What a whirlwind of fun.

Thursday we headed to the other side of the lake to be ready for an early start to get to the zoo. It was for me, I wanted to take Lily to the zoo and was happy to have anyone come along. The whole family showed up, well immediate family. There were seven of us in total and it was great. The weather was perfect, the crowds were low, we met with a few ‘keepers’ of the animals and heard the stories of how they came to be at the zoo (lions born at the zoo and two of the polar bears were rescues as their momma was shot when they were very young cubs and so on) so all in all it was a lovely day. Lily saw so many animals and got so excited, I know she won’t remember it but I will and it was so worth it she had momentary happiness and I have great memories.

Sunday more family came over and Lily got to hang with little people again which makes her day. It was a lovely combination of a restful and busy weekend.

So now back to work and at the first job of the day I was wondering… how on earth will I find the time for all the stuff I want to do with my practice? I wrote on a cue card the list of things I want to do this week. I felt a bit daunted as it seems time just sneaks away from me in the evenings and while thinking this I glanced at a book, opened it to a random page and found a quote that made me pay attention and it went something like this;

‘All the greats in the world had the same number of hours in a day and days in a week that you do.’

I figure that means there are no excuses.

So I am making no excuses and getting things done with a feeling of optimism, and I think sure why not? I have passion, support, love, am constantly learning more about myself and the world. I don’t need extra hours I have all the time I need.

I didn’t know what to write. Throughout my day I will think of a few things but when I sit down to write I can forget, sometimes all of my ideas and sometimes part of them.  Tonight I told Denis I wasn’t sure what to say and he said to write what I want the business to look like. He means my practice.

I’d love to have three days a week for clinic time, booked comfortably full. I only want three days because I want plenty of time to continue my studies and also so I have lots of time to be with Denis, Lily and to pursue other interests. Simple, I love what I do on many fronts so I just need balance.

My girlfriend wrote today talking of her current plans to increase her business. Her goal is that, in time, by building her business it will free up more time for her. She is also interested in pursuing more formal education in her area of interest.

Oh I’d like a little quiet space, a desk and a comfy chair, wherever I am in my travels with my family, to be able to do my work in comfort. I’d also like more technology. I’d like a iPad to be able to read pdfs more easily when on the go, I’d like a bigger laptop in time as well. The iPad is top of my electronic wish list today but it might change before I am ready to purchase.

I am excited to have found something I love so much, but if you have been reading for very long you will know that already. Funny thing today I was asked again about what I do and what would I do for a specific situation. I stuttered to answer, not because I don’t know the answer but I don’t trust myself to talk to anyone about it yet. Of course five minutes after I rambled out a response I was able to put it much more precisely and eloquently in my head. If enough people keep asking I will be able to answer smoothly in the moment rather than five minutes later. Thankfully I don’t beat myself up about these times. I simply think I am growing more and more each time I am asked.

Still have not taken new photos, I will soon.

They are painting mom’s house!

This is very exciting as you may or may not know we are living in a trailer. A gooseneck 32 foot trailer that has sleeping spaces in the very front and the very back for privacy but it is not ideal for a Canadian winter, and the leaves are just beginning to change. I am thrilled to see they are painting mom’s house, I am hoping we will be moving in a few weeks. Mom is hoping to be in before Canadian Thanksgiving.

I missed last night because I goofed up and made apple sauce to late into the evening and Lily melted. It was kinda nice because it made me wrap her up in Denis’ sweater and we cuddled and went for a walk under the stars. We walked up to the pond and down to the road and she was asleep. Her cuddles are so heart warming.

While cleaning today I realised a funny thing. Of all the lovely homes we clean and all the qualities they have, I think I fall in love with the good private libraries the most. I love good books and today we cleaned one of my favourite home libraries… I probably spend a little extra time dusting as I peruse the various titles and pick up the odd one for “extra dusting” and read the back cover or the inside flap. Today I took this one step further and started writing titles down of books I’d like to one day have in a library of my own. Mini libraries all around the world in various little structures we will eventually call our own. A camper van or a hut or a cottage or who knows what. I already decorate the wee cabin in South Africa, why not fill libraries?

Denis and Lily came to visit again today, she’s been helping mom and I make beds in certain houses and she thinks it is hilarious, which of course we think is hilarious. Giggles all around.

Trying to get ahead of tomorrow, making dinner for tomorrow tonight (slow cooker) and got homemade soup out of the freezer for lunch.

Got to hurry, Lily’s going to want to sleep soon and I don’t want to miss her cuddles.

