Single And Feeling Overwhelmed?

As I have recently become single from a very serious and abusive relationship, I am still having trouble getting my 'emotional feet' on solid ground.  I found this article at Jennifer's Single Parents Blog on About.com , and not only was it helpful, but it was very down to earth, and helped to get some ideas on 'what should I do now?'.

After a breakup of a long-term relationship, sometimes it feels like your world has crumbled, and you feel at a bit of a loss at times.  Along with the ideas I got from at Jennifer's Single Parents Blog, I also found a FREE 30 Day Single Parent Journal:

"Keeping a daily journal will help you process your feelings and realize the wealth of positive qualities and personal strengths you already possess.


Each day for 30 days, you'll receive a new journal topic in your E-mail. Choose to complete them at your leisure, using a notebook or word processing software.

Please note that this is a personal exercise and your journal entries are not intended to be "turned in" to the Guide." (Reference: Jennifer's Single Parents Blog)

You can sign up for the once-a-day email here , it is free and may help you to learn more about yourself and perhaps take you a step closer to healing through this experience.  Please be kind to yourself if this is one of the seasons of life you are going through, get information and do your best to keep your head up.  I'm cheering for you!

Womanhood and Motherhood, Not A Career?

As I grew up, I dreamed of having a husband and a family of my own, of being dedicated to caring for a partner that provided for us, and raising children to be the best they can be.  I wanted to experience as many 'firsts' as I could with my children, creating lifelong memories and focusing on my family as my career.  I feel that has been my calling for this season of my life.  However society has had some other ideas.

Many times I have been told that I am wasting my intellectual potential.  Because I was a very high achieving student at high school, my career counsellor was horrified to learn that I intended to leave school and get a steady paying job to provide for myself until I met the man of my dreams ~ then I wanted to throw myself full-force into family life and motherhood.  Many teachers tried to convince me I needed a to have a 'real career', and that with my acedemic abilities, I could become qualified to be a doctor, a lawyer or anything else I set my mind to.

I have also come across some very indignant feminists that were also very disgusted with my choosing to dedicate my life to my family.  As far as they were concerned, they fought so hard to get women equal rights in every aspect of life, and by my actually CHOOSING to make my home and family my career, I was setting back every accomplishment they struggled to achieve.  These women couldn't understand why I would want the 'lowly' occupation of caring for my partner and giving all of myself to him and my children.  Although that relationship ended up being very abusive and has since ended, my children are still my focus as far as what I am called to do in this season of my life.

Why is it so offensive for me (or any other woman) to dedicate myself to what I feel is a noble calling of womanhood, to not just say I would die for my children ~ but to go as far as to live for them?  To set aside these years as they grow to be a constant in their life, to be their soft place to fall, their confidant, their organiser and their comforter?  To learn as much as I can about womanhood, motherhood, and childhood... and apply all that experience to the raising, edification and education of my children on a 'full-time basis'.

There is nothing wrong with being a working mother at all.  There may be financial, mental, emotional, physical or spiritual reasons that a woman may have, to continue in the workforce as well as balance motherhood.  My gripe is that I thought our fore 'mothers' fought for equality and the right to choose to have a career, not to force us out of our homes and into our pant suit's and stiletto's as a higher calling belonging to everyone that calls themself a woman.  Some may be Corporate Exectutives - I am a Domestic Executive.  Some may perform Customer Service - I perfom many services to my children.  Some women may strive for customer satisfaction - I strive for familial satisfation.  I believe I have followed the highest calling I have as a woman, a major purpose in life ~ so stop telling women everywhere to leave home and get a real career - we already have one.

Chronic Pain? You Need A Doctor...

Of course you need a doctor!  However not just any old doctor will do.  For a while I stayed with the same General Practioner that had treated me for a long time, but when this back pain became chronic pain, he just didn't seem to agree with much of what my highly trained (and trusted) pain specialist had diagnosed and prescribed medication for.  Every time I had to go for a new prescription, my doctor would be frustrated at having to follow the specialists advice, and I dreaded the next appointment.

