Resilience

It Was One of The Scariest Weeks of My Life Since Losing My Husband.

Medical emergencies are no fun.

Retrospection can be a good thing. When bad things happen, you want to know why so that you can make sure they don’t happen again.

Pride goeth before the fall they say.

When is it too much to claim or have an identity of being strong?

Benjamin Hardy, PhD said “For me, identity is a powerful tool… but if you don’t know how to use it, it becomes a trap for you.”

I’ve always felt no matter the circumstance there’s always something you can do to make it better. And if all actionable items fail, the one thing you have left is your attitude and you better make it good.

I recently found myself in the emergency room. A car accident has destabilized the cervical vertebrae in my neck, and if I push myself too much or if I sleep wrong, I am suddenly thrown into life-altering vertigo.

When you no longer have a husband to help, or be a sounding board, speak reason to you, or drive and you’ve moved far away from everyone to establish a new life for yourself — you know the meaning of being alone.

But when you’re sick, and can’t move, and you feel the centrifugal force of a turning earth in your body and you can’t make the spin stop and you’re all by yourself — now you really know what being alone is .

Crying doesn’t help.

You’re too weak to call someone you love and trust and even if you did, it would take them too long to get to you.

Facing the choices in your head asking if would you rather be dead or experience what you’re experiencing is an eye-opener.

I’m talking you’ve hit the lowest of the low that you’ve ever felt. That was me.

What can we learn from a circumstance like this?

Perhaps one thing is everybody needs help sometime. Another thing is, even though most of the time you’re trying to convince yourself you’re strong so that you can be strong it just might not be possible to be that strong.

Then you start to consider should you really move closer to one of your kids so they could be there to help even though your perception is you wouldn’t be able to find the environment that you want to be in, there? Or you plain flat out don’t want your kids to see you as a burden.

And on top of that, you begin to feel old thinking about having your kids take care of you.

That begs the question of, do you want to live in fear or be sensible?

But even in that question, you realize there are still other choices in between the two.

I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that I need to step out of my self imposed isolation of widowhood and begin to meet people so that I can have a small community of close, trusted and beloved friends, who might be able to help me be brave, laugh, and enjoy life for more hours of the day.

I’ve also realized, yet again, when the proverbial splat hits the fan, there are people who like to talk about what you should do and there are people who do.

I am lucky to have a son who hopped a plane and got here as quickly as he could. My daughter-in-law supports him in this, and I’m grateful. Just the thought of having somebody else in the room to share the burden with me was a tremendous gift.

Those are the kind of people I want around me. That’s the kind of person I continue to value.

I’ve been listening to a lot of marketing courses lately because I’m trying to sell my first book, A New Baby at Happy Gates Ranch.

Quite honestly, I suck at marketing. I’m much better at the visioning and inspiring part of book writing than I am of the selling.

Part of marketing is connecting with your audience. It’s not about you selling the product. It’s about you meeting them where they are. It’s about giving them a solution to their problem. It’s about having a real reason to connect as opposed to salacious content or something fake.

Although the successful marketers will also tell you, all that matters is that you get eyes on the product.

Arnold Schwarzenegger told a story this week at a 10 X GrowthCon business conference with Grant Cardone. that when he was running for governor, someone threw a raw egg at him. All eyes were on him to see what he would do. Would he be the person who is angry and reactive? Would he call security and tell them to grab the person? Would he show his anger or would he give up and not run for governor? Instead, he told the person, “You owe me some bacon.”

How we react to every circumstance is within our control.

We all have a choice in how we react to our circumstances.

People who have lost their spouses begin to realize there is deep pain out there, and we begin noticing it everywhere and in everyone around us. Grief makes us a bit more empathic, and some of us do something about that, and some of us become a victim.

I want to help more widows and widowers find hope and meaning in what’s left of their lives.

I’m great one on one. There’s no one you’d rather have at your back than me. I will go out of my way to make someone’s life better if they want it better but I don’t seem to do that for myself in all the ways I need to.