So Lily shared, her cold and I missed the physician heal thyself motto… again! So Denis and I are having a longer does of whatever it was that Lily introduced to us.

We also found out on Friday that getting visas for volunteering in South Africa has a twist. Lily and I apply in person in Canada and Denis applies from Europe… in person! Just a little something to see if we are determined in our path. We are, so now we just have a little extra organising to do. I wanted the journey to South Africa to be in two parts for Lily anyways… it is such a long journey to do all at once. Now it is being enforced.

Spending the weekend at my dad’s place. Nice and slow pace, I am not sure who is getting the most pleasure, me for seeing the joy on my dad’s face when Lily initiates play, Lily for having a playmate, or my dad at having all this time with Lily! The simple things really are the best things.

This photo is from last week, this weekend is to cold for boating. Still it is reflective of Lily and her Papa.

We had our first fever at about 6 months I think, now we are having her first cold.

Yesterday evening and night Lily was a little more demanding of attention/cuddles than normal. Other than that there was no real warning, until this morning when a distinct little gurgle could be heard. The snot had arrived. She has been a super hero, I left her  in her daddy’s care with a few homeopathics to work with while I was at work, he said they helped when he needed them at one point in the day but mostly she was a trouper and he just loved on her and let her sleep a lot.

I won’t stay long tonight as I completely forgot about the blog and now I want to snuggle with Lily so she has a early night, tomorrow we go to a tea party for her in the late afternoon and I am hoping we will be able to have her fully rested. The weekend we will spend with Papa (my dad) and hopefully we will not all end up with Lily’s first cold. I already have a few signs of it working on my system but I hope that with a little TLC and lots of good food and rest at dad’s it will pass with nothing other than the funny taste in the back of my throat.

You know, I just realised that I did not worry about her at all today. As soon as I knew she had a cold I was worried about going to work but once I had the remedies left for Denis I never worried again. He is so good, he kept her warm and loved on all day and she shows it. What a blessing to have such a great partner, all the power to the single parents (in and out of relationships) it is so much easier with a good partner. We are lucky that we also have a live in Grandma right now too, and that makes things that much easier again.

Going to run, she is sounding like she is ready for bed, I know I am!

So much has been happening and I have missed writing so many entires that a huge amount of fun has not been accounted for. I will fix that now.

Some of the fun we have been having:

Sometime back we took Lily out for her first ride in a stroller, we went to the corner store (about a 30 minute walk each way). It was a hit, the stroller and the ice cream. Every bike that passed Lily half crawled out of the little buggy and watched it until it would disappear around a bend. Glad both her dad and I love motorbikes.

We went to the Canadian Exhibition with my family. We had a lot of fun, Lily almost refused to sleep she was so excited about everything she was seeing. She yelled at me when I took her away from the pigs.

We have been boating a few times and swimming off the boat when the weather has been agreeable. This last time was only this past Sunday and the very reason I feel like I need to share our adventures. Lily had so much fun, she was crawling around on a shallow sand bar splashing in the water, watching her cousin (3.5 years old) playing with his his and watching her daddy run and crawl and play with her. I was snapping photos and enjoying the ‘last days of summer’ when our Lily starting crawling into the waves. The first few that hit her face shocked her but she got into it, so much so that when one rolled her over and I pulled her out the water she yelled at me to put her back in the water. She loved it! So much that facing her in a direction where they hit her from behind she would only crawl for so long before turning to face them again, I am not sure if it is the feeling of the pressure on her chest or what she liked the most but whatever it was she had a brilliant time. Eventually I called it quits for her and found a quiet part of the boat and nursed her to sleep. Her grandpa or Papa as he likes to be called, held her for her entire nap, never letting go.

Tonight my brother popped by quickly to grab trailer to go fetch some wood and my mom went with him for company since it is going to be a late night for him. Denis and I went from a super fast pace to a leisurely stroll down the road in less time than it took for them to leave the driveway. We are so lucky to be able to go fast or go slow and enjoy both speeds.

Another thing I have forgot to mention, one of my moms clients discovered I came back from France with two pairs of pants… one being my maternity pants, and not many more tops. Her client has since taken to giving me beautiful hand me down clothes and today I got another large care package from her. 🙂 What fun, mom teases me that I have a personal shopper. Lily was over at her house today for a brief visit for nursing and Lily and the lady’s dog (German Shepard) fell in love at first sight. Lily giggling and the dog sneaking in little licks and nudges as Lily explored the kitchen and dining area. It won’t be long before she is walking, she is standing without holding on to things for what seems like ages now, Lily is on such a quest to discover her world… she is such a joy.

