Why This Quirky Woman Blogs - Blog Challenge Day 31

It's finally here. The finish. Grand Finale. Le Fin.

Why I blog and a quirk I have.

The author David Eddings once said that if you're a writer, you will write, whether you want to or not.

I spent years fighting it. After all, writers seldom make money, and the image of a starving artist wasn't really in my life plans.

I've done a lot of different jobs in my life. Few of them really sparked my interest, even if they felt good for a little while. What I found, though, was that very often, I would loose myself in a story that I was making up in my head to occupy my short-attention-span creative brain.

This is boring, let's make up a story to make it more interesting...

The less creative my job allowed me to be the more... well... bitchy I got. It's harsh, but it's true. Much like a grumpy old female wolf, I'd snap at anyone and everyone. I chose jobs that had a lot of stress, because then, I could justify how miserable I felt using a mask of "I'm stressed out because I had a crappy day at work, leave me alone."

It doesn't work well.

Okay, so maybe millions of people around the world are making it work for them. It didn't work for me.

I got sick, I was tired. I spent years feeling like I'd been plowed under by a bulldozer.

And finally, I realized that I felt better when I was making up stories in my head. Not necessarily stories about my life, but fictions, with characters that lived in my head.

Why not put them on paper?

I am now, telling those stories, crafting tales that have lived in my head for a long time. I'm stretching my wings and learning to be a novelist.

In the meantime, I blog. It gives me an extra outlet, a chance to practice my craft. I suppose that this is also my quirk: I'm a story teller and a weaver of words. I answer questions in stories and carefully mold characters to reflect aspects of life as I see it.

I started this blog with most of an idea of what I wanted to write and create as a business in my head. That has evolved, and I'm not sure how often I'll come back to this one. I've got ideas in my head, but my focus has changed as I've found my feet in this world.

I am a writer. Writers write. And while, on one hand, it's difficult to let go of what I started, I'm finding that it's okay to let it go.

I have drafted the first of a 3 book series. I am planning another novel entirely for National Novel Writing Month. I am fostering my need to be creative, and planning the launch of my creatives business next month (Sage Wolfsong Creations), for which the blog is already running. Sage Wolfsong is all about being creative, being a writer, and the things that come from my heart and into a physical form.

As a family, we've started a concerted effort toward building our used bookstore, Once Written Thrice Read, and the blog for that business is up and running. There, I blog about the books we post for sale in Amazon, reviews of books, some of our daughter's writing, and a little more about living the life of a writer.

Funny side effect of writing my first book: My confidence has soared as a result of finishing that first draft. Aowynn and Teo (the main characters) have become my friends and a part of our family. My actual family has caught the spark, as hubby and daughter are both lovers of the written word, and they have both begun writing their own books. Apparently, we just needed someone to take one for the team, sweat it out, and get the ball rolling. Never really thought of myself as a trailblazer--I've always preferred someone else lead, to be honest. Yet here I am, setting an example by not worrying about what they're doing, and giving myself the time and space to write, and great things are happening.

Today marks the end of a 31 day voyage that took me 3 months to complete. You know more about me than I probably ever dreamed I'd share with strangers. I've learned more about me than I ever imagined I'd find over the course of a summer. I had a summer romance with myself, I suppose. It's over, and yet, it's only beginning.

I hope you enjoyed this series. If you want to go back and read the posts from the beginning, you can start here, at the Intro. If you're a blogger, or just getting started, and need some material that's a little more personal and offbeat, by all means, feel free to use it. I just ask that you credit your sources, and be kind. Then hop over to my Facebook page and let us know, so that we can all follow you, too!

Makeup Bags and Comfort Food - Blog Challenge Day 30

Ha! We're almost there, and this one's an easy one, if not quick.

The contents of my makeup bag, you say? I keep it simple. Leave in hair conditioner, a wide toothed comb for my curly hair, blush, two palettes of eye shadow (both browns, one sparkly for the rare evening out), lipstick in a nude color and one in a bright red, tweezers, toothbrush, toothpaste, flossers, a hair scrunchy (yes, they went out of style a decade ago; they are still the only hair ties I can use without ripping out my hair), and a bottle of bright blue nail polish. Pretty cool, huh?

So, what is my comfort food?

Cheese.

