Saying "it's been a while" is a total understatement. I wasn't even sure I could still sign in here, but...I did, and here I am! I'm not sure what actually sparked the idea this morning to write, but I dropped my son off at school after studying all about adjectives and adverbs and proper sentence placement and well, somehow that took me here.
What a RIDE life has been these past three years. Has it really been three years? Yes, sadly yes, it has. The time frame seems so out of sorts when this blog was such a huge part of my life for so long. As life changes and seasons come and go, so do our interests, our passions, our ups and our downs.
One thing that has not changed is running - I am still running, I still participate in at least one runDisney event a year, and we still love Disney. We've taken a few cruises, and visit both Disneyland and Disney World as often as we can get away. I do enjoy documenting and sharing those trips over on Instagram, so if I'm not catching you there, you should go check it out!
My son just turned 9. Yes, NINE and he's in the 3rd grade.
Not long after returning home from Boston, I was asked to sit in a 3 year term on the school board at my son's school. It's been a great journey and oddly enough, my 3 year term has come to an end and this next meeting will be my last. To say it's a bittersweet feeling is accurate - I've enjoyed getting to know other community members better by serving on the board and I was able to serve with some members who I've known most of my life, as they also had a personal connection to our school. I'm going to enjoy the break but I will definitely miss it at the same time!
My mom fell ill sometime around 2021 and was ultimately diagnosed with ALS at the end of 2022. She didn't want to publicly speak about her diagnosis at the time (rightfully so), and I honored her wishes and didn't do so. She was a naturalist and one of the healthiest people I knew, so this diagnosis was completely random and out of the blue. They do not believe she had the familial ALS gene, so I haven't dived too much into genetic testing for myself. In a world filled with uncertainty, I can totally understand genetic testing in an instance like oncology - where early detection and prevention matters - and can save many, many lives. Sadly with ALS, there is zero cure, and any life saving measures/medications usually only extend a life by a few months or so. Would the knowledge of a suspected ALS gene help in any way? Maybe. But I know how my mind works - I'm a worrier and a fixer and would constantly be waiting for the shoe to drop. Life is meant to be lived, not sitting around worrying about the next thing. (And unfortunately, I can fall into that trap all too easily.)
Watching your loved one slowly die in front of you day by day, when you are rendered completely helpless is one of the worst things I've ever experienced in my life. As a nurse (I'm a fixer, remember?), I just couldn't grasp my mind around what was happening. I knew in my heart but wow...ALS literally sucks the entire life out of a person, and the only thing left working is their mind, their thoughts, and they are trapped in a body that has betrayed them. Zero cure? We have to do better.
Ultimately, my mom lost her battle with ALS in September of 2023.
After that, I spent the next year living in one of the darkest times of my life. It often felt like an uphill climb. Getting out of bed sometimes was a struggle. But still, I carried on because that's what you do. I smiled, I participated in things, I attended events, I continued working out and running, but inside, I felt like I was slowly being sucked into a black hole. It felt like I was swimming in the ocean, being taken over by waves, and only my nose would peek out occasionally for just enough air to keep me afloat. One foot in front of the other, one day at a time. Knowing this would get better, it just had to. I know grief is a process, and I definitely allowed myself to feel all those things in that first year. I knew I needed to get through them, so I could get "out" of them. Not "over them", just out. If you were around before all of this, you know I'm a sunshine and rainbows, glass half full kind of person, so living in that state of constant grief just wasn't going to cut it for me. It took about a year, but sometime around this past holiday season (our second without my mom), I finally felt it - the sun. It started slow at first, barely peeping through, just enough to show its warmth. Then the clouds began to lift and there was light. Light! I could finally sense it again and boy what an incredible feeling that was!!
Additionally, in the middle of all of this, my two little pups, my sweet little babies, also went home to the rainbow bridge. Pixie passed away in May of 2023 at the ripe old age of 16.5. Madalynn, my dog with 9 lives, surprised me and almost made it to 18 years old. She had kidney disease and in the end, she was on a special diet, fluids, and all the things. She had a good quality of life until she didn't, and we ultimately had to make the decision to say goodbye. They both lived very long and happy lives and neither Jason or I feel able to open our hearts to a new pup just yet. Having two elderly/sickly dogs at the same time, along with all I was dealing with my mom was quite traumatizing to say the least. I know I'll get there, but my heart is still healing.
