The past two months, I've focused on strength training thinking that would make me feel STRONG. Instead I feel like jelly. Everything I had worked so hard for has gone out the window. Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed about crossing all those finish lines last fall...it was insanity.
My race schedule knocked me out. I conquered each race like I had normal energy levels. And then I would feel it the next morning like a freight train, as the fatigue would settle in and not necessarily the pain. I believe that when I run, I am conquering the pain that I experienced so long ago. My mind travels back in time when I was 25 and woke up one day and couldn't get my legs to move. Flashbacks to when I hobbled on crutches for an ENTIRE six months!!! Finally, the diagnosis of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia was pinned on me. I was told to take arthritis medicine and that I'd never run again.
Yeah, OK....WHATEVER!!!!
I decided I was going to Bounce Up! Not fall down...
This is the story of my life. A life that on the outside that seems pretty good and fabulously fun and that I live in a bubble shielded from all the really BAD STUFF.
I can't even begin to go into the detail, after detail, of each struggle I've encountered. It began when my birth mother couldn't even hold me to say good-bye. I was a lost newborn. Two months later, I was found by my adoptive parents.
The resilience to survive, to succeed, to accomplish the Impossible has always been pulsing through my blood.
Often when I meet other bloggers, I tell them I blog but a part of me feels like I am a phony. I can't be light and fluffy and write about my everyday musings. Instead, I want to formulate my nitty gritty, raw emotions and translate my experiences into words that dance on the page. It has been this way since I was 12 and began writing everyday. Taylor Swift sings about her break ups. During my teen years and college, I spilled my emotions to my journal and minored in creative writing. After graduation, life became more difficult in the real world and my writing subsided but the passion has remained.
As for this blog, I usually don't sit down and let the words tumble unless there is some sort of message that I want to deliver. This is why, I absolutely must finish one of my three novels. There are too many stories to tell. I want to somehow change the ending. If anything I've learned while being silent and watching the world being changed by ordinary people, like you and me, is that ONE person can make a Difference. It is all about being able to Bounce Up and Make Things Happen.
This past weekend was difficult. Memories of anguish flooded my mind. I fell down hard on Feb 10, 2005. This was the day that I lost my third unborn child at 16 weeks. Tremendous pain and heartache followed. The doctor could not find the baby's heartbeat and made me go to a different room and repeat the ultrasound, only to confirm the horrific truth. I was shoved into a doctors office and told there was absolutely nothing they could do for me because I was 16 weeks along in the pregnancy. I was too far along to have a D&C and not far along enough to deliver. I was in limbo.
They made me feel like I was trying to have a late term abortion but my baby was already deceased. I also learned my baby was supposed to be a twin but never developed. I still weep when I think about that day. They had no idea what to do with me. I was an inconvenience to their busy high risk pregnancy practice. Empathy dissipated into the air.
I was informed to contact a doctor who was on vacation and ask if he could perform a D&E procedure on me. I didn't even know what I was asking for. I was told to just follow orders, after they left me alone in the doctor's office. There wasn't a nurse with me or a social worker, just me alone in that sterile doctors office with the fancy diploma's hanging on the wall.
The doctor who agreed to perform the procedure, cut his vacation short to help a lost soul. He was quite a character. I swear that when we met him at the hospital, he was still enjoying the buzz of his vacation martini's. But as crazy as he was, he appeared in the darkness and helped me return to a world of light. After the procedure, he told me he was fairly certain it was a girl. Like my birth mother, I never got to say goodbye to my baby girl. I remember being wheeled out of the hospital and as my husband got the car, I stared into the Heavens and decided to name my baby girl, Faith. And then I went home to grieve.
Baby Faith is one of the reasons why our family team, The Fabulous Five Fitzgerald Family, participates in the March of Dimes walk, March for Babies every year...for our Angel babies and for our Earth babies. We cannot choose our circumstances but we can choose how we will react to the situation.
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I am not sure why I am feeling compelled to share my story but it is important to sit quietly in moments of pain and anguish and absorb it so that it can be transformed into goodness and healing. When the weight of the world is on your shoulders, you have to Bounce Up. For this is the only way you can begin to truly heal and go back out into the world again.
~ Peace and Love ~
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