🧡 Holding on to HOPE 🧡

How can you possibly access Hope when you are told there is “none?
When you are told there is “no cure” how do you move through the shock and disbelief without losing Faith?”
… by learning to live more fully in the moment and embracing ONE moment at a time.
This is not our family’s first experience having a family member diagnosed with a ‘RARE” life-threatening disease. This recent bombshell feels like a flashback to 1997 when my 21 year old son was diagnosed with a rare disease.
It was during my son’s journey, we learned about and witnessed, the Power of Prayer and the arrival of Miracles and Angels among us. We continue to be blessed with his ongoing stability and his blessing of being the “exception” to medical predictions regarding his diagnosis.
I recall saying to him in the midst of the darkest hours immediately following his diagnosis, “There is an exception to every law of nature, and may YOU be the exception to this disease.” I now find myself repeating this statement as a mantra when speaking to Jaime and to Wyatt.
By no means am I comparing catastrophic diagnoses, as each carries it’s own unique heartache, turmoil and deep sadness, but perhaps my profound sadness and grief over “what may lie ahead for sweet, innocent Wyatt” is compounded by this being yet another RARE disease.
When I was 19, I was diagnosed with cancer after the death of my first two infants, who were born a year apart. This diagnosis forced me to figure out my own healing journey while still grieving the loss of my son and daughter.
It was a depressing and long rocky road filled with unpredictable twists and turns, but thanks to Divine guidance and Divine Intervention, I’m still standing.
Divine Guidance led me to read “Love, Medicine & Miracles” by Dr. Bernie Siegel MD. in 1984-several years after I was diagnosed with Cancer
Reading about his experiences and absorbing the wisdom of his words was therapeutically healing for me, and when I wrote him an actual letter and he wrote back in his purple ink on note paper, a door was opened for me to understand the importance of advocating for myself in regards to my medical care.
Before Bernie, I didn’t realize I could make choices for myself, based on what was most resonant with me, rather than being dictated to, based upon clinical studies and statistics about my cancer.
20+ years later, Bernie asked me to submit two of my stories to his publisher of his book “A Book of Miracles”. We had kept in touch over the years and I had shared some of my blessed stories of healing and Divine guidance.
It is one thing to address your own mortality, but it is gut wrenching to watch your children, and now a grandchild, face all the issues catastrophic medical issues bring to the table.
Now in the present moments, I’m not only watching my sweet grandson navigate challenge after challenge, milestone after milestone, and setback after set back, but I’m in the trenches with my beautiful daughter Jaime as she gets caught up in the tsunami of learning to “RALLY & REEL”, going from a fleeting hopeful moment to getting sucker punched in the gut!
I feel caught up in the blur of a whirling dervish experience!

Grief arrives in many forms and for a variety of reasons. Grief is always connected to a Loss. They seem to be inseparable as they morph into each other, indelibly anchoring grief in our soul and spirit.
This is new territory for me, to be strong for my daughter and our family, while internally and feeling fragile and profoundly sad. I’ve often felt like I signed up for the accelerated human experience here on earth, and have tried my best to make lemonade from the lemon bumps in the road of life.
There have been times I have succeeded in learning the lessons, which always present themselves along with life challenges, and there are other times when I didn’t realize the toll these cumulative back to back lessons were having on my mind-body-spirit.
Odd thing about a PTSD diagnosis… often the people with it are unaware of the intricate complications and havoc it can wreak in their daily life.
So, the question I ask myself daily…
How do I hold onto Hope and Strength and not falter with my belief in the Power of Prayer and the arrival of Angels and Miracles?
“I do my best to Create and Hold Sacred Space”
Simply put, I live in Gratitude…
Gratitude for all the blessings I have amidst the life crap
Gratitude for being cancer free since 1988
Gratitude for being the matriarch of an amazing Tribe
Gratitude for my surrounding village of amazing people!
Gratitude for unconditional LOVE of Family and true Friends
Gratitude for my connection to Spirit
Gratitude for compassion and forgiveness shown me
Gratitude for Divine guidance and protection
and on and on…. everyday I write 23 things I’m grateful for and YES…
there are days when finding 23 things to be grateful for seems to be an impossible goal so I resort to my sense of humor when I write…
I am grateful for this journal, for this pen, for this quiet moment to write…
It humbles me to realize how much there is to be grateful for even in the most stressful and heartrending of times.
