" 'Just wait, kiddo, it gets better'. The core lesson Stephen left with me was this: With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable." Michael J. Fox - No Time Like the Future
I just finished Michael J. Fox's new book. I have always appreciated him as an actor and as an author. I read his other books, 'Lucky Man' and 'Always Looking Up' before I was sick. If you have a chronic and progressive illness, this latest one is a brutally honest look at the specific torture and trials of long term illness on an optimistic soul. There are portions of this book that resonated so deeply within me. What do you do when you are a hopeaholic and you have an incurable illness?
In his case, he started a foundation and has raised a billion dollars in research dollars to find a cure and yet so much of the book is him looking at where he feels he has failed. He had an "annus horribilus" in 2018. It covers the struggle of trying to recover from it and put himself back together physically, mentally, and spiritually. How to come to terms with who he is in his current circumstances. I can relate.
My experience is that recovery is a 'one day at a time' deal - and it doesn't matter what you are trying to recover from. On any given day, I may be grappling with a symptom of my illness, the loss of some of the most important people in my life and of what I thought my life would be. Having to let go of the dreams that I had of the future. There are days that my kids treat me like they used to treat my mother - as if I am totally technically inept - and there are days that I am. I should be pleased that they are so gentle and sympathetic in their approach to helping me. Instead I am devastated that they no longer consider me to be the smart and capable woman that I once was. What to do when your entire self identity is no longer who you are?
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. Time to make new plans and find new dreams. A big part of this is acceptance and gratitude. I struggle more with acceptance than gratitude. There is always something to be grateful for. Accepting my new reality, the unpredictability of symptoms and my limitations is so much harder. So you have to break it down into manageable chunks. I can do this for a day or for an hour. I can think about all of the things that I do have rather than what I do not. I can ask for help - even when my pride is screaming that I should be able to do something myself. I don't know what God's plan is and I struggle to believe that it is going to get better and that I am going to find that something I thought was a curse is a blessing.
At the beginning of this blog, I talked a lot about my youngest son going off to college. I was terrified of how he would handle it and how I would handle it. He thrived his first semester. It is the happiest and most fulfilled I have ever seen him. He has made some friends and his mind is challenged which he loves.
Grant and I have remembered what it was like before the boys arrived and how much we enjoy being in each other's company. I am regularly surprised that I clean the kitchen and when I return - it is still clean. My fears were all unfounded. I put myself mentally through the wringer and nothing I worried about happened. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I have to hold on to this experience. I have a friend who used to shout 'The Future is Friendly". As a hopeaholic, I hope that it is....