Grateful for Barb

So it is now March 20 and I haven't kept up to my word of blogging to be grateful....I am suffering from stress, anxiety and depression. I have been so caught up in this spiral of feeling anxious and stressed that I haven't been grateful for anything and unable to think of any positives. In the last few weeks I have found working in the special school extremely challenging, I have had good and bad days, but unfortunately more bad than good lately. This has increased my levels of anxiety and stress which has inevitably caused my lack of concentration, the overwhelming feelings and the inability to remember things, not to mention the many tears shed and mascara wasted. You would think that after three years I would have invested in some waterproof mascara by now, and that the little thought that is in the back of my head which struggles to squeeze through those negative thoughts, to tell me 'it will be ok and you will not cry over work', has grown stronger and stronger. But not. Well, not yet anyway, I'm working on it.

Hopefully by me blogging again and being grateful, I will overcome this set back and achieve what I had achieved in the last 2 years of working as a teacher at the special school, success! For me, it is very challenging working at the special school, not just the working with different kids but working with different adults too. I think if it weren't for one particular person there, I don't think I would have made it this far. She geniunely cares, is approachable and usually makes me feel good after confiding in her. She tells it to you straight, it's not always what you want to hear but she has a way of making you feel positive about any situation even if it's just for that short moment. That person is Barb. Thanks Barb.
Steph

Loving Our New Deck

Giving Being Grateful Another Go This Year 2014

It is now January 2, 2014 and I haven't blogged for at least 3 months now. I figured I didn't need to anymore, but in fact I do. This morning I was looking through Facebook and one of the Upworthy posts that show up on my Timeline was about a woman who is grateful for something everyday and takes a photo of it each day....so it gave me the incentive to do it again, be grateful that is! It can only make me feel good so I will give it another go this year. I will attempt to change my Blog name to Grateful Movement without the year so I can keep it going.... Hopefully I can figure that much out!

My Mothers Passing

I'm not sure how to start this post as it is meant to be about being grateful! My family and I have been on an emotional roller coaster in the last few weeks. My mother was diagnosed with terminal inoperable pancreatic cancer and came to live with me in Metung. She came here in the Winter school holidays (July) after being discharged from Peter Mac Cancer Institute. It was decided that she would come to live with me as I worked part time and I would be home more to be able to look after her. At first mum was pretty weak but soon gained some strength and started doing small things around the house like washing up, closing the blinds, walking up and down the hallway and even knitting. Sometimes Dave and I would look at each other and think (hopefully) that maybe the doctors have made a mistake. Unfortunately soon mum started to deteriorate, she got some fluid on her lungs and was admitted into Bairnsdale Hospital to drain it. What was to be a couple of days stay turned out to be a three week stay. We organised for mum to come home to our place, with the hire of all the equipment such as a hospital bed, air mattress and so on, so that she could be more comfortable and it would make it easier for her and for us. Nurses came everyday now instead of the three times per week. I took the two weeks before the September holidays off to be with mum as there was no way she could be left alone. In those two weeks my mum deteriorated so fast, however there were days she was better than others and that surprised us. In the mornings I would quietly sneak into mum's room to see if she was still with us. It was a truly horrible feeling. My sister came to stay for a few days, a week after mum came out of hospital and on the Thursday (12th September), mum was pretty sick so we called my two sons and told them they may need to come and see her just in case. When they did arrive on the 13th mum had picked up and she was talking to them and joking with them and trying out some cool sunglasses. It was this day we discussed her funeral and some other things. Mum was scared that night as she thought she was going to die the night being the 13th. You see mum was first diagnosed with Hodgkins on the 13th many years before and her oldest daughter (my older sister Maria) died on the 13th and this year being 2013 was when she was diagnosed with this damn disease, so she didn't like the number much and she obviously thought it was pretty unlucky for her. Well she didn't die that night thank goodness. The following Thursday morning mum woke up pretty dazed and was asking for my sister as she knew Isabel was coming to see her on Saturday. I asked mum if she wanted me to call Isabel and see if she could come earlier and she said yes. I phoned my sister but didn't tell mum that she was coming that day as I wanted her to be surprised which she was and quite happy about it. On the Friday mum was pretty drowsy and hard to understand and she was worse on Saturday. I went to bed thinking that mum may not make it through the night. She passed away the early hours of Sunday. I felt that my mum had already gone on Saturday, it was just her body breathing and keeping her alive, and that she wasn't there. The passing of my mum was at the time a relief for me that now my mother wasn't suffering any more, but it was also the most horrible and sad feeling of not being able to see her ever again. I am so grateful that my kids got to spend the weekend before with her when she was still with it and joking with them, I am sad that my little Zoe had to see her nanna so sick. I am grateful that I chose to have mum here with us her family instead of in a clinical unfamiliar hospital even though I didn't feel comfortable with having mum die in my home. I still get a weird feeling when I go into the bedroom in which she died even though I have emptied it of my mother's things and decorated it nicely. It is really weird how your view on things change as you get older and perhaps because of your life experiences, when my sister died  I was eighteen and at the time my mother stripped her room and got rid of all of Maria's things (I managed to keep a couple of things which I still have), I couldn't understand at the time as to why my mum would do this, I wanted to keep the room as is, sort of like a shrine. I wanted to remember my sister for as long as possible. My attitude has so changed with my mum's passing, perhaps it is due to the way she passed and the suffering she endured. A lot of my mother's things remind me of this and I don't want to remember her that way. I want to remember my mother as the loving, caring and extremely brave woman she was!

