and people. I really frustrate myself sometimes! So, I need to clean house so to speak and give myself room to feel better, sleep better and smile better.  There are things worthy of keeping, some forever and others for only a period of time. There are also things that should never be allowed in your head and heart and some that only need to be there for a while. The first step is always recognizing the problem which I have. Now, I need to devise a plan to throw away a bunch of crap….for good.