Today is a good example of what our life looks like here in Canada.

Laid in bed thinking that it must not be as late as I thought since mom was not up yet for work. No, mom had turned off the snooze button on her alarm so when I heard her up and getting ready, my cue to get up and get ready for work as well, I soon discovered we had less than half the time we normally give ourselves to get out the door. We made it with only one small back track to get the garbage out for pick up.

The work went smoothly enough, no great surprises. The third clean I was waiting for Denis and Lily to show up for me to nurse her and have a wee visit and the clock just kept ticking along. I fluctuated between figuring they were busy and being worried until I started spending more time in the worried category. I wondered if we’d been in such a rush that he had ended up going to the wrong house, got a flat tire, ended up in a ditch, or other not happy ideas. I had simpler ideas of Lily having a poorly timed nap (according to my very full breasts) or simply they lost track of time having fun but I couldn’t stick with those thoughts. So mom let me borrow the car and I went looking for them. I found them, on their way to me from another house with a lady with a name very similar to the one we were at.

Visiting and nursing and cleaning of the house complete we headed home. Denis and Lily washed laundry (by hand) mom and I peeled a big pot of apples to make apple sauce of the freezer, supper was prepared, eaten and cleaned up, progress on moms house checked out, emails for clients read and sent back, talks about South Africa and research into visas and renewing drivers licences occurred, chickens sorted… need I go on? We keep busy, one day rolls into the next, they are never the same, almost always very full of activity.

I am not excite about having to start to sort visas again. I still have an aversion to them, although it is not as bad as it used to be. I used to fear it, now I just don’t like it. Seems like such a bother. I would rather have it that all countries let us travel about as we saw fit and all you had to do was behave in a manner acceptable to the place you are visiting. Break their laws pay their consequences. When in Rome do as the Romans do.

Well, since that is not going to happen fast enough to help us for our South African adventure we will have to jump through the hoops again. Once the paperwork is in the mail it seems easy enough. Now though it is bedtime, Denis is writing and I am typing and Lily is hanging out with her Grandma but now it is time to put it all down and snuggle up with the ones we love, before another day begins.

It is time.

I have been sharing much about our lives with you over the past months, intimate details of our life, mostly good and a few of our struggles. Today I will share what was, historically, our biggest and our most time consuming struggle/challenge. I can do this because of how far we have come, we have come so far it will no longer have this title in our life very shortly, if not already.

Denis was diagnosed just under 10 years ago with Paranoid Schizophrenia. Five years ago this month we met and though we had no idea at the time we were about to embark on a journey that would change both our lives we knew something was a little different this time. If someone had told us the work, the hurt, the frustration and the challenges we were facing we may not have kept in contact after meeting at that wedding in Ireland. I would talk about my changes but tonight is about Denis.

A year after he came to Canada he was fully off the medication he had been placed on since his ‘break’. He worked hard, we had a team of doctors, psychiatrists, nutritionists, and of course our Heilkunstlers working with us, giving us the skills, the knowledge and the support we needed. He was so violently ill for one month that it was all we could do to keep him hydrated and getting some nutrients. His mind wavered in and out of healthy states, but he and I were determined to work through it together as a team.

There are times even now where he has to fight to marshall his mind into working with him and not against him. He studies everything he can get his hands on to empower him and give him clues as to what, why and how he can truly gain his health. On bad days the paranoia still haunts him, it tests our bond when he tries to push me away because his mind will tell him I am not on his side but messing with him. His way of pushing me away is normally with anger and accusations. This last time it was so bad that he threatened to leave Lily and I and went so far as to start to look up flights out of Canada.

Yep it hurts and at times I’ve wondered if I have the strength but you know what, I just had to focus on that feeling that was is so strong… that he is my person. Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel, he is winning, the worst days are long. Our fights used to be so frequent that a bad day we could fight multiple times in one day. I would not know what trigger might set him off, I would tiptoe around what I thought would cause and issue and that would cause a problem. It was hard. Then it got a lot easier as he starting winning his battle of retraining his brain. I stopped being so diligent and invariably I would do something to trigger him and I would start seeing signs in his behaviour that a blow out was coming. Now we are able to talk through most of them pretty quickly, quiet a few colourful words are in that talk but there is a lot of love too.

I tell you this because he inspires me, because it is not always easy and sometimes I don’t have all the time I want for other things because we are hashing out some acute paranoid thoughts that are harassing him at the moment, but all in all those days are fewer and fewer. He is winning, so we are winning.