Anything cheesy does it for me when I'm really down.

Cheesy garlic bread straight out of the oven. Cheesy roasted cauliflower. Cheesy tuna casserole. Cheese biscuits. If it's ooey gooey, hot and melty, it's making me feel better just thinking about it.

And that just sounds.. cheesy. Okay, okay. Yes, bad joke. It's been one of those days, I'm afraid.

Want to read all the posts in the series so far? You can hop over to the Intro to start from the beginning. If you're enjoying this series, please feel free to use it on your own blog. I just ask that you blog ethically and cite your sources, and maybe hop over to my Facebookpage and let me know, so that we can all follow along! Have a great day, everyone!

Of Bucket Lists and Travel - Day 29

After a short break thanks to a migraine, I'm back and ready to swing through the home stretch of this blog challenge. I've done the top of my bucket list already, so let's talk travel and where I've been.

I haven't done much travel.

At least, not the kind of travel that is anything to write home about. The list of places I want to go is longer now than when I was a teenager with all kinds of bright hopes of seeing the world.

I've been to Mexico. Nowhere fancy, Tecate and Nogales; border towns that don't have much to offer except shopping and lots of dirt. I visited Tecate way back in high school for a church youth missions trip, where we helped build some new housing at a local orphanage. I was struck by two things: How little the locals had, and how content they seemed to be with what they had.

Nogales on the other hand, is totally a border and market town. Thousands of people stream in and out of Nogales daily, on foot and in cars. Americans go to buy pottery and medicines, Mexicans come through, looking for trade and work.

I grew up in central California, so I've been all over that state: Yosemite, Big Trees, Monterey, San Diego, San Francisco, all the touristy places. My all time favorite though, if I absolutely must be in California (no offense to those in Cali, but it's not a place I like to visit, for personal reasons, nothing to do with your state, I promise), I prefer to go to Morrow Bay. Just, lots and lots of happy memories of that place.

I've also been to Missouri, South Carolina, Minnesota (does it count if you were too young to remember it?), Kansas, the Dakotas, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Arizona and Washington. I've lived in the latter two, and feel so very much at home in Washington. Especially here by the ocean, I have never, ever felt like "home" the way I do in our little seaside town.

Feeling my way though this blog post, I'm thinking that I'm not much of a travel writer, though if you were to ask me specific questions about places I would recommend here in Washington to visit, I could probably talk your ear off. I've lived in Washington twice, and I think that they'd have to pry my cold, dead body over the state line if anyone told me that I needed to move somewhere else, This is my home. And here I will stay.

Until next time, Live large, Love much, Laugh often.

Want to read all the posts in the series so far? You can hop over to the Intro to start from the beginning. If you're enjoying this series, please feel free to use it on your own blog. I just ask that you blog ethically and cite your sources, and maybe hop over to my Facebookpage and let me know, so that we can all follow along! Have a great day, everyone!

The Last Time I Cried & What I'm Looking Forward To - Day 28

Whoa... two topics that I either haven't written about, or that I can stand to write about again. How about that? Totally unexpected for this late in the series, but these two are intertwined for me at the moment, so here goes: 

I cried last night. 

Not a little, either. Last night, really hit me hard. I killed someone. Two people, actually, and it broke my heart to do it, even though I knew it was coming. 

Well, now that I have your attention, I suppose I should probably explain myself a little better. These two people? They only exist in my computer. They are, well were, characters in a book I'm writing. One was expected, she was old, and needed to die to make room for the things that push my protagonist to move forward toward her destiny. I expected her to die. I planned for her to die. And yet, it totally caught me off guard how deeply affected I was by her death. The second character that died was nameless, faceless, and she may get revived in the revision of the story. I wasn't happy with how that scene came out in the drafting, so who knows. That's the beauty of being a writer: You can make those changes. Usually. 

I've been trying to honor my commitment to writing for 1 hour a day. Every day.

I'm doing the NaNoWriMo challenge in November, and since I have two solid story ideas, I figured I'd use one to get into the habit of writing, and start finding what does and what does not work for me when it comes to writing. I'm reverse engineering this particular story; rather than developing the characters and setting and all that before drafting, I'm drafting the story, and going back and making notes about my main characters as I go. It's not easy work doing it this way, but I only have about 6 weeks left to get this drafted before my focus fully gets turned to the book I am writing for NaNo. That book is getting done in the "proper" way: I'm developing characters and settings and plots and archetypes before writing. 

