Little steps

Those who would climb to a lofty height

 must go by steps, not leaps.

St. Gregory the Great

from a letter to Augustine of Canterbury




Baby steps is what is needed when a change in life circumstances reverts back to what is considered "normal" . . . normal being the perception of what it should be by the person making the changes.

The date of the following post was in October of 2007 and I still don't consider my life as "normal" even though I have moved on and have remarried.  Having said that, many of my goals have been met and I have moved closer to what I have considered normal even though I'm not there yet.

It has taken little changes . . . I call them incremental changes.  Changes so small that you barely feel them happening.  Sometimes that is all we can handle.  As stated in the quote, change cannot happen with leaps.  Leaps lead to overwhelm, feeling like a failure and giving up.

As I look back to the time the post was written, so many changes have taken place, however, the changes were so little at a time that it almost seems impossible that so much progress has been made on my journey to a "normal" life.  

I did try doing the leaps, but they led to me falling down and failing, making the progress move a step backward.

To recap some changes . . . I'm no longer agoraphobic (not able to leave the house),  I'M NOT A HERMIT ANYMORE!, I can drive again, I entered the workplace, I trusted another person to love again . . . enough to marry him.  I can be in a vehicle again as a passenger and not have panic attacks as I did in the beginning, although I still have a problem with it (and still working on it).

This post originally published on 10-5-07

It is turning out to be one of those days that aren't quite so positive.  Memories of when my life was happy and I had someone to share happy times with are haunting me. Now I'm alone in miserable times. Sometimes I wonder why bad things happen to good people. I'm fighting a pity party this morning and I can't go there, so I thought I would write about how I'm feeling.

What is bothering me can't be fixed over night . . . I want what I had before. I miss my husband, I want my life as it was before he died. Why did he have to die? Having to deal with this was the last thing on my list of worries, which is always a very long list since I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders and worry about everything.

It isn't the loneliness since I keep myself busy. It is being alone . . . this is the first time in my life that I am alone and I hate it with a passion. Sometimes like this morning, it just gets to me. My mom is on her way over and we are gonna go shopping to keep my mind occupied. It helps momentarily.

I'm not always positive about life, sometimes life just sucks, but I try to deal with it optimistically.

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Love will change us forever . . .

Another post that I'm transferring from an old blog that reminds me that some things don't change . . . I was thinking about how love has changed my life once again . . . and how some things haven't changed.  


Love will and does change us forever . . .  over and over again . . .  good and bad.


Originally posted on  March 4, 2007

How many of us have experienced something in our lives, good or bad, that changes us forever?


The past couple of days I have focused on becoming a widow/widower.

Anyway . . . I had to stop what I was doing and write this blog post. My inner sign that it is time for life's reflections . . . "therapy" time . . . and a visit with my Bloggerville buddies. One thing I have fondly realized is the difference the love and support I have received from my online friends has changed me forever. No longer do I feel alone in my struggle to move on and deal with the abrupt changes in my life . . . angels surround me.

Fate chooses whether these changes are happiness, drama or tragedy. We are somewhat responsible as we contribute to our fate . . . we don't walk out in front of a fast moving train unless we want to die . . . but ultimately, fate's changes are like a game of russian roulette.

Being an extremely spiritual person, I am ashamed to admit that I constantly ask "why me" . . . and go through the phase of being so angry at God that it is difficult to pray and be thankful for anything. That attitude doesn't help anyone and finally I am breaking through this "pity" phase. It is emotionally unhealthy and extremely unproductive.

It does not matter "why me" . . . it is what it is . . . "this is it from now on" . . . and I have had to deal with it.

Being angry at God will not bring my husband back.

It is not a soap opera . . . it is real life, as much as it sometimes sucks.

What I ultimately decided what to do with the tragic changes in my life is be grateful for what I do have, cherish the beautiful memories of the most wonderful marriage and unconditional love anyone could ever experience . . . for 22 years . . . and use those beautiful memories and lessons learned to create another beautiful time in my life.


Nothing will ever be the same again,
but I now see it as an exciting chapter
in my life that is yet to be written . . .

Back to present day . . .

And so I walked that lonely road that led me to love again and once again love has changed me forever in a different way.  One of the ironies of life . . . there is really nothing to fear . . . it is our destiny either way.

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What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger?

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape. --Charles Dickens

WOW, that quote speaks volumes to me and reminds me of another quote . . . "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Yes, I am stronger than before I had to deal with the death of my spouse . . . I'm still standing after taking one fall after another.  One learns how to get back up, however, I'm not sure if I have been bent and broken into a better shape.  

Sometimes I wonder about being "stronger" since I am haunted with worry that it will happen all over again while fiercely trying to fight those feelings and adopt the philosophy of living for today and don't worry about the future. 

When I fell in love with The Captain, I thought my heart would be what it used to be, but it had experienced the devastating pain of losing a spouse.  He's gone through several surgeries since we have been together and the feelings come flooding back with a vengeance.  I've wondered if other widows go through the same feelings after finding love again and this is just a "normal" phase of the grief process.  

The fear of another loss . . . I've perfected the act of suffering and live with the hope that I will learn the lesson that life goes on no matter what or how much we worry about whatever the worry is about.

Sometimes I wonder if what doesn't kill you makes you weaker?

