This past week and a half have been hard.
When I set up my summer schedule for work, I looked for vacation days, possible open days I could use to take temporary time off, while committing to growing my business. I also accounted for potential obstacles.
But I missed one. A big one.
Four years (and a week and a half) ago, I almost died.
There‘s really no way to sugar coat it. I had an emergency surgical birth to bring our second son quickly & prematurely into the world, then I crashed. Not knowing how to help me, but with me struggling to even breathe, I was placed in a medical coma and woke up four days later. I joke about it being the world’s most expensive nap, but there are times I am deeply disturbed to know I’ve lost four days of my life. And that I completely traumatized my husband, who was trying to balance having a 29 week old premature baby in the NICU, and a wife in the ICU that he was being told he’d possibly need to say goodbye to soon.
Well, my story wasn’t finished yet… And that experience actually led to us meeting the parents of our foster (soon hopefully to be adopted) kids. I actually am writing a book about the entire thing, because it’s too crazy not to be a book!
But despite all the changes for the better in my life, and health, trauma can pop up & completely side track me. Which is what happened this year.
And I have struggled to make sense of why this year was so hard, when last year it didn’t seem to bother me. All I can come up with is last year I was SO busy with the kids and getting my health back on track, I didn’t have time to think about it.
This year I’ve taken blocks of time to think… about the future, the past, my dreams, my path in life… and I think this year I had the mental space to really think about what happened. And it scared me how close I got to not being here to see my family grow and flourish.
And while it’s been rough to be sidelined for a bit, it’s allowed me to see just how far I’ve come, how much I’ve healed, and reminded me that healing isn’t linear!
And, of course, as always… I’m grateful to be here & to be alive! But as a friend reminded me recently, I don’t have to always have good days to make up for that.
If you find yourself having a bad day or week… just know you can take the space to help yourself see that it’s okay to not be okay.
I’m still here, and going strong, but I don’t have to be okay every single day just because I’m grateful to be alive! ~Naomi
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