11 Things I Did During March The Lion

I didn’t know I needed a break from routine blogging in March until one and then two weeks passed without me sitting down to write. Being immersed in the #spoonie world has many and priceless positive benefits (empathy, helping, learning), but can also wear me down. I’ve felt better than usual on some days (not on “weather days” or when in a flare, duh!), so in March I was able to…

1. Spend more time in the backyard and outside the house with my daughters and Husband.
2. Volunteer at our local farm. It caused a huge, rest-of-the-day flare yet it was the happiest I’ve been due to ME and only ME in over a year. I’m going again next week and will continue to until it gets too hot. Then I’ll switch to an indoor cat rescue.
3. Attend a meeting at our daughters’ school where I noted a look of shock from many because I’ve gone from being a regular presence to a rare bird.
4. Recognize and stop unhelpful or negative noise.
5. Begin to better organize our house with the help of our family’s Mary Poppins, starting with donating many bags of toys and books my daughters have outgrown.
6. Cry it out.
7. Not just listen to my daughters’ worries about my health, but take further action regarding their feelings. No children should be scared their mom is dying EVERY week. Or live with worry they can’t name, or not want to leave the house because of understandable separation anxiety.
8. Get a haircut. The last time I needed one I cut my hair myself because I was overloaded with appointments. (For non-spoonies reading, this tells you so much about what living with fibro is really like). I have many skills: cutting hair is sooo not one of them, but I didn’t care. Let’s just say my hair needed to be cut shorter than I like it to fix my self-cut. Je regrette rien.
9. Garden! I cleared room for our flourishing milkweed plant to grow wider. This season’s first Monarch caterpillars are already chomping it to pieces! I planted a second butterfly garden. I prefer perennials because they’re less work, but added some annuals for the task itself. Getting natural Vitamin D (though I have to be careful as melanoma runs in my family), and dirt under my nails feeds my emotional health. The benefits help me through tough days.
10. My favorite garden store is also home to dozens of animals, from a tortoise to sheep. I find joy when I wander the rows and pet a friendly rabbit or tomcat, and I leave with free, fresh-laid chicken eggs that my daughters chow down on more than any other savory food. They beg me to go to the store for more eggs again soon! Buying extra herbs and plants is much easier for the fibro life than caring for our own backyard chicken family so I’m happy to say yes, especially living part of the year with the threat of evacuating for hurricanes…evacuating with fibro and two kids plus a cat seems like plenty!
11. I finally called a local disability lawyer. Because I’ve been a stay-at-home parent (though I would’ve gone back to work sooner if chronic pain hadn’t begun in January 2016), I’m not eligible for disability. I assumed as much from reading about it, but picking up the phone for that difficult, reconfirming call was months in the making. I hope to be able to earn enough consistently in the future to then qualify. I believe I will be able to. Just not yet.

What have you done that was new or different lately? Anything hard or that scared you? Anything that made you feel like “the old” YOU? Something fun?

 

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