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The Monsters in the Closet

Pay attention to your emotions

"Emotions are the next frontier to be understood and conquered. To manage our emotions is not to drug them or suppress them, but to understand them so that we can intelligently direct our emotional energies and intentions.... It's time for human beings to grow up emotionally, to mature into emotionally managed and responsible citizens. No magic pill will do it."  ~ Doc Childre


Many of us believe that we need to keep a tight lid on our emotions. We fear that if we ever allow these emotions to be expressed, they will do serious damage.

But if we summon up the courage to truly feel our emotions, we discover that they don't last. The monster in the closet turns out to be a pussycat. In fact, if we are willing to experience our emotions completely, without resistance of any kind, they burn themselves out in only a few minutes.

The only thing that keeps emotions alive within you over long periods is your unwillingness to acknowledge them.

"By starving emotions we become humorless, rigid and stereotyped; by repressing them we become literal, reformatory and holier-than-thou; encouraged, they perfume life; discouraged, they poison it."  ~ Joseph Collins

Source: Higher Awareness

It has been a difficult month . . . December usually is.  There have been a myriad of emotions that have been my monster in the closet.

First of all, grief.  It is the one emotion that is always looming and floating around my thoughts, which sometimes gets the best of me.  This month it was compounded by two deaths in my extended family.  One was expected, the other was totally unexpected and especially painful.  Both deaths took my thoughts to places in the past where these two beautiful people touched my life and I contemplated their affect on my life. All of this thinking took me to other places of grief to a very disturbing journey of revisiting all those important people who have disappeared from my life, never to appear again.  Grief can be a vicious cycle.

By all means, I did not starve my emotions this month.  In fact, I fed them way too much.  All the monsters were very hungry!

With my emotions in a delicate condition, this situation of no running water for yet another month had me to the point of wanting to scream at the top of my lungs without ceasing.  How awful to have to live this way with no end in sight.  This too shall pass . . .

The monsters from my childhood also stay at the edge of the closet, coming out to haunt and torment me randomly.  Although the emotions seem trivial and silly to others, they are very real to me.  They came at me fiercely around Christmas.

Although many of us try to sweep the monsters back in the closet, we all have them and must deal with them as they show themselves.  Mine always come out with a vengeance around the holidays.  Maybe I don't deal with them enough during the year.

Of course it was not all bad.  The Captain and I had some very joyous times. We treated ourselves to a few culinary toys that we are thoroughly enjoying. Christmas Eve was spent at my cousin's house for the annual pig roast.  We arrived early to experience the process of roasting a pig.  It made me very happy to spend quality time with my aunt, uncle and cousins.  The simple things in life are so special and these are the things I will remember when I think of this holiday season.

Hopefully the monsters will go back to hide in the closet as the ball drops on New Years Eve, marking the end of the holidays and the dreaded season. Having said all that I've said, they are way more joyous since I met The Captain.  He's my hero and gift from God . . . the light at the end of the dark closet.

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Back To You

Like a star that guides a ship across the ocean
that's how your love
will take me home back to you
And if I wish upon that star
someday I'll be where you are
I know that day is coming soon
I'm coming back to you.


lyrics from the song
Back to You/Bryan Adams



Originally posted on Yahoo 360
September 29, 2007 comments included at the end of this post


What if we could go back and look into the eyes of someone you love who has passed and tell them how much you love and miss them, spend time with them or just give them a big hug . . . fix those mistakes we made in life, go back and rewind immediately after we know we said the wrong thing and have the ability to say it again . . . the manipulation of life's outcomes. Rewind immediately after the lottery numbers are called and be the first one to get them right . . . we'd all be millionaires wouldn't we?

How about the love that got away? What if you could go back and do it all over again?

History would constantly evolve into whoever's concept of fixing what was wrong was achieved. What a crazy thought . . . the world would be far more out of control than it is now if outcomes could be changed and manipulated.

In my life, I've dealt with death starting at a very young age and I still don't deal with it well. Many of my friends were killed in automobile accidents and coming from a very large italian family with my grandparents each having at least ten brothers and sisters, I think I experienced more than the normal person. Then my grandmother who raised me and was actually more like my mom than my mom died at a very young age . . . well, my childlike thoughts wished that I could go to the place where I could visit those who had passed on who I loved so much. At the time, I didn't have much religion with just a vague concept of heaven, so death freaked me out.

I've since become a Christian as an adult and death does not freak me out as it did in my younger days . . . but when my husband passed away, the notion of time travel and visiting heaven has come to my mind quite often. I guess that happens when someone so close to you passes on suddenly without warning. You spend your life with this person and don't even get to say goodbye . . . what if you could? What if we had the ability to visit heaven, not a time travel thing where history would be constantly evolving and changing . . . just a visit to another time or another dimension like heaven.

Of course I would love to be the merchant in charge of all travel arrangements . . . would be a popular item on eBay . . . talk about difficulty in pricing an item or a service for something so priceless and worth more than all the money in the world . . . at least it would be to me. For now, I visit them in my dreams.

What do you think? For once, I would love to use it to win the lottery, not have to worry about survival and be able to help people with the money I win. What would you do with the powers of going back?

lol I know most of you probably think that I have really gone over the edge with this one . . .

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