Crime scene investigation
By · CommentsOn Tuesday morning, I visited my PCP and announced, “We’re going to get to the bottom of what’s causing all of my health problems.” She listened, then ordered nine vials of blood to be drawn from my arm.
Since then, I’ve slowly watched the test results come into my electronic medical record, and with the exception of my thyroid and cholesterol tests, all have been normal. So much for the theory I was going on.
The day before, when visiting my OB/GYN to switch birth control pills because, despite taking them, I’d started bleeding again nonstop for almost three weeks, I asked what she thought was the cause.
“Given your history, and some of the other symptoms, I highly suspect PCOS,” she said. My heart leaped. For the first time, someone named it. With a name, you can ask for tests to rule it in or out. With a name and test results, you can have a treatment plan. And with that, maybe I could get my life back.
PCOS: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome … or not
PCOS is an endocrine disorder, the most common one in women, effecting 5 to 10 percent of the female population starting at puberty. One of the symptoms is ovarian cysts, which I’ve had all of my life. The name is a misnomer, because not all women with PCOS have cysts. Doctors and scientists aren’t quite certain what causes it–there are lots of chicken-and-egg theories. But some classic symptoms are:
- Anovulation, resulting in irregular menstruation. About 30% of women have heavy, irregular periods.
- Acne
- Unexplained weight gain and difficulty losing weight
- Skin tags
- Insulin resistance
- Depression and mood swings, panic attacks
- Excessive amounts of androgens, because the ovaries (which produce testosterone in addition to estrogen and progesterone) are producing too much. This results in anovulation, male pattern baldness, facial hair growth, hairy toes.
The first five symptoms accurately describe me.
- Can you say bleeding for most of nearly two years, with a few weeks (and occasional months) off?
- I break out like a teenager unless I’m diligent with my Clairsonic face brush and Proactive system. And that doesn’t stop all the zits.
- Last year, I gained over 20 pounds, and all of it before I stopped working out in April. I’ve weighed the same since my March 19.
- I’ve had laser hair removal on my lip and chin because of the lovely beard I was growing, and my toes and razor know each other well.
- At my last dermatologist appointment, I pointed out a few new “moles” and the doctor told me they were skin tags. I thought only old people got those.
- My history of depression, which used to last from November to February, is well documented. For the past few years, it seems to have spilled into other months, and my summer “lift” is disappearing.
So, you can see why I might get excited to have a name, a diagnosis. I’ve been living in this world of not knowing what is wrong with my body for the past five years. I Google, I read PubMed, I try different supplements, herbs, acupuncture, chiropractic, drugs, surgery. I do visualizations. I work on affirmations in therapy. And the symptoms continue unabated, and are actually getting worse, especially the bleeding.
And it makes sense that an overarching endocrine system issue would be the culprit. The endocrine system uses hormones to regulate the body’s systems. I have one major endocrine disorder–hypothyroidism–and I also have a chronic Vitamin D deficiency, which is also a hormone.
But so far, the tests say no
No insulin resistance. Normal cortisol and prolactin levels. LH and FSH in normal proportion (in PCOS it’s usually reversed, 2:1 or 3:1 FSH to LH).
My PCP said that PCOS is very difficult to diagnose, that it’s more of a ruling out than a ruling in. She suggested a referral to a reproductive endocrinologist. So I’ll go.
At the very least, the endo should be able to get me back on the right dose of thyroid hormone, because for some mysterious reason, since March my levels have tripled. Having my TSH at 3.0 (when I feel best when it’s just below 1.0) can explain my exhaustion, and it could also explain the continued bleeding (although that’s never been a symptom when my levels are off). And maybe, if I get a long appointment and describe everything, the endo will know what’s really going on–PCOS or something else.
I feel like a detective, and the crime I’m investigating is my health
I can’t remember the last time I felt good, energetic, joyful. Maybe, I think, even if I don’t get a definitive PCOS diagnosis, I should just act as if I did.
The treatment in the Western medicine world is birth control pills (check, and ugh) and Metformin, a drug that helps your cells process insulin better.
Eating a 40/40/30 diet (protein, carbs, fat)–aka low-glycemic–plus exercise seems to be on the treatment menu, and perhaps some electro-stimulation acupuncture, which my acupuncturist does. And chromium, which is shown in several recent studies to help with insulin resistance. I have an appointment with my naturopath next Friday to look at things from that perspective.