Now, there's really no wrong way to write a book, I'm told, other than to not write the book that's in your head. Give yourself permission to write badly, just to get the idea down on paper. You can always go back and edit later. And you won't have anything to edit if you don't write in the first place.

So, this idea of writing badly, led to my tears last night. 

I spent 1 hour writing, probably looking a bit like a mad woman, pounding away at my keys, moving music into playlists as I went (I like to write to music, so I'm building playlists for the writing of both these books), and knocked out about 2,000 words in that 60 minutes. I have my work single spaced, so that comes out roughly to 5 pages of text. I think, just based on how I felt after writing it, that about half of that will get cut in the revision process. But I wrote. I honored my need to write, and did it.

Nothing sucks for a new writer nearly as much as spending an hour writing crap and killing off a loved character all in one night. I had to cry. I needed to purge the crappy feeling. I cried on my writing buddy's shoulder and gave myself permission to let it go. Tonight, I'll write again, and keep my protagonist moving towards her destiny. I'll work on my characters for the NaNo Book, and start shifting my focus just a bit towards their story.

Which brings me to what I'm looking forward to.

I'm looking forward to NaNo. I'm looking forward to write-ins with my buddy at her place in SecondLife. I'm looking forward to holding a finished manuscript in my hands; a story that I pulled out of my head and gave life to on paper.

That said, I'm also a little scared of it. My writing buddy and mentor, Allie McCormack, has encouraged me to submit my NaNo book for a competition that takes place in the months immediately after NaNo, which means getting that book revised, edited and ready for public consumption in just under 5 weeks (throw Christmas holidays in there, too, just for kicks and giggles). 

Her faith in me scares the hell out of me. My husband totally supports this idea. 

But Allie is right: It's motivation. If I commit to it, and pay to enter, then I have a really big reason to see it through. Even if I don't win, my book has been put out there, and that's not something I've ever done.

This whole year has been full of stuff I never thought I could actually do. I never thought I could get my craft business off the ground, and here I am, setting up an online store. 

I never thought I would find a good Reiki teacher that I could afford, and yet, today, I received my Reiki First Degree certification from my Reiki master/teacher, Elle North.

I never, ever thought I would see my dream of owning a bookstore materialize, and yet... Our online shop is open and doing business, with plans coming together for a physical store-front in the next 2 years.

I started this year out with a bunch of dreams that felt like a really far reach. And yet, here I am, standing near the end of the year with so much coming together that it drives me to tears sometimes. 

I don't think we would ever have been given the gift of dreaming, if our dreams were out of reach. So dream big, darling. Dream Big.

Oh, and if you are curious about this NaNoWriMo thing, check it out. If you're brave enough to write 50,000 words in a month, sign up, and grab me as your first writing buddy (JennBradshaw is my user name). If you're curious, but not sure you're ready this year, join me on my Sage Wolfsong Creations Facebook page, and let me know you want to be my cheerleader. I'd love to have you! If you happen to be in SecondLife, look up our NaNoWriMo Obsession group, and join us for write-ins, sharing, feedback and mutual cheering on. 

If you're enjoying this series, please hop over to Facebook and let me know! Or, you know, you could just drop a comment below. If you've missed any posts, you can skip back to the Intro and read from there.

Are you a blogger that's flailing for content and need a little break from your normal topics? Or perhaps you're just getting started, and would like to populate your blog with some great posts that help readers get to know you? Feel free to snag this challenge and run with it. Just... do so ethically, please. Cite your sources, And then, pop over to that Facebook page and let us all know you're doing the challenge so we can follow you, too!

What Makes me Feel Better/Favorite Recipe - Day 27

Okay..  yes, yes. I know. I skipped day 26. Well, it was another day of duplicates: My 5 Favorite Blogs and an Old Photo of Me. Been there, done that, not that long ago, so... I've linked to them if you missed those, and am moving on to day 27, which includes what makes me feel better always and my favorite recipe.

So, let's tackle topic #1: What always makes me feel better?

In a single word?

