The Mother's day gift that turned me around

It's been a rough year and a half. I have had a lot of health issues that have kept me away from the blog simply because I just didn't have the resources to go around. Even when the diagnoses and treatments came in, it was still hard to pull myself out of the slump where I had found myself. Then, this past May, I received a Mother's Day gift that turned out to be a lifeline -- it wasn't from my son, but from my own mother.

It was a simple gift - water weights; a set for me and a set for her. Something that had the great potential to sit in a corner and collect dust. It took me about 2 weeks of getting up in the morning to do water aerobics with my mom in our backyard pool to realize that the weights weren't the gift at all -- it was the time, the encouragement, the comraderie. The focus on what my body (and spirit) could do, instead of the focus of the last year and a half on what it couldn't and where my body was failing me.

My mom's dedication to coming over and making this happen was what I needed. She dragged me out of my hole by just showing up with enthusiasm. Propped me up by making me create space and time to be available and move in a different direction. At first it seemed like one more thing to layer on already overwhelmed days, but just changing the focus made the days less overwhelming and somehow became the thing that set everything on the right path.

Sometimes we don't need great words of wisdom. Sometimes, depending on what is going on, we can't even process them no matter how practical. Sometimes it's just the showing up that can do the trick. Thank you mom!