Even through all of these awful times, I can honestly tell you that there were still happy moments, good times, and little glimmers - these things that kept me sane, kept me going, kept giving me hope, even when everything felt like it was crashing and burning around me.
If you haven't seen or read or heard about my ancestry findings, well, that will have to be another blog post in itself because WOW, that's a doozy! I'll give the cliff notes:
-My mom's dad was adopted in 1930.
-He always longed to know his birth family.
-He passed away in the year 2000, never having known.
-I took an ancestry test in the summer of 2023, "just to see".
-I was matched with a family in California.
-Turns out she was my grandfather's half sister (and 95 years old at the time, at that)!
-We spoke with both her and her daughter that very afternoon - this was summer of 2023, so my mom was still with us, and she was able to speak with them as well! What timing, right?
-Since that time, I've been opened to a whole SLEW of family I had no clue existed - there were 8 total siblings (including him) so if you can imagine the endless amount of cousins! What a discovery!!
The timing of all of this was beyond my comprehension. It was like a little kiss from heaven for my mom to be able to meet this new family before she passed away.
Since my mom's passing, my dad has gotten remarried. Her family is wonderful and we love them dearly. That also came with time. I had a friend put it into a good perspective for me - she definitely acknowledged my feelings of grief and loss, but she also helped me look at what I've gained - new family and new people who could love my family and Brayden as their own. That's exactly what it is, and I'm so grateful. They are all so kind and inclusive and their light and love at the time was like a little bandaid or another patch to my broken heart.
Right when I was at the rock bottom of my grief journey, my husband surprised me with one of the greatest and most incredible gifts of my life. Yes, I know we contributed to the Ticketmaster problem here, but his selflessness and the fact that he went out of his way to do this for me is just the most incredible gift. Knowing how much I wanted to go to the Eras Tour (can we say daily live streams, anyone?), he took an extra week of overtime (on his week off) to be able to provide a ticket for me and even accompanied me to New Orleans for a little "Swiftie weekend".
Yes, I went to the concert by myself.
Yes, it was incredible.
Yes, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
I still cry just thinking about it all. To this day and forever, that weekend will remain in the top 5 experiences of my life. Not only was the concert incredible, I saw Gracie Abrams open, Taylor Swift in concert, and Sabrina Carpenter as a surprise guest. Pretty sure my little Swiftie heart got to experience the ultimate trifecta and Jason's self-less gift will always mean so much to me.
After Boston, I was determined to run one more marathon (for a total of 8) to round out my marathon career. With Boston, I only had 6 weeks to get prepared - I was "half ready" but had to throw together several long runs in a short time to get there. I crossed that finish line but it wasn't as great of a finish as I'd hoped. I knew if I trained in a proper time frame, I could do another and so, I ran Goofy one more time. It was so much fun and I was right - with the proper amount of training, marathons don't have to be so painful! Hah! As of right now, I've officially retired from the full marathon distance.
Since then, I've run a several half marathons, some 10K's, maybe a 5K or two, I can't remember! My goal is to always keep at least one half marathon on the books per year as long as I am physically able to do so, then everything else is just lagniappe!
My sister in law and I ran the Crescent City Classic in New Orleans last year. I ran with Team Gleason, a non-profit that provides aide to patients diagnosed with ALS. If you aren't familiar with Steve Gleason's story and the hope he's brought to New Orleans, go check it out. It's pretty incredible to say the least.
It snowed here, y'all. I couldn't quite believe it myself. In my 42 years of living in Southwest Louisiana, it actually snowed enough to accumulate (like a lot!). It even snowed enough for us to build a snowman, have snowball fights, and play out in it all again the next day. My son is a little junior meteorologist and boy did he have the time of his life!
Jason and I celebrated our 18th anniversary this week. I can't believe it's been that long - it literally feels like no time at all yet a whole lifetime at the same time!
And so here we are, back to today.
Am I a changed person since all of this? Absolutely. But isn't that what this life is all about? Learning to navigate and adapt as life continues to do its thing? All we can do is make sure we come out stronger, a better person, and make sure our next chapter is one worth reading.
Much love, my friends. Until we meet again. <3
