This will take time.....embrace that!

You may or may not know this but I've been a bit down lately....Lost my dad on March 1, had major Achilles Tendon surgery on March 27th....and of course the never ever ending battle with my weight and getting fit and healthy.  You'd think by now that I would be used to it and know that it is and will always be a part of who I am.  And that I must just keep plugging away at it.

I'm trying to make some changes in my current life situation.  Trying to have a happier attitude.  Trying to assure myself that some day the pain of losing my dad will (not go away), but will find a warm safe place in my heart that I can treasure and that won't hurt like the open wound it is right now.  Trying to assure myself that once this boot comes off and once I am able to walk without the walker and once I finish physical therapy.....and once I am allowed to slooooooooooowly once again get back to some cardio exercises that require lower body (and ankle) participation, I will be back on the road to the fit and happy healthy person I was last year.  I believe those things will happen.  For some of you.....that fit and happy healthy person may take looking back a very long way....and may not require just soothing open grief or removing a boot or going to physical therapy....it might take a lot more.  THAT'S OK! It is never ever ever too late to take that first baby step....even if you've taken it before and then took a mile step back....just take that baby step again.

Some of the things I've been doing to try to help my own mental and emotional attitude is to change some pictures I was using as screen savers...

I had one on my screen for weeks ....I was using it to hold on...

Love this picture of my mom and dad....but seeing it every morning was breaking my heart all over again each day.
                                                 I was using them to reflect my feelings,

 

This little girl looked exactly like I felt....

 to remind myself of where I'd been......to encourage myself that I hadn't really gained all my weight back...

 

 Yep that was me!!!

But that made me even more depressed.....so I decided to use a picture of what I looked like last summer...to reset my goal to see that with determination, dedication and discipline we can do whatever we set our minds to do ....and this morning I am smiling because I will get there again....

 I know you've heard the saying that goes something like "if you want to be a successful supervisor or  manager, surround yourself with smart hard workers.   Well I think perhaps the same sort of idea holds true if you want to accomplish a tough goal in life....you have to surround yourself with people who are trying to achieve similar goals..........don't worry about if they are further along than you or even have a tougher row to hoe than you.  The thought in mind should be that you're trying, you're making the effort.  Sometimes it takes printing out posters, slogans, words of encouragement and plastering them all over your bathroom mirror...or carrying them on a little card in your wallet....taping them on your car dashboard.  It's so wonderful to be around people or know people or read the blog of people you know understand you and your struggle....but the most important thing to remember is you have to be your own loudest and most enthusiastic cheerleader. No one else can do this for you...Only you can get yourself healthy and fit.

This morning when I was thinking of what I wanted to write about in this blog, I was reading some other blogs I follow....that led me to some other blogs and to these two poems....I thought they really expressed my feelings about this struggle I'm in....and perhaps the struggle you're in....I've felt the joy this first poem speaks of when I lost the weight and was fit and healthy and I will feel that unexplainable wonderful joy again....and so can you!

When we get out of the glass bottles of our own ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.

"Escape" by D. H. Lawrence, from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence. © Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994.


 And remember....we didn't put the weight on or get unfit in a day....we won't undo the damage in a day....it will take time.....it will be worth it....that's why I love this little thought by A. A. Milne so much!  (And I know my trainer, Shepherd Green would love this too....it's what he always tells me...)



 “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” — A. A. Milne