Walking. Walking is my go-to cure for boredom, depression, fatigue, writer's block, and general spiritual uplifting.

But for those that haven't been following me for a while: This year has been painfully tough on me in this area. I developed problems with my feet (we still don't fully know what's happening) that make walking really, really difficult. I might be enjoying a wonderful walk to the beach, and my heels will suddenly lock up and feel like someone has stuck a knife in the back of my foot. Both feet, often.

I've been doing physical therapy all summer, and have made tremendous progress, but it's been 3 steps forward, 2 steps back all the way. A few weeks ago, we were looking at discharge from PT, because I was doing so well. That same visit, the tendons in one ankle went kaput, swelled up, stopped working and I was in OMG-I'm-dying pain.

Thanks to some great, quick action by my therapist and his assistant, I was able to hobble home (we don't have a car, and the bus system out here isn't the most reliable, not to mention that the therapist's office is only a few blocks from our place), ice it some more, and take a little something for pain.

It's been about three weeks now since that, and I still haven't been able to walk much further than the post office, but I'm getting there. And that's what really matters to me. I can still get out and walk a bit every day, which clears my head for writing and creating. Hopefully, I'll soon be able to get to the beach so I can sit down there and write, or at least record thoughts and scenes for the books I'm working on.

So... ya'll want a recipe that I absolutely love, huh?

Cheese biscuits.

I know, that sounds deceptively simple, but this is my go-to comfort food. Easy to make, and it brings back memories of Grandma's kitchen, as she used to make this when she just wasn't up to cooking.

Grab a pie pan, 2 cans of ready-made biscuits, and a cup of grated cheese. 

Preheat your oven to 375, and grease the pie pan. Open your cans of biscuits and lay them in the pan, overlapping slightly in a ring, with the left-over 3 or 4 in an overlapped clover pattern in the center. Cover with cheese, and pop it in the oven for about 25 minutes.

They come out super yummy, easily come apart and are great with or without butter. We've also slipped pepperoni slices in between the biscuits and added a little garlic salt to the top of the cheese for a pizza-type thing, but that's entirely optional.

That's it for today. 

If you're enjoying this series, please hop over to Facebook and let me know! Or, you know, you could just drop a comment below. If you've missed any posts, you can skip back to the Intro and read from there.

Are you a blogger that's flailing for content and need a little break from your normal topics? Or perhaps you're just getting started, and would like to populate your blog with some great posts that help readers get to know you? Feel free to snag this challenge and run with it. Just... do so ethically, please. Cite your sources, And then, pop over to that Facebook page and let us all know you're doing the challenge so we can follow you, too!

Best Physical Feature and My 5 Favorite Blogs - Day 25

I think I can safely say that I am at that point where I will just be glad to finish this challenge. Understand, I have totally enjoyed writing and exploring these prompts with you, my reader, but the duplication is starting to annoy just a little bit.

So, one list I've been working from says to write about my best physical feature. I hate, hate, writing about this. Yes, I have some body-image issues that I'm working on, and for today, I'm going to slink out of this in favor of getting something actually done today. Ha! But you can fly over here and read my post for Day 10 for yourself.

Let's see. Can I entice you towards some really awesome blogs that I enjoy reading? Here's my Top Five list of favorite blogs that I read pretty regularly (I don't do many things truly regularly, as things are constantly changing in my life, but these have endured those changes for a while now, and they are what I'm currently following as regularly as I get).

1. Daniela Uslan - Lots of good articles on blogging; follow her on Facebook in her blogging group to connect with other bloggers

2. Hibiscus Moon - Crystals, crystal healing, crystal science. She does most of her blogs on Youtube now (subscribe for some really awesome content!) and through her newsletter that arrives, on average, once or twice a week. More often when she's getting ready to kick off another round of her Crystal Healers cource twice a year. I've been following Hibiscus for almost 7 years now. Love her stuff.
3. Elle North -  Tired of me crying the wonders of this amazing intuitive/healer/yogini/sage woman? Check out her deep insights on her blog, and maybe snag a course or two! Absolutely adore this woman's energy.
4. Randy Gage - Okay... so I don't actually read his blog regularly, but I do follow his weekly'ish video posts on Youtube. Great, rich content in short (about 5 minutes). fun videos.
5. NaNo - This is a fairly recent add to my list of regularly followed blogs. Why? Because I took on the crazy notion that I can write 50,000 words in a month. NaNoWriMo is a huge writing challenge in the month of November. I've been getting warmed up and doing some practice writing sessions, which I blog about on my Sage Wolfsong Creations blog. Really fun stuff, but as a first time writer, I have a lot of moments when I question my sanity in adding this project to my already-pretty-crazy schedule.