The car goes where the eyes go
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Photo: Travis Pictures on Flickr
At the Chapel Hill airport this week, I picked up The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, a book told from the point of view of a dog on his deathbed. The dog, Enzo, tells the story of his life with Denny, an aspiring race car driver. Enzo believes that men evolved from dogs, not apes (and makes a valid argument), and also believes that in his next incarnation, he will come back as a man.
The book is short, moving, unusual. Enzo is a dog-philosopher who wants desperately to have thumbs, to have speech, to communicate the things that only a dog can know to his person. He also, as Denny says, is a race car driver at heart, thanks to spending many hours watching videos of past races with Denny. At once point, he gets to ride a racetrack with Denny, where he learns one tenant of racing: The car goes where the eyes go. That which you manifest is before you.
Daring to dream
When I think about what I most want in life, it’s freedom(time, money, power) to follow my bliss. To share my talents and skills and knowledge with people who find them valuable, and who show that through paying me handsomely. To set my own schedule, and to say yes to the things that light me up and no to the things that shut me down. To travel. To take pictures and write about the people I meet. To write about my own life experiences in a way that can help others. To take naps, to play with my daughter. To be healthy and in a loving relationship with my husband.
Like most people, I have so many excuses for not having what I just described, and they all boil down to one word: Fear.
I don’t dare to dream. I don’t take risks. I don’t take steps toward getting what I want. In fact, I take steps that keep me from getting what I want. I keep myself in debt. I stay in jobs that reinforce that I’m not worth what I think I’m worth–that my own sense of value is skewed. I find myself in relationship patterns that I thought were worked out, but instead have just changed costumes.
Where am I looking?
I am the driver. My life is the car. If I am looking at the wall I will hit the wall. If I am looking into the curve the curve will eat me alive. If I am looking at the what comes after the curve, that’s where I’ll go.
The car goes where the eyes go.
When I am in crisis, my focus becomes acute, close in. I don’t see more than three steps ahead of myself. I don’t dare, because in crisis I’m barely hanging on. However, that myopic field of vision could be limiting where I’m going, keeping me in the crisis.
For the past six years, I have not looked much further than the end of my nose–the next step in the crisis. For the past decade, I haven’t looked past the next curve.
I don’t have a vision for my life. And I think that’s why I’m stuck where I am. I can vaguely see the pattern I’m locked into with Steve, at work, with my body (especially my weight). For as much growth as I’ve done, for all the ways I better understand myself, how I work, who I am, now compared to a decade ago, I find myself on another loop around a familiar track.
That which you manifest is before you.
Out the windshield, or through the rear view mirror
Fear comes from focusing on the past, from looking in the rear view mirror. If my eyes–my focus–is on what happened back then, and those circumstances (which no longer exist), the reasons why I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t, then of course I’m going to keep getting what I’ve always gotten. I, along with most humans I know, am addicted to letting the past be my guide. Because it feels safer. How’s that for irony?
If I’m looking for the next way my body will betray me, because it has in the past, why am I surprised when the betrayal comes?
If I’m expecting my ex to be an asshole, because he always has been in the past, why am I surprised when he is?
If I’m looking at my job as a place where I do not get my needs met, because every job has been this way, why am I surprised when I’m in a job that does not meet my needs?
The car goes where the eyes go. You get what you expect. Your life is what you think it is.
I want to learn to focus out the windshield.
I want a crystal ball
By · CommentsAnd the body drama, which I thought would be fixed by the D&C, followed by daily birth control pills, continues.
It’s been a month since the procedure. For the first 10 days, I sat in deep worry. All I remembered my doctor saying was they found some abnormalities, and that if a cancer diagnosis came back, we needed to be prepared for a quick hysterectomy. And I waited and waited to get the pathology back. Apparently, three days after the procedure, she left a message saying the pathology was normal–no indication of hyperplasia even–but the message didn’t go onto my phone. Who knows where she left it. I didn’t get it, and I spent a whole week past that date thinking that they must be running more tests, that it must be bad, because if it was normal I would have heard something. I got it in my mind that I had cancer. And then, it turned out I was OK.
Except I had a uterine infection, post-surgical, and that required a week on flagyl. Now any woman who’s taken this drug knows that a) you cannot have any alcohol because you will get sick as a dog and b) the longer you take it the worse it makes you feel. By day 10 I had to take in in the middle of a meal so as not to get nauseous.
