Today I walked over 13,000 steps. My daily goal is currently at 7,000. There’s a nice park near my house that has a walking path around a lake. It’s close enough that I can walk my dog (Gideon, you remember him from the first post, right?!) there, around the lake and back home in about 4,000 steps. Typically, we do this each morning and most evenings as well. This park has become a sanctuary of sorts for me. There are benches and picnic tables everywhere. I could go on, but that’s not what this post is about.

I’ve been going through some struggles lately, more so than usual. Before anyone gets up in arms about how we are ALL going through stuff I kinda feel like I’ve been hit pretty hard. Here’s a quick rundown since the beginning of 2019 for some context, these are the “highlights”:

• Jan 2019 – my purse gets stolen out of the front seat of my car while I’m loading groceries at Aldi (biggest losses here were my cell phone and night guard for my TMJ)
• Oct 2019 – I get into a multi-car collision where my car ends up being totaled right after purchasing a ton of groceries and the guy who hit me (then I hit the person in front of me and so on) comes up to my car yelling at me that it was all my fault because my dog was in the car (huh?, still haven’t figured that one out). And this was while I was on the phone with 911 because I was hurt (got to have my first ambulance ride – yay?)
• November 2020 – officially diagnosed as Type 2 Diabetic (my A1C was 12.75 – that’s almost the highest it goes- uh…face palm)
• Jan 2020 – had a nervous breakdown while picking up lunch for our newest employee and couldn’t go back into the office to enjoy it with my whole team (I was the office manager for my cousin’s basement waterproofing company and was severely burnt out at this point…hence the nervous breakdown. Still no idea what triggered it, not that it really matters.
• March 2020 – watched my best friend have a stroke (did NOT know that what was happening at the time) in the ER (fun fact: met his mom for the first time right before it happened). Next day went to the hospital expecting everything to be fine as the ER doc was saying at first it was a seizure, he was not okay and had not been conscious since being in the ER. Got to be there with his mom (just me and her) as she had to decide to remove part of his skull so he could keep breathing. Less than a week later IL was put under a stay-at-home order for Covid.
• May 2020 – had some ridiculous amount of rain (9 inches I think over a 4 day period). The business exploded with activity and we intook over 3,000 calls in a weekend filling up 4 VM boxes (fun fact: ours held 600 minutes which is about 10 hours of info to listen to). This does not include the plethora of other ways people could get a hold of us; Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, email, website form, and referrals to name a few.
• June 2020 – my bestie passed away
• February 2021 – my cousin let me go from the company saying he wanted me to focus on getting and staying healthy because he could see how everything I was doing for him was killing me (this sounds nice, but it’s not – just trust me. One day when I’m up to telling that tale I’ll share all the gory details). He made me promises to help and has since reneged and we are no longer in touch.

Let’s just say that it’s been a lot including all the Covid related stuff. When I say all this to someone in person I would normally shrug my shoulders and act like it’s no big deal. But it is.

It’s a HUGE deal.

Problem (one of them anyway) is I’ve been removing myself from the emotion of these stories. I tell them like they are and know that they are kinda crazy and intense things to happen to someone. I think that so much of this happened in the span of just over 2 years is INSANE. Seriously, insane when you really think about it.

I have spent the last year or so trying to process my emotions and move forward. Yet, every time I feel like I have my footing something else will happen. It might be a small thing, but with all the trauma my trigger is quite sensitive.

I started doing Yoga again on a regular basis and I walk a lot. Both of these things really help me. They help me get rid of some of the excess energy and attempt to process all the things. Don’t worry, I’m in therapy too which is all due to my brother, A. I messaged him one day saying that I just didn’t know what to do anymore and I was considering checking myself into the hospital. He texted me a number and said call them. I had no idea what that number he had sent to me was but feeling desperate I called. Turns out it was the suicide prevention hotline. At that moment I was not specifically suicidal, however it was extraordinarily helpful. And he explained to me later it was the only thing he could think of for someone who might know how to help.

For my 40th birthday I gifted myself a visit to a psychic. I had seen the same one when I was getting close to turning 30 and it was fun. Plus, what did I have to lose at this point? Did I mention I’m also single and have been trying to date during this whole pandemic thing because I made a promise to myself to start trying again by March of 2020? I was so proud of myself for starting in February, thinking I had finally followed through on a promise to myself and I even managed to get it done early (yay me!). Anyway, back to the psychic. One of the things that she told me was I was coming out of a period of being stuck and that what was happening was I would make some forward progress, but then feel stuck again. The way she explained it was that I had been stuck for so long that as I tried to take steps forward my feet were still tacky and so what felt like being stuck again was just the left over residue from that long period of stuckness. One thing she recommended was to go and stand in the grass barefoot and feel my energy going into the Earth, then to step over a little and allow the Earth to feed its energy to me.

 

So, I tried this. And at first it felt weird. Then it felt good. The more I did it the better I felt. The affects were not super long lasting, but they would help take the edge off. And as I’ve gone deeper into my Yoga journey I came across The Yoga Institute on YouTube. One of the videos they have posted talked about getting grounded in a very similar way, but by walking barefoot in the grass and allowing the Earth to absorb your energy and assist you with being more grounded. I don’t do this every day, but on days where I just feel like more things are not going my way than are or I feel especially scattered it’s something I can do. I’m by no means an expert on this, I just know how I feel when I do this. I’ve definitely done weirder things and with no results.

But this, walking in the grass and not only feeling the Earth beneath my feet, the blades of grass tickle my toes and how some spots are soft and bouncy, and others are rock hard are all so representative of life. The ups and downs and how things are similar in some aspects and so very different in others.

Tonight, we walked, we rested and then we walked again. There are a lot of geese at this park of mine, so I try to be aware of where I’m attempting to walk. Tonight, tonight I walked about half of the lake in the grass. Then we took the long way home.