That's it for today. If you're enjoying this series, please hop over to Facebook and let me know! Or, you know, you could just drop a comment below. If you've missed any posts, you can skip back to the Intro and read from there.

Are you a blogger that's flailing for content and need a little break from your normal topics? Or perhaps you're just getting started, and would like to populate your blog with some great posts that help readers get to know you? Feel free to snag this challenge and run with it. Just... do so ethically, please. Cite your sources, And then, pop over to that Facebook page and let us all know you're doing the challenge so we can follow you, too!

Fav Childhood Book and Difficult Times in my Life - Day 24

Okay, I gotta admit. Duplicates annoy me most of the time, but when it means catching up on a project that I wanted to finish 2 months ago, I can deal with them.

Day 24 is supposed to be my favorite childhood book and a difficult time in my life. They're already done, so I'll just leave links here for you to go read that which attracts you the most.











 Muah. Love ya, darling readers. Until next time!

Challenge Day 23: Dream Job and Pet Peeves

So.. when working from two different lists, I end up with duplicates, and Day 23 is one of those, so I'll link up the previous posts that address these two topics: My Dream Job and Pet Peeves.

So much fun! Until next time!

Favorite Music & Best Things: Blog Challenge Day 22

In the home stretch, almost ready to sprint for the finish! Today, we're talking my 10 favorite songs and the Best Thing to Happen This Year. I love it when things are all rainbows and sparklies!

I love music.

Seriously love music. Have been having a lusty affair with it since I can remember, thanks to my mom and her love of music.

So, get your Amazon music, your Pandora, your Spotify, your iTunes.. whatever floats your boat, and check out these favorite songs. I've given links to Amazon's digital music for each song. [disclaimer: my favorite music changes regularly, so these are as of this writing. What I'm listening to in a month or a year could be very, very different.]

1. Firebirds Child by S.J. Tucker
2. Mo Ghile Maer by Celtic Woman
3. Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield
4. Pachelbel's Canon in D
5. The Mummer's Dance by Loreena McKennit
6. The Mystic's Dream by Loreena McKennit
7. Let It Go from the movie Frozen
8. Now We Are Free from the movie Gladiator
9. With or Without You by U2
10. Doum Doum by Carmine T. Guida


Yeah... that right there makes for a really interesting playlist, I know. But honestly? I don't usually throw them all together in one lump. But whenever I get a new music subscription, these are the songs that make it into my collection right off the bat. Favorites. All time.

Best thing to happen to me this year?

I'd have to say that the best thing to happen to me this year was all the crap I went through at the end of last year.

Heartbreak. Multiple times over.

Depression. Crippling. Debilitating. Not getting out of bed for days at a time. Not eating for no other reason than because absolutely nothing sound interesting enough to eat.

Saved on groceries in November and December, and I lost several pounds. But I also felt like crap all the damn time. So... Not such a great thing on the surface.

However, that dark time in my life led me to where I am right now.

All those hours in bed, I laid there and asked myself over and over and over: What is it that I want out of life, cause what I'm living isn't really living, and it doesn't feel good.

I asked until the answer felt right and felt complete. I wanted more time with my family. I wanted energy to get out and do stuff. I wanted to put myself out there creatively and send more out into the world. I wanted that financial security that I've been missing since I left my J.O.B.

And when January rolled around, I knew what I wanted out of the year. I've been working diligently towards that every day since. Even on the days I deem "off" days, or "vacation" days, I'm still working towards that, because taking care of me was part of that vision. My family and my business can't support me if I'm not taking care of me first.

The very best thing that's happened to me this year, was the depression that happened at the end of last year. Delusional? Maybe. Did I find a silver lining for the crappy dark clouds that filled my life the last two months of 2015? Absolutely.

If you ask me, it's the best damn thing to happen to me this year. The rest? It's all ingredients in the cake that I started making back in 2015. I'll put the icing on this baby in January of next year. Indeed.