At that point, I’d been taking a low-dose birth control pill for two weeks. The plan was that I would take the pill continuously, skipping the placebos to suppress my period. Two Wednesdays ago, I had a night of insomnia, followed by a day of intense sugar cravings and mood swings–my typical PMS. Last Friday, I started pack 2 of the active pill. And I also started bleeding.
That was a surprise. I’d expected that if I took the active pill continuously I’d skip my period.
My cramps were bad enough that it took 600 mg of naproxen + valium to make me mobile. All the other issues I’ve had since I was 12 1/2 came back too. Let’s call them digestive upsets. By this past Wednesday, I was bleeding heavier when the bleeding should have tapered off, per my “normal” cycle. I emailed my doctor, who said it is not abnormal for it to take a couple of packs to override my cycle. (WHAT normal cycle, I thought. I haven’t had a normal cycle since 2000.) Yesterday, I’d stopped bleeding.
Then, this morning I went to a hatha yoga class. We’re talking easy. No sun salutations, just holding a few poses, lots of breathing, a few hip openers, a couple of twists. Halfway through I felt myself starting to bleed again, enough that I had to leave the class for a moment. My cramps came back toward the end of the class.
This is the pattern I was in before. Stop bleeding. Exercise or have sex. Resume bleeding. It’s why I quit my gym, stopped working out. My once A+ sex life is nonexistent.
I came home from class in tears. I really believed that the D&C, getting all that overgrown crap out of my uterus, would make things right again. That the pill–which has put enough weight on me that I had to go up yet another size in the past month–would make me normal again. That I was done with this, that my marriage could be repaired after the damage this whole mess has done to it over the past 6 months, for sure, and the last 20 months most likely.
I emailed my doctor, and I have an appointment on Monday at 815. I feel guilty about reaching out to her that way because I’m taking advantage of the fact that we work for the same institution. Other patients don’t have that access. Yet we do have the precedent. And I’m fed up. I am tired of suffering with this.
I don’t know what options she’s going to give me: another, stronger birth control pill? Perhaps an ablation since the pathology showed no abnormalities? Maybe I should just throw in the towel and have the hysterectomy. That will certainly solve the problem, but what other problems will it cause?
I want a crystal ball that will tell me what will give me the best outcome. I want someone to say: Drink this potion and everything will go back to normal. Steve says he wants his wife back. Well, you know what? I want me back too.
At an impasse about integrity
By · CommentsFrom Dictionary.com: Integrity –noun. 1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
I am generally not a rule breaker because I believe in the law of reciprocity: what goes around comes around. The bigger the rule you break, the bigger the consequences later on. Cheat on your husband, get T-boned by a drunk driver. Maybe one didn’t cause the other–it’s not like my ex hired the driver to smash into me. But maybe the universe did, to wake me up and to collect payment due. (It also works the other way: do good, get good.)
I admit that I’m not consistent on my non-rule-breaking rule. For example, I have called in sick when I am not physically ill. My senior year in high school, I cut class enough second semester that I almost truancy-failed a computer class I needed to graduate. I tell white lies sometimes. I shoplifted as a teenager. I’ve shopped online at work, on the clock. And I’ve probably paid the price for these things in various and sundry ways–traffic tickets, my identity being stolen at one point, food poisoning on New Year’s Eve, getting stuck at every single light on the way to something fun. Crimes and punishments do not necessarily correlate either.
But there are certain things I won’t do now or ever. Such as downloading pirated music and movies–I just can’t do it, silly and harmless as it seems. Or committing illegal acts to gain something that I really want, even if the illegal acts are “it’s the way it’s done now.” Even if “this person, and this person, and this expert says it’s the only way to change the situation.”
There is a line in all of us, and on one side of the line are the things we can live with, and on the other side are the things that we can’t.
Right now someone–I’ll call the person J– is asking me to do something that sits firmly on the wrong side of my Integrity line. Something that, if caught, carries the possibility of a very hefty fine and jail sentence. It would be a victimless crime, something that’s more aligned with a fib than a crime against humanity.
Yet what J is asking me to do is wrong. I feel it in my gut, where the line called Integrity lives in me. What lives on the right side of J’s integrity is different than what lives on mine.
This is a person who I want to trust, and to believe in. This is a person I love.
