As much as I love summer for it’s long days, warm weather, vacation time and wearing sandals for any occasion. I must admit there is something about the arrival of autumn that makes me feel happy, and not just because school is back on, and so are pumpkin spice lattes.
Much like the beeping of my smoke detector tells me its time to replace the battery, the changing of the seasons, also reminds me to stop and think about all that I have to be grateful for in my life.
The last few years have been very difficult. I watched my father go from living independently in 2016, to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and moving into long term care then passing away July 2019. I had my own health scare and surgery in 2017, both my dogs died within 5 days of one another in May 2018 and my marriage finally fell apart in July 2018.
Along comes 2020, and now my mother faces rapidly advancing vascular dementia, and we have the world of Covid-19. Working remotely, increased social isolation and fear about sending my child back to school after months at home. Unbelievable right?
Talk about a crazy few years. To use an old cliché, when it rains it definitely pours. There are times when I think it’s a bloody miracle I’m still trudging along, but yet here I am still standing.
Whenever I have to face a lot of challenges and turmoil, I think to myself that it’s life’s way of giving me a reminder that change can be good, even when the circumstances surrounding it are completely horrendous.
In the past, when I’ve gone through something difficult, making it to the other side brought with it a sense of satisfaction, especially when I realized I was stronger than I thought I was, and that was pretty empowering. Now that doesn’t mean you will get through everything unscathed, or that situations won’t impact you profoundly. I just find at the end of the day there is always going to be that next event in your life that’s scary, or will leave you heartbroken, but when you truly believe you can get through it, you will feel lighter and learn something about yourself along the way.