I found a doctor that was willing to work with me and the rest of the pain team, and that was such a relief.  For you to be effectively treated by any health care practitioner:

1. They must listen to you.  I don't mean say 'uh huh' and nod a few times, then return to explaining to you whatever the were in the middle of saying.  They need to address your concerns, explain any medical terms you don't understand, tell you the reasons they are prescribing what medicines they think you need and how they work or can effect you.  You need a channel of clear communication between you both.

2. You must feel that you can trust them.  Now for some people that is a given.  For me, when this situation began I just blindly accepted everything any health care worker said to me, thinking that they are 100% sure and extremely experienced in what they do.  After a while I came to know that sometimes people can talk over your head, not listen and may not have the experience or information they need to move forward with what they prepose to do/administer/treat etc.

As a woman, sometimes we may be too eager to please and can hate to say 'no', even when it concerns our own health needs.  You may fear to come across as aggressive or arrogant, or perhaps you think that you don't know enough to debate a point with a treating doctor or whoever they are.  LISTEN... you are the only one who has lived in that body, and you do know when something isn't right. 

Be an active participant in your health care... it might just save your life!

Chronic Pain... It's Not 'A-CUTE' Thing

Some of you may have heard of someone having 'chronic pain'.  Myself, I now have chronic back pain and I am slowly learning about it, struggling (at times) with it and am learning to live with it.  However, before you can learn to live with it, you first need to understand it. 

Pain is usually classed as 'chronic' after having pain that persists after three months.  This is because after three months, your bodily tissues will have healed and the injury itself should not be the source of the pain.  What is now taking place is a 'haywiring' of your nervous system which is now unusually oversensitive.  So your injury is healed... the pain is still there.  Not really fair, is it?

So to the outside world, there is no cast on your arm, no traction in the hospital, no bandage or really any outward sign that you could be in pain.  People don't see any sign that you're in pain because they are used to dealing with 'acute pain', that happens, heals and then all is better.  But chronic pain now affects you silently.

Once those around you understand that you're now dealing with chronic pain, they will usually be very understanding.  However just because the doctor or specialist tells you that you now have chronic pain that you will probably deal with for many years (if not for life), doesn't mean you can automatically just accept it and say 'okay, let's get on with life then'.  Well, I sure as heck didn't feel, think or say anything like that at all.  LONG TERM PAIN... ummmm.... don't you have a machine, or an operation for that?  Maybe a prescription or a specialist that can fix it?  Unfortunately alot of the time there is nothing available that will cure your pain one hundred percent.  So then what?

For a long time, I was in denial (it's not just a river in Egypt).  I thought that maybe the specialist could be wrong.  I asked for a CT scan, and all that did was confirm that I had sacroiliac joint dysfunction, facet joint inflammation (L4 and L5), piriformis syndrome... oh and a surprise of mild osteoarthritis in the SI joint.  Then I tried ignoring it and hoping it would just go away on it's own... nope.  When you are unable to walk (I was also pregnant at the time I was diagnosed which just added to the problem), closing my eyes and sticking my head in the sand did absolutely nothing.

In the end of 2009 I asked to be put into Rehabilitation to get strong enough to walk again (I'd spent most of 2009 in and out of hospital, and bedridden basically all year, even after the birth of my beautiful son).  The pain persisted still and I had to continue to take strong opiod pain relief constantly (I still have to at this time).  Luckily for me, the local hospital that I was treated in has a Multi-disciplinary Pain Clinic.  This consists of Medical Chronic Pain Specialists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and chronic pain psychologists that work as a team to give you information and treatment tailored to your situation.  They also run a chronic pain course that teaches you how to take control of your pain and your life so that you can move forward and still achieve things in your life.  They teach you the physical/nervous reasons for the chronic pain, as well as the mental and emotional aspects ~ and techniques to cope by using the nature of your own body to help combat it.  I haven't even finished the course, but the things I've learnt have been invaluable to me, and has helped my depression and anxiety to abate some.  It seems there is light at the end of the tunnel... and it's not an oncoming train :-)

I've only just begun this challenging journey, and have met some beautiful people that have travelled further down this road than I.  They are inspiring, and give me hope that this chronic pain doesn't have to define who I am, only God and I can do that.  There's more to me as a woman than chronic pain... there's more purpose to my life than just surviving pain, and I'm determined to find every purpose and joy in life that I can!