And this is a person who is ridiculing me, shaming me, trying to motivate me to give in by hurting me. Jay thinks I’m being ridiculous to stick to my “high morals” which are “costing tens of thousands of dollars” in possible future financial gains if I don’t do it J’s way. There seems to be no compromise here, even though I know there has to be middle ground between how I want to approach the issue and how J wants to approach the issue.
My way is harder. My way will definitely take more time. My way will require more sacrifice for now, and it could cause these losses of future financial gains. My way is scary to J, and doesn’t put J where J wants to be. I could very well live to regret not moving on what J wants to do, right now. J’s way is a shortcut that would likely result in my life being made easier and more comfortable on a few fronts.
But the fact that J is saying things in an attempt to hurt me, as if that angle will make me say Oh, OK, since my ‘high morals’ are ridiculous I’ll do this thing so I can make you right and happy for once, is eroding my faith in the ability of our relationship to continue. I’d like to think that, if this person told me the thing I was asking to be done lies firmly on the “wrong” side of J’s line, I would drop the matter and look for another way to solve the issue.
I’d like to think that.
J and I have been in a reversed situation, years ago. J and I played some games that went against J’s integrity. J said so, and I pushed to have fun and participate anyway. A couple of times. OK, more than a couple. J tried to have fun, and sometimes did. Then, I noticed how little fun J was having. When we finally talked about it, really talked about it, I said we were stopping because the games were hurting us. And we did. I have some regrets, because the games were fun to me, and I felt OK doing them. But my relationship with J was–and is–more important than the games. We stopped after many attempts at compromise, at finding a way for me to enjoy the games while J stayed on the sidelines or didn’t attend at all. That still didn’t work, and it hurt our relationship until that last time and the last fight. We still talk about it, and I regret pushing so hard. I can be overbearing when I really want something. Or don’t want it.
On this issue, though, I want to find a solution we both can live with, a way that’s on the right side of the line for both of us.
I hope we can find it. I hope J will stop saying things like, “We are not talking about this anymore, because it’s always a fight, and I don’t want to hear X and Y from you again.” Because I truly believe there is an approach to the issue that will sit well with both of us, and the only way to get there is to say, “OK, my way doesn’t work for you, and your way doesn’t work for me so let’s get some help in finding the way that works for both of us.”
Who gets hurt by the act if it is committed, really? J asked me. The answer in my heart is us, and me, and you.
We’re at an impasse.
He deserves better
By · CommentsLast night at about 7:30, Steve asked me: “Do I have a burn on the side of my face? Because it feels like it.”
In the dim light of our living room, I saw a significant dark red patch extending along his jawline from the left corner of his lip nearly to his ear. It hurt, he said. I asked him what he’d done: He’d popped a zit, then sterilized it with a drop of rubbing alcohol he’d dipped a Q-tip into.
The same alcohol I’d used to clean a wound our cat Noelle got earlier this week when jumping over the fence, which, when I swiped a cotton ball drenched in the stuff over it, had kind of stuck, rather than smoothed over like you’d expect rubbing alcohol to do. She’d been acting weird since, and I noticed that the stuff had bleached out her black fur to a ruddy brown. Odd.
I vaguely remember having a conversation about a year ago regarding that bottle of alcohol, which is not what’s inside it, about not using it, about not wanting to pour it down the drain because it was some chemical we had mixed in order to clean something. I don’t remember the details. But now I understand the ramifications.
Steve took a shower, and came down to report his face was now weeping pus. Sure enough, a tiny row of blisters had formed along his jawline, and the skin beneath it has turned from pink to dark purple.
Google to the rescue.
Google told us (from several good sources, like WebMD) that chemical burns on the face are considered an emergency, especially if they blister and weep.
The issue is that Steve’s medical coverage is through the VA. He’s an Iraq War I veteran. The Denver VA sucks, especially its emergency room. However, it was go there or pay thousands at another ER. Steve flushed his face with water for another 10 minutes, then we left, bringing entertainment with us because there is no such thing as a short wait at the Denver VA ER.
We arrived at 9:20 pm. The nurse didn’t triage him until 10:59 pm–meaning no one asked us why we were there for 100 minutes. During that time, I watched the blisters along his jaw weep clear liquid, and the chemicals, which were obviously working through his skin from the inside, make their way up toward his ear. When the nurse looked at it, she immediately went to talk to a doctor, then came back to tell us we’d have the next bed.