There’s a huge part of me that wants to post on my apartment building’s internal chat room, asking if there are any other widows or widowers that would like to get together for all the reasons ‘alone’ people want to be together but I do question — stupidly, would anyone show up and answer my query; would I connect with anyone? What if the vertigo hits me again and I can’t lead? What if the people who do show up connect with each other but I’m still left on the fringes?

But I also think about how much I want to be saved right now and if I did do something like this, I could help somebody else out who might also want to be saved. Maybe somebody else wouldn’t feel so alone. Maybe somebody else would have a person to call on to unlock the door so that the EMTs didn’t have to break it down to get into their apartment like I did.

Maybe somebody would want to go sit on the beach with me, or go out to a restaurant, or just sit on a Friday night on the couch and watch a movie and eat popcorn.

It’s about our identity and how we perceive ourselves.

I know I’m a good person. I know I’m a kind person. I know I’m a hard worker but there’s still that little part of me that wonders, am I enough?

These days, I’m a little bit ashamed at myself for not watching out for more single people when I was married.

It’s that bad opposite side of am I enough? We don’t reach out because we’re afraid of rejection and yet we sit there alone, wishing to be part of a community of people who care.

I didn’t know what single life was like. The first time I was ever alone, because I went to living in the family bosom to being married, was when I walked back into my apartment after my husband died.

That was 1035 days ago. In the beginning it’s get through the first hour, then the first morning, then the first day, then the first week, then the first month. It’s getting through the birthday and the anniversary and the holiday.

There are all kinds of tragedies in this world, and I don’t want to make light of any of them. When you’ve lost a grandparent or a parent or a beloved aunt, or uncle, or a mentor or a child or a pet… we all hurt.

There might’ve been an overdose, violence, an accident, a self-inflicted death. Someone could be bullying you, you could be worrying about how to pay the rent, you could be living on the street, there could be sex trafficking, you could just be plain flat out mad at the leaders in this world… There’s so much suffering. And perhaps it’s our duty to come out of our shell to help alleviate it because if we don’t, who will? It’s not about fixing everybody else it’s about recognizing what we’ve got going on in our own heads.

I sat on my third floor, screened in porch today, appreciating the wild birds by the lake, the alligator moseying by, the turtles rising to the surface, taking a peek and dipping below. I watched the squirrels and the crows, heard the tweet of the redwing blackbird and the doves, and watched the geckos go about their normal day of searching for food. And I was filled with gratitude, as I usually am. Nature is an amazing Band-Aid to the soul. Back where I lived it is snowing and here I have the tropical breezes of nearly 80°.

I was still a bit scared, since the vertigo started back up when I laid down last night and said to myself, “You just have to get through today. Tomorrow is another day.”

And then I caught myself.

Even though I was feeling like crap, there were still so many good things in my life and why would I want them to be wished away hoping for a better day tomorrow?

That’s attitude. It’s a choice.

We have to monitor our thoughts.

We put meaning behind every circumstance that happens to us. What we focus on draws near.

Don’t believe me? Start looking for green vehicles. And I’m talking about the color. Count how many of them you see now. If you’re not out driving look for green houses or people that are wearing green shirts or jackets. Bet you’ll have never seen as many green things in your life as you do now.

My point is if we keep looking at all the bad things happening in our life, that’s what we’re going to notice. If we keep counting our blessings and being grateful for the good things, that’s what we’re going to see more of. It doesn’t stop bad things from happening, but holding onto the good things allows us to be more resilient and gives us hope.

Maybe the universe is redirecting me by this damn vertigo to reach out of my comfort zone to help alleviate others’ isolation and loneliness.

Maybe there’s something happening in your life that’s redirecting you, but you are too scared to take the next step.

I’m going to reach out today. I have no idea what will become of it but at least I will have tried.

I dare you and I’d love to hear what you did.

And if you want do something nice for me, buy my book or share it on your social media. https://store.bookbaby.com/book/a-new-baby-at-happy-gates-ranch