Here Is The Dress

Well I promised a photo of my daughter wearing the dress I crocheted her.  Now be kind, it is the first thing I have crocheted as an adult (I dabbled and made a sweet pea when I was a young teen).  Now you may see that the buttons aren't on yet ~ but this little princess just couldn't wait!  Thankfully she loves it, and wants to wear it when she goes to church tomorrow night.  However, she'll be wearing it with leggings I think, because I don't feel it's totally appropriate to wear little shorts out of the house (especially to church!).  I'm so proud!

Crochet ~ My New Love

My first project was a beautiful crocheted dress made of a beautiful pink yarn for my five year old daughter, Imogen. It took about three weeks or maybe a tad more. As soon as I can, I will post a picture of DD striking a pose wearing it, though I did make it more to be a longer shirt to wear over shorts, leggings or even pants. It is a Family Circle pattern from the seventies, and its so gorgeous!

I find that with crocheting, I am sufficiently distracted from my chronic back pain that I can enjoy a small time without the pain being all I can focus on. Now that I've completed the crochet dress, I am starting to crochet a pair of overalls for Jaiden who is ten months old. The yarn I'm using is Panda Magnum Soft 8 ply in a caramel, cream and light blue blend. Hopefully these crocheted overalls will look so glorious in the pastel colours... And when they are done I promise photos! Soon I would like to learn to create my own patterns, though I think 'soon' may actually be a lot later than I thought, lol.

Crafts like crochet, knitting and scrapbooking (to name just a few) have had a kind of revival in recent years. I feel a deep connection to generations of women that have come before me as I work my crochet hook and yarn, and to see a garment that I created myself gives me a sense of pride I can't explain. Love is woven in to each stitch, and thats how I want it to be. I am starting to explore and am finding passions in activities, that I never got a chance to discover before. Another piece of me has been found and added to the jigsaw of my life, more purpose is revealed to me.

What hobby or activity makes you feel more like the real 'you', if you know what I mean! Inspire me and our readers with your passion, with what expands your womanhood.

Be blessed!

Is it equality, or tyrrany?

Women spent many years to help women at large to be treated as equals to men.  However, somewhere along the way, society went in the opposite direction, and now quite often equality just isn't enough.  Quite often we see examples of where women didn't want to be equal with men... they wanted to be bigger and better then men and squash them into the dirt!  And why?  Why fight for equality between the sexes for so long, to then turn around and become the one you were originally pointing the finger at?

Even in the media, relationships between men and women are not balanced.  We quite often see a doltish husband, who couldn't make it trough the rest of his life unless there was a woman to tell him what to do, where and how to do it, and when the right time to do it was.  These TV husbands seem endearing, almost in the way a new puppy is when you are trying to train it.  Women band together in little groups and gossip about the negatives of their husbands with each other, roll their eyes and placate their husbands with knowing smiles and a sarcastic 'yes, of course dear, what ever you think, dear'.  When did men become the puppet, whose strings were pulled by the wife in order to give the impression of life in the body and intelligence in the speech?

Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a joke.  Nothing wrong with being lighthearted about a relationship or marriage.  Nothing wrong with a knowing smile between women every now and then.  But to constantly portray men as dolts who couldn't change a light bulb to save their life, ultimately changes the perception of healthy husband/wife dynamics, and how we should treat each other.  If it was the other way around, women would be up in arms around the world.  People would say that it was 'sexist', saying how disgusting it was to portray women, men and marriages in this fashion.  They would say that women are just as capable as men in doing anything they wanted or needed to, they would strike, boycott ~ they'd call the nearest news station and make their thoughts known on national television.

But yet its all entertainment when men are the puppies, and the wives are their handlers.  Equality?  I'm not so sure.