At 1 am, after we’d watched 9News and Leno and Jimmy Kimmel, after I’d read nearly 100 pages in my book and Steve had played countless games of Solitaire on his iPod, another nurse came in to tell us that we still wouldn’t be seen for hours. Hours, she emphasized. Like five or six.
We went home. I called the VA nurse line to document that we’d been the ER and couldn’t get treated, and to have the official nurse recommendation for emergency care put into the computer, which sometimes can cause you to get seen faster. She told us the day shift started at 8am. Steve rinsed his face for another 10 minutes, then covered the burn with gauze, took more Advil and went to sleep.
This morning he arrived back at the ER at 830, was finally seen by a doctor around 10a, and was told, “The damage is done.Now, you just have to keep it clean and watch for infection.”
Did I mention that the burn is on his face? Did I mention that we were in the ER needing treatment from 920 pm until almost 130 am? Did I mention that both Google and a VA nurse said his case was a true emergency, and yet we could not get care?
As we waited, there were others there who had been there longer than us, in some cases by hours.
“If you’re lucky, you won’t have too much scarring,” the doctor told him this morning.
Now, we get to watch for infection, and figure out on our own (since he can’t get a follow up appointment until next Wednesday) how to take care of the wound. Because at the VA, the only real way into the system in time to have something taken care of before it becomes acute is through the ER. I talked to a dermatology nurse at the medical center where I work, and she told me that the University doctors staff the VA dermatology clinic, and she would help me get him an appointment if the wound gets worse.
I fucking hate the VA hospital. Our veterans deserve better. My husband deserves better.
Black Belt Overcomer: That’s me
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Alas, Peaberry is no more. Image source: peaberrycoffee.fsaerospace.com.
I sat in a Peaberry Coffee in Aurora, a woman I’ve just met hunched behind a stack of papers–her old resumes–across the tiny table from me. I’ll call her Gloria.
“What’s the thing you did at that job you’re most proud of? I mean, the thing you bragged about to your best friend, or maybe to your mom or your husband?” I asked Gloria.
She had been laid off from her office manager job of 12 years at the company where my brother in law works. He’d referred her to me. At the end of the two hours we spent together, Gloria was on cloud nine, remembering what she was good at. I captured those things in accomplishment statements, reformatted her resume and sent it off to her for approval, feeling good about my work and about how I’d helped Gloria overcome feeling bad about herself.
Then, for the first time, a client hated my work.
We went back and forth on four complete rewrites before Gloria was happy enough to say it was done. I took her displeasure personally, because after all, I am a professional promotional writer, interviewer, selector of words. Nearly 200 clients have been happy with my work, referred others to me, come back to me for a second, even third time.
I wasn’t able to solve the problem of her not liking me or my work for whatever reason, and I’m still thinking about it. I couldn’t Overcome.
I am an Overcomer
Black-belt Overcomer. Image source: www.seashell.com.au
I was taught to be humble, to talk about the problems I overcome (vs what I’m good at) as a way to illustrate my strengths. I think most of us are taught the same thing, which is why it’s hard to write your own resume–the ultimate bragging document. The best approach to get through the guilt of bragging yourself up is to develop CAR statements: you describe the crisis, the action you took to solve it and the result, succinctly using action verbs.
When you focus on the problem you solved, you’re telling potential employers Hey, I fixed this at Company XYZ and I can fix it for you. That’s good for finding a new job. And it’s good for bragging in a non-bragging way about what you’re good at. And! It helps my clients know what they really love to do, what they hate to do, and what they’re good at, which puts them on cloud nine.
But I apply this approach to defining myself as an Overcomer (and not in the Christian sense of this word). I am good at defining the problem, at researching solutions, at making pro-con lists and even at eventually making a decision about which solution to go with. That’s fine as a skill, but not so great for self-definition.
- I am a cancer survivor (Overcomer!)
- I successfully rebuilt a life after divorce (Overcomer!)
- I fought a traffic ticket and won(Overcomer!)
- I lost a bunch of weight (and will again)(Overcomer!)
- I figured out how to get out of debt (again and again)(Overcomer!)
- I did X and Y at work and I am a hero yadah yadah yadah(Overcomer!)
- Etc. etc. blah blah blah(Overcomer!)