Are you enjoying this series? If you'd like to read it all from the beginning, you can hop over to the Intro and read from there. If you have your own blog, and would like to use this challenge to get yourself rolling, or just take a break from whatever you regularly write about, please... by all means... use it! I just ask that you practice ethical blogging and credit your sources. And hop over to my Facebook page and let me know that you're doing the challenge yourself, so that I (and those on my page) can support and follow your writing!

Until next time: Live Large, Lovelies! Muah!

Something I Miss - Day 21

As we head into the home stretch, we'll probably have more of these duplicates. Today, we have "something I miss" and my 10 favorite foots, which I covered way back here on day 7.

Ever notice how freaking fast life zips by us? We get so hung up on the daily grind: get up, get dressed, put on your makeup, slam down breakfast and run out the door, grind out 8 hours (or more) at a J.O.B., fight traffic getting home, hurry through dinner, rush the kids to activities, zone out for an hour or two in front of the t.v. and then crash, hard, in bed (if you're lucky to have made it that far).

If you're lucky, you'll do this routine, with a few vacations, day after day after day for 40 or 50 years. Finally retiring to enjoy "the good life" with your spouse, kids, friends, grandkids... If you're one of the lucky ones. If not, you'll crash like an old workhorse that dies in his traces, dropping like a stone, spending the last few moments of your life thinking about all the things you still wanted to do but never got around to.

Or, you're one of the many, like me, who worked hard for 15 or 20 years, only to slowly degrade over a short period of time, your health something you're constantly reaching for, and finding more and more, every day, that it's further out of reach. Your blood pressure goes up, you get sick easily, you can't think anymore for the constant, horrible pain you're in every. passing. minute.

And then, you have to walk away from everything you've known, and kiss your financial security and work-life goodbye. You find yourself cut off from the world, barely making ends meet (if you're lucky and have some reserves) while you scramble through the exhausting process of getting help.

You start looking at those posts on social media about people on disability and state assistance in a different light. You are no longer on the bandwagon that lumps everyone into the "lazy" category for being out of work. You're not lazy, after all. You're just trying to survive and deal with the constant pain and fatigue that your life is now enveloped in. You just want to know that you'll have enough to cover rent and some food for your kid.

You're not taking vacations anymore-there's no money for getting away, and even if you could afford it, you don't have a job to get away from anymore, and there is no getting away from the constant pain and fatigue you live with.

You realize that your entire life has been redefined. No longer do you define yourself by your job skills, or the excellence with which you execute your job duties. No longer is your worth defined by your annual salary or your tax bracket. Now, your life is defined by the moments you can get past the pain just long enough to enjoy your daughter's kindergarten drawings and listen to the song she's made up for her writing assignment. You count time in doses of medication and how many days you have to feel up to going out to get your refills.

You don't worry about make up anymore, because you now spend an hour trying to get ready, and look "normal" enough to go to the post office. You've learned to mask the intense pain your life is soaked in now. "How are you doing today?" is no longer a blithely answered question; do I tell the truth, or pretend? And if I pretend long enough, will I have to explain to this person at some point that I really am not okay? You've learned, on a deep, personal level, what "invisible illnesses" really are.

And then, one day, you start dreaming again. You start looking at life through the lens of what you've lost, and what you wish you still had. Life has taken on a whole new meaning for you, and you see what you would be missing now, had you never lost all that other stuff. But on some other level, you miss the normality, the consistency of that old life.

There are days I really miss knowing what day of the week it is based on what's going on at work. I miss showing up, making the coffee, going through my day, planning for the weekend. I miss the regular paycheck that came more than once a month, and having money to put in savings and being able to buy clothes when we need them instead of having to plan 3 months in advance to buy a single pair of shoes.

I miss the security of having a job and the health to maintain that job. I came to grips with that last year, and decided that it was time to start slowly working towards some resolution to that situation. We homeschool our daughter, and that's helped somewhat with the regular routine that a job used to provide, but that doesn't pay the bills and allow for savings.

We've made a lot of progress toward some of our financial goals this year, but there's a long way to go yet. I might miss my old life at times, but then... I turn around, and look at what I do have instead of that, and I'm filled with overwhelming gratitude that I have all this other stuff in it's place.

