The Mind-Body Connection

My stomach hurts. It's hard to eat if I'm alone, but much, much easier when I'm around friends. So I'm eating out a lot these days, and I'm so thankful to the friends who have lined up lunch and dinner dates the past two weeks. I've lost five pounds, but I'm pretty determined to stop that trend now.

I saw the chiropractor today, and everything was out of alignment. And nothing wanted to move back in. Given the stress of the last month, I am unsurprised this is the case. I'm also not at all astonished that my stomach hurts. My body is absorbing the brunt of what my mind can't really process yet. And it's only going to get worse before it gets any better.

But on the bright side (because, really, there has to be one somewhere, right?) when I talked to my doctor earlier this week, she commended me for being functional. Am I struggling? Yes. But I'm not despondent. I'm getting up every day, and going about most of my life. Just slowly, and with a few less snacks and a lot less smiles.

And on the glaringly bright, must-wear-sunglasses-to-see side, I do not have mono. I have made it through the first month of this awful experience and I am not debilitatingly sick. I don't feel great, but I'm healthy. And I'm working so very hard to stay that way.

The silence around here is deafening

But while I might not have anything to say, my sister has a list.

Read it and laugh, or something.

Sometimes, you deserve a prize just for showing up to life

And really, this is one of those times. But, since nobody is handing out medals for burying my mom the week of my birthday (and three years, almost to the day, since her mother died), I had to find another way to get my medal.

So I walked for it. From the Bay to the beach. And while I was walking, I thought a lot about the past two years' races. About having to meet friends at the halfway mark in 2009, because I wasn't well enough to complete the whole 12K. About running portions of last year's race with the same friends, and pointing out the great strides I'd made in that year in regaining my health and my fitness.

I'm not so sure what the next year will bring, but I do know that I'm so much stronger, and so much healthier, than I was when my dad died. And if the next year brings the hardest challenge I've ever faced, I'm already several strides ahead of where I was last time.

Unfinished

I hate unfinished business. And we're surrounded by it right now. My mom had just gone shopping, and yesterday I returned a bag of new clothes, tags still on them. They were interview clothes, and clothes purchased in preparation for the new job she thought she'd get. She was right. I talked to the person who wanted to hire her last week. They were so excited to bring her on board.

But we went to her funeral on the day of her job interview.

This is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. And I'm guessing the worst is yet to come.