My life truly is blessed.

We don’t use nearly enough words to describe our feelings.

On top of that many of us rarely discuss our feelings. Yet feelings are so important. We talk about having a good life, a successful life, a life worth living, one without regrets and so on. Yet we keep our emotional health to ourselves, we even have a limited common vocabulary to express ourselves if we do happen to open up.

What does “happy” mean? What does “love” mean, “good”, “fine”, “ok” or “I’ve been better” mean? We need to work on developing language and communication skills that allow us to share and grow with others by having conversations about these tricky things.

Most people can’t even honestly tell you how they feel. I am a person who if you ask me how I feel I kinda get lost in the question. The very question itself is to vast for me to give a heartfelt answer so I resort to a simple blanket response, most often “good” or if I am feeling particularly open “never better”.

Really inside my head I am thinking things like; overall health is good, still have some complaints about my feet from the pregnancy periodically, my mind is at peace, my heart is full of love but missing my family while I work, however I am proud that we work so good as a team that I can work and know they are good, at the same time I am a bit concerned about my sugar intake lately and I wish I was less complacent about food, I am optimistic about the way the practice is starting out and I am a little melancholy for a few friends I don’t seem to be able to connect with very much now that life is so busy. Like a run on sentence my emotions are many, from great to a work in progress but thankfully none of those heart wrenching ones of fear, loss, pain, sorrow or others.

What about those people who do have those emotions, the hard ones, the ones that we don’t talk about? I want to be part of the movement that says “lets talk about that emotion”. I want to take the stigma away from the hurt, the pain the confusion and say ‘you know what, it’s okay to feel that”. I also want to be there when we work towards solutions, real empowerment of individuals so they can change their emotional story to a happy one. I have done it myself, I have seen others do it and though it is a lot of work that is my passion. Helping people grab the reins, to their quality of life, and getting the most out of each and every moment is such a wonderful feeling.

I enjoy it so much, that today I signed up for year 3 of Romantic Medicine to continue my education in creating a life worth writing about. I life I am proud to call mine.

How did this happen? For months I never missed a post and now I seem to miss more than I write. Even when I have time these days I seem to forget that I am supposed to write, it is like I moved to Canada and though I don’t feel too disoriented I am so day to day that I forget things that are supposed to be daily.

Today I was cleaning a beautiful home office and I was thinking how nice it will be to one day have my own, how much easier it will be to organise myself and so on. I have to be honest though, it would make things nicer but an office is not going to remind me to do the things I want to do. I just have to do it, tonight Denis reminded me about the blog. I was all playful and happy after getting off the phone with a client and ready to play with Lily when Denis reminded me. He really is my rock.

So a wee bit about constitutions. Constitutions are a state of health but they also tell us what challenges a person might have.

I am a Silica, my strength is my principled nature. I don’t argue much but if my principles are at stake I will state my thoughts as clearly as I can. Silica weaknesses is we can be walked over if we don’t have an opinion about something, we tend to disappear in a crowd our voices lost when they have no passion.

Denis is a Phosphorus nature. He is all about connections and relationships. If they are not healthy they can lose their sense of self not knowing who they are because they don’t have boundaries. They have a warmth about them and they sparkle when excited (not the Twilight series sparkle but that kind that makes you want to hang out with them). They throw the best parties and always know who should sit with who, they are natural match makers.

Pulsatilla’s are the family first crowd. They are the one’s who once you are part of the family then you are always part of the family, no matter the years or distance that may separate you. Blood is of no consequence, you can be family with or without blood ties. If they are lacking health they can become manipulative and needy but with health they are the glue that holds the family together, and defends it when necessary.

Cal Carb’s are the pearl makers. They don’t travel, they don’t move fast, they often don’t even think fast. They can appear a bit slow but really they are just thinking it through and are solid in their thoughts and actions. They are the people who you can rely on to still be holding the fort (coaching little league, running the local fit it shop, selling homemade preserves at the local fair) years after you first met them.

Lycopodiums are brilliant at the corporate world. Anything where there is a hierarchy they excel at. They know how to climb ladders, they know how to be the top persons go to person. They don’t want to lead but they want the leader to notice them first.

Sulphurs are intense. They are the ones everyone notices, they are the ones who change the world (though the others can as well) because they become so passionate about something that they move mountains to get what they want. They are loved and despised equally at times, and they really don’t care that much about others opinions if they are following their heart.

I want to talk more but this is already a long post… will write again soon.