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What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…….
That’s an age old saying, right? Sometimes it feels like there is a higher power that wants to test just how strong I am. When I look back at 2016 honestly I cringe. It has probably been the worst year of my life and I almost died in 2006. 2016 was like being locked in a tennis court with a ball machine on rapid fire. The hits just kept coming and have shown no signs of stopping. Between my health issues, serious financial crisis and being a mom of two teenagers plus one who is careening into her pre-teens, I feel lucky to have the strength to get up everyday. That’s the thing I feel like needs to be clear. I always feel lucky. I feel lucky I wake up everyday. I feel lucky to have the strength to get out of bed because I know in my future that may not be the luxury afforded to me. I have heat. I have food. But yeah, there are some days I feel like I am going to break. We all have them.
Just because there are days that you feel like the world is going to crush you doesn’t make you weak or useless. We are human. It’s what you do with those feelings that counts. Having a chronic illness makes you a special kind of strong. You learn your body. You learn your failings. You know when you can push and when you can’t. I feel like this applies to a lot of other incidences in life. Parenting. Careers. Marriage. You learn limits. I see in the upcoming generations children that aren’t being taught that. They think everything has limits. If they can’t achieve or receive something instantly they feel like failures. I teach my kids that failure is a learning opportunity. It’s a chance to start again and do it right. I have had to learn to apply this to my illnesses and bumps in the road that I have encountered in 2016. I learned, I moved forward and I will try to make my life different in 2017. It’s all you can do. We only have one life to live and we need to live it fully.
So our new motto in our house? Did it kill you? No. Then you are good. We can handle it. We got this.
What did you learn in 2016?