How about you? What do you miss? Jump in the comments below and share, or hop over to the Facebook page to share. If you're a blogger, or thinking of starting a blog and want some fun topics to help you get going, feel free to use this challenge for yourself. I ask just two things if you do. First, use this material ethically - cite your sources, and share credit where credit is due. Second, let me know you're doing this challenge, too, so we can all share in your journey!

Enjoying this series? If you'd like to read this series from the beginning, hop over here to the Intro.

Until the next time, Live Large, Lovelies! Muah xoxoxo

Blog Challenge Day 20 - Where I want to be in 10 years & A Difficult Time in my Life.

We'll be two-thirds of the way through this challenge by the end of this post, so hang on, folks. This might be a little long'ish (blame my inner story-teller, okay?). Looking forward and backward today as I talk about where I want to be in 10 years and a difficult time in my life.

Let's talk tough, shall we (and save the feel-goods for the end)...

"Be kind - everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." (Ian McLaren) While your life may have been easier or more difficult than mine, the question relates specifically to a difficult time [for me] in my life, so I ask for a little space for this, dear reader.

My life hasn't been easy, for starters, but I could spend an entire book on that. Narrowing it down to a single, difficult time, is not easy, but I would pinpoint a few years ago, a trip to the hospital, and a serious health scare as the most difficult.

See, I get migraines. Not just a headache, but blinding, mind-bending, personality altering migraines. If you've never had one, well... Think of having a cold, the worst flu ever, a sinus infection and having your wisdom teeth pulled without anesthetic, all at the same time. Thinking hurts. Light hurts. Hearing your kids laugh... hurts.  Without medication to manage them, I get migraines daily.

Every. Single. Day. 

Most migraine medicines knock you out. Yes, there are a few out there that don't, but there are serious health risks (like serious fatigue and death) to taking those every single day. So, I'm on a medication to control them, and it works pretty well. I now get only 2 or 3 a month, versus 28-30 a month.

The first management medication I was on worked GREAT! For about 2 years. But because of that period when I was taking the short-acting migraine pills 3 or 4 times a day, every day, I would have these little periods of time where I'd just zone out. Poof. I'd be talking, and would just stop. Wasn't responding, couldn't move. My doc decided that these appeared to be a form of seizure, and since my migraine control med was also an anti-seizure medicine, she upped my dose very, very slightly while we waited for my neurology referral to go through and for my appointment to come up. 

The seizures got worse. 

My lovely little dog, Freedom, who had already taught himself to alert to my fibromyalgia flare ups and anxiety attacks, started learning to notice the seizures, and my doctor got more worried. I was still taking a much, much lower dose than even the lowest dose for seizures (the dose for migraines is a fraction of the dose for seizures), so she upped me to a slightly higher dose, and put in a call to the neurologist to get me seen sooner. 

The seizures got even worse.

I was no longer just freezing up. I was trembling. I couldn't talk after the episodes. They were getting substantially longer. But I was still a week away from my appointment. So, up went the dose to the minimum therapeutic dose for seizures. 

They got even worse.

The night before my neuro appointment, I ended up in the ER by ambulance. My seizures were happening every hour, and I was out for 10-15 minutes at a time. Since I was going to the neuro the next day for testing, the ER discharged me without doing any further tests, and I went home with my mom, instead of going home with my husband. At this point, hubby decided it was time to surrender me to someone with some actual medical training until we figured out what was going on. I'd lost about 10 pounds in this last week before my appointment, just from not being able to get through a meal, and from the severe shaking during each episode.

I never made it to my neuro appointment...

The entire trip into the city for my appointment is totally lost to me. I apparently spent most of the trip going from one seizure to another, and we ended up in the ER, then admitted from there for emergency tests. To this day, I can't remember exactly how many days I spent in the hospital, hooked up to machines measuring my brain activity. 

As out of it as I was, I still hadn't hit the bottom.

I had spent some of the weeks leading up to all this, discussing plans with my mom. We didn't know what was going on, and even though I'd been dealing with these migraines for almost 3 years, no one had bothered doing an MRI (mind you, every doc I saw wanted to know if one had been done), so there were still a lot of possibilities out there. When I say we were discussing plans, I'm talking things like burial and my youngest daughter's education, dealing with my ex and talking to my older kids; all that fun stuff that goes along with the "what if's". Hubby wouldn't go there with me, and I needed to make sure these things were worked out with someone.