Hell, my life is a Hollywood movie. Triumph over evil or at least annoyance in all corners of my life. I am a Black-Belt Overcomer.
You Get What You Ask For
From one perspective, I don’t want to be a non-Overcomer. If I fail to overcome the hardship, then I die, right? If I GIVE UP rather than fight, I am a failure, right? And also, when I Overcome I get empathy and high-fives and respect (that I otherwise don’t deserve for simply, ahem, existing, or so the Monsters tell me).
And yet, if I define myself as an Overcomer, then the universe is going to keep sending me waves of things to overcome. Like health issues, and money issues, and relationship issues, and sick pets, and clients who deflate my ego a bit. Things like the Work Project of Doom that I thought was settled twice now, but now threatens to time-travel me back to 2007 where I can start over in a situation that I really, really do not want to solve again.
Things like all the Hard that comes to me, again and again. I have become a Hard magnet because I am Strong and a Black-Belt Overcomer and I Can Handle It! (Or so I’ve been telling whoever is the traffic director for Hard and Easy lives.)
Look at Rule #4 up and to the right: A lesson is repeated until learned.
What if this lesson is you get what you ask for? What if I’m asking to prove that I am lovable because I can overcome anything that is thrown at me? What if I just decide that I’m lovable even when–even ESPECIALLY when–I utterly fail?
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never let myself utterly fail. I don’t take chances like that. I don’t know how. Because if you define yourself as an Overcomer, then you never fail. Because you overcome.
Clear signal
Having just overcome the 20-month health saga of the late decade, I thought I’d have a break from the Hard. Not so much. Yesterday it reared its ugly head at work.
My Black-Belt Overcomer status feels a bit like this. Image source: icanhascheeseburger.com
The Project of Doom at work has me feeling incredibly frustrated because I cannot overcome this issue. It’s too big for me. And scary. And kind of like a kitteh pushing a watermelon out of a lake, only to have it roll back in again and get said kitteh all wet.
I have a few ideas about this situation:
- This situation is a clear signal that I am done with this job, that if I stay I will be caught in the perpetual loop I feel caught in until I jump out of my 7th floor window.
- The situation is an opportunity to stop the Overcoming Train and be OK with failure. Because to not Overcome is to Fail.
- The situation is my opportunity to grow by finding new ways to Overcome that will highlight my leadership skills and creativity and powers of Overcoming!
- The situation illustrates that I am noticing my need to Overcome, and by noticing it I can stop the cycle not by trying to fix the cycle but just by noticing it. Hmmm.
The Project of Doom is bringing up a lot of things for me, things that are tricky to write about here because work people and their friends sometimes read this blog. However, I believe that the Project of Doom is a signal.
I just need it to be clearer. (An anonymous letter written at the 6th grade level explaining exactly what I need to do would be nice, dear universe)
It’s a pattern of grave proportions
I started with Gloria and I’ll end with Gloria. After a conversation with my brother-in-law, I learned that Gloria is generally a dissatisfied, unhappy woman, and that’s why she got fired from her job. Her dissatisfaction with me was an indication of her chronic condition, not to be taken personally.
Yes, I was actually eating this delicious ice cream cone when I thought of Gloria.
Even with that information, I can be having a fine time, eating an ice cream cone with my husband on the Fourth of July, feeling happy and wonderful, and all of a sudden Gloria pops into my mind, apropos of nothing. Because I failed in that situation. And I am not allowed to have pleasure without remembering how I failed to overcome.
This Monster Talk is part of the Overcoming pattern of grave proportions. It’s what keeps me stuck in the pattern, not learning the lesson, not moving on to something else. The problem is I don’t quite see what the lesson is. I can only see the pattern, and (Irony Alert) if the pattern I’m now ready to disrupt is “overcoming”, it’s not exactly ending the pattern to overcome it.
Conundrum.
I can’t go back to Gloria and force her to like me and like the resume I did for her.
I can’t fix the Project of Doom, even though I think I’m going to be asked to fix it.
I no longer want the Hard to come into my life for any reason, let alone so I can prove I am strong and worthy of love and respect.
I need to redefine myelf and why people should love me. Why I should love me. Where I get my stories (because if there isn’t Overcoming, then where’s the drama to hang a story on?). Maybe the need for stories in the first place.
Ferrets and Cats in the Garden
By · CommentsThe ferret crew, cats and I had a lovely morning in the garden today.
