All Apologies

I'm sorry I can't fix you. I'm sorry I can't take away your pain and make it my own. I'm sorry I take your feelings and feel them too, but it doesn't diminish them for you.

 I'm sorry I can't make you take the medication, or seek other help. Sorry I react too quickly and take it personally. Sorry that after all these years I just can't leave you be when it's like this.

 I'm sorry life has dealt you blow after blow.

 I'm sorry I can't give you the part of me that contains all the hope and optimism. I'm sorry when that part of me is damaged by this.

 I'm sorry I don't have an answer. So sorry.

 I'm sorry that the image we project isn't always the reality. I wish it was too.

Fitness Friday: 12WBT Week 2

It's Friday again, already!!

I've had a bit of a challenging week. It has been a very emotional week but I've been taking our all my stress on the treadmill so that's a plus I guess!

I've not used the 12WBT meal plan at all this week, but I HAVE stuuck to making good choices foodwise. Mostly. Hoping to at least use some of the dinner plans next week but I'm happy to back into menu planning properly for my family and not having junk in the house makes it a lot easier anyway.

We had weigh in on Wednesday and to date I have lost 1kg. I am really happy if that's about it for weight loss for me, and actually hope to be putting on a few kilograms of muscle, I'm working hard for it. The best measure as to success for me will be when we do physical measurements rather than weight I think.

Now I have a question for you fitness gurus. I have a dodgy back and this week it has been pretty horrific on and off. I'm doing the C25K alternating with strength/weights work. Is running not a great idea for me?

I have to say as much as I curse and try to find excuses not to get on the treadmill on running days, the high afterwards can not be beat and I really do intend to achieve my goal of running 4km with my sister at the Mothers Day Classic in May. BUT I don't want to do anything that may be detrimental to my long term health backwise. Has anyone got some tips or ideas for me?

Fitness Friday is a Blog Hop hosted by myself and the lovely Natalie over at Mummy Smiles. We'd love you to join in whether you are participating in the 12WBT or doing it your own way, or any other program for that matter.

Feel free to grab our button and add it to your post or sidebar, and we have a Facebook page for chats and discussion during the week as well.

Just add your link here, copy the code and add it to your own post and voila, you're hopping along.

Please do try and pop in on some of the other hoppers and show them some comment love too. We really want to support and encourage each other here.

Thankful Thursday: From Stress to Strength

I'm changing it up a little this Thankful Thursday.


I asked on my Facebook page yesterday if anyone might like to join in some prompted writing this week. If it's something you lovely TTers like I'd love to make it a regular thing.


The prompt was to look back at a time of stress or challenge in your life and recognize the gratitude you have for that time now. Of course ALL Thankful Thursday posts are welcome to link up as always.

Many years and three children ago we lived in Queensland. We had a baby boy and moved up there chasing a dream when he was about 9 months old.

I truly loved living there, not least because it was the first year of my life that I didn't crack the SAD's over Winter. We made some amazing friends, a number of whom we're still in touch with today.

And then it all went to hell.

My husband was contracted as director of an advertising firm. He'd worked with one of the owners before, the other was an unknown entity. The very short version is that things did not work out. The long version includes absolutely disgraceful behaviour on their behalf to the extent of extreme bullying and even death threats to some of the franchise owners. Cowboys.

I was pregnant with our daughter by then and we just wanted to get out of there. We were scared and thousands of kilometers away from our families. Our home down here had been rented out for a year so we literally had nowhere to go once we decided to head back to Victoria.

Thankfully my sister-in-law very graciously took us in. My husband was not in a good place emotionally, I was a big bag of hormones and we had an energetic little boy running around as well. I don't know if I've ever expressed to her how grateful I am that she opened her home to us in a time of great need.

This was a turning point for all of us. The hubster had a truck license and our experiences had soured the advertising field for him completely. He started looking at jobs in the transport industry and a Supertrucker was born.

Our tenant moved out a week before our baby was due and we went home. I literally went into labour hours after unpacking the last of the boxes.

Life has changed so much since then, sometimes I forget just how awful that time really was. I'm glossing over it here but truly it was a very scary time for very many reasons.

I am so grateful that it is far behind us now and nothing but a memory. The entire experience of shifting our little family interstate and back again was fairly stressful in itself but through it all I learned that I possessed a strength I'd not recognized before. The time of unemployment during and after the move back home was horrible, but I worked hard at my manufacturing business and somehow we got through it with help from our families.

I am so grateful to both of our families for the support they gave us both financially and emotionally. I am thankful for all that we learned from that time, and I am thankful that when things are feeling hard now I can look back at that time and others we have gotten through together and know that we can get through this as well.

