I have to say,” WOW I actually turned 50!!!!” FIFTY can you believe it? After all, the odds have been against me all this time, a milestone that I never thought I would achieve. I never imagined I would live this long. I’ll never forget looking out of my hospital bedroom window at the graveyard and wondering,” Am I going to end up in there.” at age 9. Then an amazing, glorious, possibly miraculous thing happened; while I was still in the hospital an Angel visited me in the middle of the night and said, “You are going to be all right!” Here I am 41 years later of mostly being all right and even better than all right, amazingly well! I guess I should still take that advice and live better than the first 49 years. Like the saying goes, if I had known I would live this long I would have treated my body better. Although I always had dreams or plans of things, I knew I would do in the future even if it was still a crapshoot. 

I knew I would write a book and I hoped to help people through education and helping them learn to understand that they can be better than they ever believed they could. Of course, that didn’t come to me easily, I was in my twenties when I figured that out.  I went through the normal lost and found part of my life like other teens and young adults at that time of my life. I am incredibly grateful for having the chance to do that searching as many people with the kinds of injuries I have had, never get to do.

I never thought that I would do as many different things as I have to help people in so many different areas in the Human Service field. I also never imagined I would go to college and take this journey to get to 50 by learning to help others find their way. Life has a funny way of steering you to the things, people, and places that best suit you or where you can do the most good. Call it God, call it destiny, or a calling, whatever you call it, I call it a life well traveled. I found myself in this field for a reason and maybe because of what I had to go through. If I had to go through that to get where I am, then I am happy that I had to take this particular road because helping others has been one of the many Joys of living my life.  If I could not help others on their journey, I know I would not feel as brilliantly alive as I do today. I believe learning my true nature early in life and knowing that I felt that there were BIG things for me to accomplish out in the world has driven me.

 My motto has always been DREAM BIG, no small things for me. When you are told you’re special because you survived such horrific things as many times as I have been, you begin to realize they can’t all be wrong. A standard was set a long time ago, a standard of living- to rise to an occasion, to be better or do more than you thought you would ever was set in place and that’s how I have lived.  I am fortunate that I grasped that and that others helped me believe it was possible. That concept was instilled in me at a very young age. My belief that I was here for a Reason is my Life Force, I am convinced of it at this point in my life.

I lived hard and large, which is why I never even imagined I would actually make it to 25, which came and went. I began to slowly, settle down.  I was very entrenched in living my dream, not writing my book yet but helping people. Which in fact is very rewarding and it gives you things that you never knew you deserved to have or understand. By age 22, I had really slowed the drinking down and I stopped experimenting with drugs at age 18.  I was on the right track. Things that should have killed me didn’t, not that it was the goal. I was trying to experience everything as quickly as I could. You can say I was going 100 miles an hour with my hair on fire. Ironically, I find myself laughing as I wrote that last sentence,  because I remember the times so well and someone once told me when I turned 25, that they didn’t ever think I’d get that far in life. They said,” You were moving so fast I worried about you.” In fact, many people told me similar things but that one really hit home because they were with me a lot and they observed all the chaos of my life.

I figured that slowing down and getting it together would help me refine what my life was supposed to look like, feel like, or be like but it wasn’t that conscious a thought, it was a slow progression like the tide coming in. If you have ever been to the beach; you’re sitting on the shore with your blanket and all the things for your day and slowly you find you are getting wet, you move back a little, get situated ,and then you do it again, and again until your dry and the water’s  slow progression towards you, halts. I just realized when I did something stupid I seized. I began to have aversions sometimes in the form of seizures to bad decisions.  After stopping those bad decisions, I still had seizures but not as frequently. The seizures like the tide kept coming; it slowed down with just quitting drinking or experimenting with drugs. Yet they continued at a steady pace. I had not yet figured out the emotional chaos connection to my seizures until my thirties. When I had been stressed, not just little every day stresses, BIG things, worrying about losing my house, finding work, hormonal changes,  anniversaries of bad times, tumultuous relationships,  and worrying about finances which is something I have done in my life a lot; those big things are the making of seizures. I have believed seizures would do in me in one day. I have gotten to the point where I just have to say, “Come what may.” I can’t control what will happen in the future, no one can. However, I can make sure I am aware of the tide marching in before getting wet.

When I figured this very simple concept out even though it is one of the hardest things to put into action, I started feeling less stressed about everyday stuff and big stuff.  I don’t want bad things to happen, I try my best not to have them happen like most of us, but for example; if I had to sell my house because I couldn’t afford it, I would miss it but I would do it. I tend to walk away from things that have become more stress than they are worth and I have done this with people, things, jobs, and life events, rarely; but I have done it. There is a point of no return in me, where I know I have done everything I can do and there is nothing left but to abandon it. I love too hard; I have lived struggling and fighting the odds for too long to continue things that are not worthy of my efforts. Someone I respect a great deal told me in the last 8 years after talking about things I needed to change, I said,” But I fight so hard and try all the time.” He said,” You are the most courageous person I know. But maybe the fact that you feel you have to fight so hard is part of the problem.” I  have thought about that a lot. I think he is right in some instances; there is no need to try so hard or fight so fervently for some things.

It’s time to just live, let me ease my mind in any way I can to have a more stress free life, where I have time to do what is important to me. Not for anyone else just for me, I tend to live selfishly that way and I do not regret things I have done or people I no longer have relationships. These things really do make a significant difference in my life. I have less stress if I am less reactionary of other emotions, and I tend not to be caught up in others drama, or less than usual. There are people that think because I am like this that I don’t care. Then I know all too well that they must not know me at all. In my life, you do not get to be 50 without taking into account the things in your life that are the most important. It is pure and simple self-preservation and maybe a little wisdom, well earned.  It’s like the concept of surrounding yourself with positive people, you just feel better, so why not do it.

Now I choose NOT to speculate what will be the end of me. I choose to just think that I am here while I am, so I better make it GREAT. Let the other part of my journey begin. I have Stuff to do BIG THINGS. My newest motto: Live With Purpose and the rest will follow!