Getting It Off My Chest

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Life Is Too Bloody Short So Do Something With It

Not feeling so grateful at the moment. Not with God, not with doctors, not with old fashioned attitudes and not with life and all it's imperfections.

1: I am not happy with God as it didn't matter how much we prayed that mum didn't have cancer, it didn't work as now she has Pancreatic cancer and there is nothing anyone can do for her. I have to admit I have lost a little faith at this particular time.

2: I hate Doctors....they play God sometimes....who are they to tell you what to do and what not to do, especially when it comes down to cancer. I have been researching alternative medicine to help my mum beat this cancer and every time I ask the doctors they disregard it. I have read about how sugar feeds cancer so you should avoid it and yet the doctors tell mum she can have it and that she needs it. Yesterday's visit to a local GP sent my head spinning into uncontrollable confusion as to what is right, who is right? He was pretty straight forward in saying that mum hasn't got long so there is not much point in her taking some of the medication she has been previously prescribed. If it were up to me she wouldn't be taking any medication and living on a healthy diet instead. Funny enough none of the tablets she takes are for her cancer other than the morphine for pain.

3: Old fashioned attitudes don't sit too well with me. My mum has exactly this attitude. She disregards anything I say about any alternative medicines, healthy diets like the raw vegan diet, vegetable juices and so on. Yet if the doctor told her to eat mud I think she would eat it, because in her eyes the doctor knows what he is talking about... he is the only one with authority or so called knowledge to save your life, which unfortunately is not the case this time. My mum has listened to or I should say has heard only things she really wants to hear. I have no idea where she got some of the information from, was she actually listening to any one at any time. Those medics have misinformed by mother and has blurred her vision and thoughts, or has she done this to herself with her old fashioned way of thinking whilst listening only to what she wanted or believed to be true. If there was nothing the doctors could do for you would you try out something new just in case it worked? I would!

4: Life here on earth is far from perfect. It has many imperfections and yet some of us take these imperfections and work with them, still fulfilling our dreams and aspirations. Others accept the imperfections but don't do anything to change them or work with them.....they live day to day without  any dreams, wasting their life because eventually it will end and that is that and there is nothing they can do about it. Everyone will die at some point but there are things you need to be doing in between the time you are born to the time you will die.

5: I am a true believer in showing emotion and expressing how I feel. It is deadly to your well being if you don't. The anger, frustrations, sadness would surely build up inside you and destroy you in the long term. In my own experience I have found that expressing how I feel helps to overcome it and helps me to start again, fresh with positiveness. Some individuals don't think this way and when those individuals are close to me, it hurts me and I worry about them. I want to say to them 'just cry if that is all you can do at this time, get it out, express it, you will feel a little better even if it is for just a short while'.

Life is too short so live it up and do something with it in the best possible way you can. Do something, anything! I will be!
Steph

Isabella

Tomorrow is my late brother in law's anniversary, it will be 12 years since Mark died from cancer. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and had chemotherapy treatment, the cancer spread and he died six months later. My sister Isabella of course was devastated and at the time we were all very sad as Mark was a beautiful person and to this day we miss him dearly. At that particular time I was going through a happy new phase where I was in a new relationship and even though I still grieved for Mark, I had other things distracting me from it all and soon learnt to deal with the situation. I was always there for my sister when she needed me and did what I could, but I think at the time and I've only just realised this, I don't think I actually realised how bad she was feeling, and even if I did,  I don't think I would have been able to deal with it any differently. Now that mum is sick, my sister has had to take her for appointments, scans, blood tests etc and communicate with the doctors about her condition. It is now that I realise how difficult and stressful it must have been for Isabella to have to do that so many years ago, especially for her husband whom she loved dearly and whom she thought was going to grow old with her. I am grateful for my sister Isabella for doing this all again, for our mother this time. I don't think I could have done it any better or dealt with it quite as well as she does. So my beautiful sister Isabella, I love you and thank you!
Steph