Yesterday I was writing this blog, somehow I published it without the content, so here it is retitled and with content if all goes as planned.
Today is May 21, we are one month away from the longest day of the year. One month away from our days becoming shorter once again. Its hard to wrap my head around that. It doesn’t feel like anyone is ready to have our days getting shorter, where is the time going. With no concept of time anymore, and short term memory mostly gone, what did I do yesterday or last week?
I don’t normally think to much or worry about those things, but every once in a while a date or day will give me a reason to pause and think about it. Today was one of those days waking up looking at my clock and the date May 21st. As I count down to June 21st, its a day of great significance for me, you know how we have those dates that are forever etched in our minds, for most things like their wedding date, the date the kids were born, the day we lost someone important to us, those kind of things. June 21st, is one of those dates for me, actually June is filled with important dates for me. June, 7th, my wedding anniversary, June 9th, the day my mom passed away, June 12 th day my husband passed away, June 21st, the longest day of the year, and the day of my husbands funeral. So dates can be significant for us.
For many June 21st, doesn’t really give way to much thought, but today I was thinking about it in a different sort of concept, this perhaps because I have had a lot of reasons of late to think about how grateful I am how fortunate I am, that because of my dementia, because of having to learn to slow down, to look for the joy, live in the moment, the very moment I am in, it has allowed for a lot of wonderful things to come into my life. Making room for some of the most kind people, people with good energy, caring people to enter my life. Not to take anything away from some very wonderful people I have had the pleasure of knowing and having friendships with over the years, I truly have been blessed in that regard. But there was also toxic, negative energy in my world, and removing it, not allowing negative energy into my world as much as possible, has created space for some great energy, people and things to find their way to me.
The other reason I was looking and thinking about June 21st, was the conversations around how many people are feeling like they are in some sort of strange place, trying to navigate coming out of the pandemic, realizing how much it changed or shifted a lot of whats importance and whats not. Trying to figure out how they want to move forward. Its like a reset button was hit, but no one has a manual, surrounded by so much uncertainty,. Each person has to navigate and figure out the whats next, what they want their lives to look like and be, and its uncomfortable. When you’ve thought you had your life planned out, like you were in control, and all of a sudden, we aren’t, its a very uncomfortable place to be. And I wonder why we feel the need to know, to plan so completely, we over book ourselves, we allow no time to just be, children are booked into so many things, no time to just be, so creativity can surface and flourish. Busy, busy busy, so we can’t and don’t listen to that inner voice. Often times its because in the quiet the things we mostly want to suppress find there way to the surface. Yet if we listen, if we look at those things, things that hurt, things that don’t feel good, we can then take the power out of them, We then make room for things that are positive. These are all things I learnt through my years of learning to live with my dementia.
I know people are struggling to find their way through all that has and is happening, but I hope everyone knows its ok to not make decisions, its ok to sit back, the decision will come when the time is right and will then likely be the right decision. Its ok to just let life unfold, doing nothing is sometimes doing everything. Maybe 2022, is about just being, maybe as we towards the longest day, we all need to exhale, to just to breathe for the rest of the year.
I no longer make decisions other than for today, for this moment. I do what brings me joy, I protect my space, my energy, no longer allowing the negative energy in, staying away from things or people who feel toxic. More protective of my little world, grateful for all that it still is, grateful for this self awakening my dementia brought to me. Not to say that living with this illness isn’t hard it is, but accepting the hard, accepting the limitations, not letting them get in the way of the joy that can be found, finding those new ways to live, perhaps that the silver lining that I was given, perhaps its allowing me to manage through the last few years and this time we are in now.
so know a day late in publishing this blog, I am off the spend the day in nature exploring, breathing and just being.
Chrissy's Journey 