I have always appreciated the concept of a fresh start. I tend to look for excuses to set or recommit to personal goals, but especially at natural transition times of the year like when school starts, the beginning of a new calendar year, or even a birthday or anniversary. I also like to be intentionally introspective when anything is ending, to consider how I may have grown, what I learned or what I may want to change going forward, or where I am at with my personal goals.
So no surprise that as this school year is drawing to a close, I’ve found myself taking stock of where I am now with many things in my life. In comparing to where I was this time a year ago, what things have changed?
Trauma and widow/grief brain are still a very real thing for me, but it has been gratifying to be able to identify some measurable ways I can recognize I am healing. While I am still not doing this a lot, I am beginning to read a bit again, or am able to sit through (and follow!) the occasional television show. Last week in particular it felt like I had several “breakthroughs” of sorts. Two of my children had concerts during the week, and it wasn’t until I was getting ready for bed the evening of the second concert that I realized I hadn’t felt sad at all during those concerts, and no tears afterward either. Being sad hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Then on Saturday I actually PLANNED OUT MEALS for the coming week and pre-bought the ingredients myself, in a real. live. GROCERY. STORE. I even made breakfast for my kids TWICE in the week, and it has felt good to have already made a few real dinners this week. This food thing is huge, guys. That portion of my brain has been so broken. I just…couldn’t. I don’t know how to really explain it, because in my “former life” I used to make things from scratch, did a lot of baking, made breakfasts in the morning and dinners each night (OK, Kenny often helped me with cooking dinner, but still), I even made all of our jam and did other canning. And here for the past year and a half I have struggled to make even the simplest of meals without getting overwhelmed or completely botching them.
These are baby steps, yes, but steps forward nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a hot mess in MANY areas of my life. I forget things way too often, don’t always respond to messages – it’s not uncommon that I will compose a reply in my head, or start to reply and then get interrupted, and then think I had responded; sometimes I simply forget to actually hit send and won’t notice for weeks. My yard is an absolute disaster (no bandwidth at all to handle any aspects of that). I still have not unpacked most of the boxes from our FIRST flood more than a year ago. I mean come on, there are currently more than 6,000 (!!!) unread emails in my personal inbox. I know, it’s beyond embarrassing. I certainly do not “have it all together.” Far from it.
But I can see that I’m steadily creeping, creeping, creeping back toward some sense of normalcy and overall level of competency. I trust that my brain will continue to heal, that I WILL regain many of the portions of myself that have felt lost or broken. And I will take the wins where I can find them.
