“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Gandhi

1. Believe Life Is Not to Be Taken Lightly

One thing that stands my life apart is the fact that I truly care about what is happening in other people’s lives. It is what I am known for at work. When I first returned to nursing, my knowledge was way behind everyone else’s (I thought). But one of my co-workers told me that if she was admitted to the hospital, she would want me as her nurse. She told me that I never missed a thing.

But I soon realized that I could not ‘fix’ people, they had to be involved in the decisions, they had to want to be well. One important thing I learned that I need to pass on to you. I cannot live your life for you.

I tend to want to let others make my decisions for me. There is no way that will ever work. We are given our own unique mind and creative ways of thinking. We cannot let someone else take charge of that.

Many other people care, I am only one of them. You are unique and have your own stories.

2. Life Always Gives a Choice

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.”

Albert Einstein

• Learn from healthcare that disease seldom takes people down the same path.
• Learn that you can listen to your own voice and make health-care decisions.
• You have control over where your life will take you.
• You can choose to turn your life around and never give up.
• Only you can fix things that do not work for you in your life.
• Find someone to stand beside you.
• I can share my stories, my lessons, but you can choose to be inspired to change your life.

 My birth family was awesome. I was the middle child, my family was in middle society, we always had what we needed. We enjoyed taking vacations many years, watched our parents fight most of the time, and we were protected from most situations. Yes, for growing up in the 50’s – 60’s, we were a normal family. We were even privileged to live in a small thriving tourist town. (The good and bad of it).

In the growing up process, I soon ventured into a career. I achieved my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. I am very proud of that accomplishment. I entered the college, which evolved into a university before I graduated, when I was 17. I was not that smart; I was just the youngest in my class. Because I was always the youngest in my class, I had to overcome many problems growing up. There were parts of that experience I very much liked, but it was a very difficult life for me. I mostly kept to myself and devoted my time to reading books.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Mark Twain

3. Take Control. Turn Around Traumatic Life Events.

It does not help to stay stuck in any unhealthy situation in life. It could be physical disease, emotions, or mental or spiritual health. In my life stories, I take the dramatic events I experienced and turn them around.

Those very experiences have taught me how:

• to love life,
• to appreciate where I have been and
• to know I can have a better future because of the character I learned by going through them.

Traumatic events cannot be processed well:

• if I squash them,
• try to forget them,
• or lie to myself about them.

It is not what we experience that harms or benefits us. It is how we perceive them. * That is why I can take childhood traumas and learn to let go of their attachment. It is why I can rejoice in raising several Asperger members of my family and learn to delight in their uniqueness. Believe me, that is hard when your heart feelings as a mom are torn from seeing them taken advantage by unfair and abusive social situations. There is a lot we can do to help our children, but the choice to be paralyzed or to be responsive by these experiences is our own. Your own.

Source: * to become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses. Verb. Dictionary .com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/perceive?s=t

4. Focus

It is helpful to develop something to focus on. Focus on moving forward and find the right friends to help. Do not go through traumatic events alone.

When I graduated from high school, my life broke open to become more realistic. I had something to focus on. I received my RN, BSN. I loved my work. I married and had 3 children. Sounds normal enough to me, but I would find my life to be anything but normal.

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”  

Mark Twain

5. Stories To Help Focus

My friend Kathy showed me an analogy about one traumatic event in my life. The events surrounding my family literally being ripped apart made me paralyzed for a year. I had not paid attention to the warning signals, nor did I respond correctly. In this analogy, figuratively, my family was involved in a horrifying head-on train crash where my husband was the driver of one train, I was the driver of the vehicle. I swerved and caused much damage, but nothing compared to what we would have experienced if I had not swerved. In a figurative sense: one son received brain damage, my other son received internal injuries, and my daughter received severe heart damage. My friend Kathy was the one who made the analogy of the train wreck, and she became part of the energy which enabled me to survive at first, and now be victorious. 

6. Do Not be Afraid To Visit Memories

My first memories of any trauma before the age of 5. I had an experience that haunted me all my life. It caused me to live in my own world, so I reached out to the world of books and got lost in them. I loved biographies and read mostly historical books. I loved learning and took my life seriously. 

I remember falling in love in the first grade. He was the first person I felt connected with. It is sad to me that I did not feel that same support to my family. But that experience led me to a great relationship with some of those same family members over the years.

I remember 4th grade; this was the first teacher I hated and continued to distrust those kinds of people. But then there was another 4th grade teacher that I was transferred to who rescued me from that situation. She filled my life with kindness and removed what the other teacher had taken away. I found hope.

I remember my 6th-grade teacher who was kind, and I learned a lot from. It was he that pointed me to more of a reality-oriented life. But things became confusing in Jr and Sr. High school. My life focus on reality slowly declined. But the story does not end there!

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”

John Dewey

Magna Vitae!

That is part of my story and I’m sticking to it. Come join me in changing our lives for the better. Here’s to experiencing the Great Life.

“Never discourage anyone…who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”  

Plato

I would love to hear from you. Please use the comments below to comment on my post or to put in your thoughts about your life.