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I believe that one of the things that helped me in my recovery was having a goal. I was still in the hospital not even 48 hours after the stroke, and I was asking my husband no telling my husband that I wanted to do two things. the first one of them being that I wanted to find a therapeutic horseback riding center. The other and most important thing that I wanted to make sure I could do was continue on with my dream of studying to be a psychotherapist.my husband thought that I was crazy.Tom had been was trying to comprehend the situation. He was just trying to figure out if I could go home and care for myself without a nurse's aide.

He wondered if I would be able to dress myself, feed myself and be able to be left alone while he was at work. And here I was talking about riding a horse. But I needed to have a goal something to work towards, something to hang onto that would make me feel That my life mattered.The world mattered. Something to make me feel like there was going to be more to my life in just lying around doing nothing. I had been a care manager and I had seen many clients who had strokes. I thought I had been compassionate and caring and I thought I had understood their predicament but I wasn't even to understanding. The sense of loss that I felt was so overwhelming. I was sure that someone had died only I had forgotten to stop breathing. I needed to have something that made me feel like I did not die. So much of myself was lost from the stroke. I needed to hang on to at least one little piece of who I was.it was my love of horses and my determination to get my doctorate that kept me going in those first days. So I held onto my dreams Like my life depended them. I had other dreams but I did not dare voice them. I still wasn't ready to hope. You see I was still wrestling With god over that abundant life conversation. As I look back And think I was testing God. If he was going to promise me an abundant life I I wanted him to provide me with that kind of abundance that I Wanted

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Every day things matter.

Twelve years ago, a friend told me, " I you are going to have to start  approaching  everything in your life like you are doing it for the first time." How true that statement has proven to be!  Since the stroke in March 2009, Everything has been very different.  I have learned to function in a new way. You might say that I am now differently abled. My blouse or sweater must be adorned with bling at the neckline. The bling helps me determine if I am putting on the shirt correctly.  Without the bling, I might be wearing an inside-out and backward blouse in public.  

I have to do things using only one hand.   Daily tasks, such as how I approach brushing my teeth, are a challenge that needs mastering. I learned to brush my teeth. I would have to discover a new way to do it. After all, how do you put toothpaste on a toothbrush with one hand?  My solution was to hold the toothpaste tube by the top, grabbing it firmly between my teeth. Then I grasped the tube of toothpaste with my functional hand and twisted it until the cap came loose. I would then balance the brush on the side of the sink, and if I was lucky, the toothbrush stayed put. I would squeeze on the paste. 
     It has been two years since I suffered a massive stroke on the right side of my brain.  Somehow I survived the stroke, but it left the left side of my body paralyzed. The stroke also took away a large portion of my vision.  Since the stroke, I no longer have had any Peripheral vision to my left.  After almost two years of recovery, I am just beginning to Rediscover and understand that there is a world left of my center. After the stroke, anything out of my sight was out of my mind Or out of my awareness.  Nothing existed to my left.  No doors or walls existed on my left.  No tables or chairs, no pillars or poles.  Nothing.  I began to get it only after I bumped into countless walls, tables, people, and doors.
     The trauma to my brain left me unable to walk or use my left arm.  I couldn't see.  I couldn't think. For the first few months, all that I felt I could do was sleep and cry. Because my left side was affected, everything in my life became more complex.  The simple things that I took for granted have become My daily challenges.  In the beginning, even eating was a challenge. For example, I could not always find my food because I could not see the left side of the Plate!  While in the hospital, I often wondered if the kitchen staff was trying to hide the good-tasting food from me by putting it on the left side of the tray.  During my time in the hospital and rehabilitation, I lost over 40 pounds.  Not because I was on a diet but because it was too difficult to eat!  The dining staff would bring my tray to my room and leave it for me.  I asked myself the question, how do I eat with one hand?  I learned how to open a packet of artificial sweeteners using my teeth.  I would hold the package with my teeth as I tore it open with one good hand.  I learned that inhaling with an opened Splenda packet in your teeth is not good. I could open my cereal box with one hand.  But the milk carton was more than I could cope with using only one hand.  So cereal without milk became what I've lived on.  It was too hard to think about doing anything else.
    Gradually, I began to give up. Depression Was setting in.  My future looked very bleak.  I felt like I was on the edge of a bottomless pit.  I could feel myself beginning to slide into the darkness.  I was afraid that I didn't have the strength to hold on. I felt totally helpless and totally hopeless.
      It was about that time that I began to hear these words in my head! " I have come so that you may have life in abundance." Having an abundant life seemed impossible to me at that time. I looked up at the ceiling in my hospital room and screamed," God are you crazy!  Then I wept.            God had many surprises in store for me.  But first, God knew that I needed to grieve. I grieved my many losses, left my past, and discovered a future. With God at my side, I began this journey.

Father's day, summer and stories told to a daughter

The most memorable images that I have of my father include summer days, good food, and hearty laughter. Yet, not all my memories of my Dad are happy. There are always unpleasant memories that want to mix themselves up with the good ones. That is just the way minds work. You are enjoying a great memory, and the next thing you know, an unpleasant memory comes slithering in the backdoor, trying to take over your mind. Just like the serpent does in the Adam and Eve story in the bible.  In the garden, everything was rolling along great. Then suddenly in slithered the serpent, and with him, chaos and evil.  Like the best memories that recycle back through your mind,  
God recycled His goodness, love, and triumph over evil again into this world. 

Like all of us, my Dad was human. 

Dad lost his temper. Dad was the one who passed out the whippings with his belt when he thought we deserved it. Although there was always a lot of discussion between us on whether I really deserved the whooping and I would desperately try to convince Dad that one of my two brothers committed the belt worthy infraction. 
In the end, love and goodness always recycled back in. Truth prevailed, and justice was served with the compassionate heart of a loving father.

 In the summer, when we returned home from a full day at the beach, we would have an outside dinner. Most people would call this a cookout. Our meal would consist of corn on the cob, California hamburgers, and my mother's famous potato salad. There are two things that I didn't understand at these meals. The first thing was that I didn't know if my mother's Potato salad was genuinely famous, but my father talked about it as if it was the best, world-renowned potato salad and why did we eat California Hamburgers if we lived in New Jersey? Those were my mysteries of life at that time.

My father talked about a lot of things. Dad talked about his family, his work, the Vietnam War, and lots of other things that didn't mean much to me because I was young. I would sit at the table with my two brothers and my mother as we listened to my father tell stories about a magical dog named Longfellow.  In my mind, I pictured Longfellow as a little black and brown dachshund with a wagging tail.  That pup that sprung up from my father's imagination loved to eat the cobs from the corn that was left over after my family had nibbled all of the kernels of sweet Jersey corn off of the cobs.      Even at the age of 18, I was still fascinated with my father's silly stories.   Finally, in the last story, my father told me about sweet Longfellow, the long brown and black dog that ate corn cobs died.  The little dog tragically Choked on a corncob.  At some point, my father's stories ended, and so did the laughter at the table. Maybe my father thought that at eighteen years old, I had outgrown his stories about Longfellow.  Sitting at my desk this father's day, I wish I could hear just one more Longfellow story. So love could recycle back. I would listen carefully to everything my father talked about if I could. Miss you, Dad.