Strength is a funny thing. You don't know you have it until after you've used it sometimes.

Some housekeeping: I love reading all your thankful posts each week. When you link up here I would really appreciate a link back to this post so your readers might come and check out a few of the other blogs that have linked up as well. Share the love!


I'd also love it if you could try and comment on a few of your fellow thankful crew... Comments make everyone happy :)

Miracles Happen

Source

I had a post scheduled for today. It was a clever (I thought) and cutting diatribe about Real Estate Agents and how they promise you the moon and then deliver Uranus.

But then we had a meeting with the director of the company we're using who agreed our house was overvalued and is going out of his way to make up for it, including covering some of our advertising costs. We're feeling a lot better about them as a whole for now, so I guess my scathing witticisms will have to be shelved. Also I really prefer to focus on the good stuff here anyway.

And besides that I have the best good stuff of all time to share.

I have three sisters. One of them recently returned from her long awaited three week honeymoon. I'm not going to go into the specifics but will tell you that it had been heartbreaking for them and for all of us that upon their returning she was staring down a complete hysterectomy after years of illness.

Instead, she is having a baby.

She'd been so ill, not unusual for her sadly, but this time not due to insanely fluctuating hormones but due to pregnancy hormones!

Truly it is nothing short of a miracle and ecstatic does not go close to how I am feeling. As another sister said we were more excited learning of her pregnancy than some of our own!

So come late August I get to be an Aunty again, and my sister and brother-in-law will have the greatest blessing ever.

Happy Dance!
Tell me about your miracles!

Holland Revisited

There are beautiful and amazing people in the world.

I went to Uni with one. She was the most generous and loving person imaginable. She was even a bridesmaid in my wedding and I in hers. We spent a lot of time together over many years, and then we drifted apart. Not due to any falling out or anything, just life you know?

Every now and then we make contact again, and it always makes me smile to hear from her.

I got a letter care of my parents on the weekend. I'd had a fairly tough morning trying to get the house ready for an open with four kids running amok, the Supertrucker on the road and my little mate being the most stimmy hyper full on little boy you could imagine. If you looked up autism in the dictionary you would've found a picture of him grinning wildly.

I opened it as we left the house, read the note and promptly burst into tears. We're running on fairly extreme stress at the moment. For this woman to take the time to send this to me... To care enough... Just for me to know she is out there reading and thinking of us... It was nothing short of amazing to me in that moment and I am so grateful.

You may remember my post about Holland. If not pop over and read it first.

My friend sent me this response to that text:
_ _ _ _ _ _
Celebrating Holland - I'm Home
by Cathy Anthony


I have been in Holland for over a decade now. It has become home. I have had time to catch my breath, to settle and adjust, to accept something different than I'd planned. I reflect back on those years of past when I had first landed in Holland. I remember clearly my shock, my fear, my anger, the pain and uncertainty. In those first few years, I tried to get back to Italy as planned, but Holland was where I was to stay. Today, I can say how far I have come on this unexpected journey. I have learned so much more. But, this too has been a journey of time.


I worked hard. I bought new guidebooks. I learned a new language and I slowly found my way around this new land. I have met others whose plans had changed like mine, and who could share my experience. We supported one another and some have become very special friends. 

Some of these fellow travelers had been in Holland longer than I and were seasoned guides, assisting me along the way. Many have encouraged me. Many have taught me to open my eyes to the wonder and gifts to behold in this new land. I have discovered a community of caring. Holland wasn't so bad. 

I think that Holland is used to wayward travelers like me and grew to become a land of hospitality, reaching out to welcome, to assist and to support newcomers like me in this new land. Over the years, I've wondered what life would have been like if I'd landed in Italy as planned. Would life have been easier? Would it have been as rewarding? Would I have learned some of the important lessons I hold today?


Sure, this journey has been more challenging and at times I would (and still do) stomp my feet and cry out in frustration and protest. And, yes, Holland is slower paced than Italy and less flashy than Italy, but this too has been an unexpected gift. I have learned to slow down in ways too and look closer at things, with a new appreciation for the remarkable beauty of Holland with its tulips, windmills and Rembrandts.


I have come to love Holland and call it Home.


I have become a world traveler and discovered that it doesn't matter where you land. What's more important is what you make of your journey and how you see and enjoy the very special, the very lovely, things that Holland, or any land, has to offer.


Yes, over a decade ago I landed in a place I hadn't planned. Yet I am thankful, for this destination has been richer than I could have imagined!
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 


I am looking forward to the day I can embrace Holland as fully.



Thank you so much Butterfly. Just knowing you are out there means so much to me. Bless your beautiful heart <3