And then, I hit bottom...

I'm guessing I'd been in the hospital for about a day and a half when I hit the scariest moment of my life (considering that I've had cancer biopsies twice and this scared me more.. that's saying something). 

My sister had come to visit with her little ones, as she was in the city for something else. My hubby was there with me, as was Mom. I'm pretty sure that Mom never left my bedside the whole time I was there, and I'm pretty sure she never even left to use the restroom (credit 40 years of practice as an RN). Hubby went home nightly, and he was looking pretty haggard, even though he pretended he was okay. Thankfully, our daughter was not there at this moment in my life. 

I woke up from a particularly nasty episode, and was clueless about where I was, when it was, and was truly confused about the people around me. When had my mom gotten so gray? And who was the guy standing beside her? And when the hell did my little sister grow up and have kids? I was missing 20 years of my life. 

Here's where I plug my two biggest heroes: my mom and my husband. They've always been my heroes, but this was a moment when they both stepped up and rose to the occasion. Neither freaked out, just talked quietly with me to help me reorient to the time and place, and over the next few hours, we managed to piece together parts of my life that were most important.

There is absolutely nothing worse than the feeling a mom has when she can't remember her husband or kids.

After a few days of tests it was decided that I do not in fact have epilepsy. And weeks later, we ruled out anything fatal via MRI. It was determined that the seizure-like episodes I have are an extreme form of anxiety attack, and that the migraine med I had been on became toxic in my system. Both are fairly easy fixes, though almost 5 years later, I still have episodes and we get through them. Meds were changed, and maintaining a low-stress lifestyle has cut them down drastically to every few months rather than every few minutes. I still have gaps in my memory, though no particular explanation for the memory loss can be found. I figure that I've got the important stuff sifted back out of the dim recesses, and the details of years of abuse can just stay lost in the dark.

It took me months to get fully back on my feet. As in, I had to use a walker to get around, because my body had gotten so weak from those weeks of wasted energy. I'd lost almost 40 pounds to the tremors and lack of eating (those had no problem finding their way back to me, by the way). 

Again, my husband and mom totally rocked in helping me meet my own goals for walking and being able to get around on my own. I still can't drive, but that's not a huge loss to me if I have any say in the matter.

What doesn't kill me makes me stronger...

I've been on a bit of a search in the years since that time in my life. And I've found a path that works well for me, even if not everyone in my life likes it. They're free to follow their own path, and I'll stay on mine, thank you very much.

My life has led me to look forward in the moments that I look up from "now" to plan where I'm going. So...

Where do I want to be in 10 years?

In our own home, with our own book shop, and my own Reiki practice. We've come a long way since my husband was discharged from the Army in 2007, and it's not been an easy road.

But all those difficult times in our life together has led us to a place of greater compassion for those with less, and a greater understanding of those with more. We've got a plan for where we want to be, including having our own home and business. 

In 10 years, I'd like to have written and published at least a few books, and have our physical book store open and thriving. I'll have completed my Reiki master level, and would love to see that aspect of my business thriving alongside our bookstore. And we'd like to have a little bit of land up in the mountains for when we retire, someday. Though, I'm not sure that I'll ever completely retire from writing and Reiki. Some thing are a life-long calling that shouldn't be ignored.

I'm headed there. Little by little, things are falling into place. And they will continue to do so, as long as I stay on target and focused on those things in front of me, not the things behind me. 

How about you? Where do you want to be in 10 years? Have those difficult moments in your life led you to who and where you are in this moment? Feel free to hop in the comments below and share, or jump over to my Facebook page and share them there. 

Are you enjoying this series? I sure am. I'm finding that I have to think a lot deeper than I do on an average day, and it's a great way to find my writer's voice here in the blog. If you'd like to read the whole series from the beginning, click over here and check out the Intro. You can grab the list from there if you'd like to do this for your own blog, I just ask that you practice ethically and cite your sources, please. Then head over to the Facebook page and let us all know that you're doing this challenge, too, so we can follow along!

Until next time, Live Large, Lovelies!