A Bewitchingly Ordinary Life!

It's been 436 days since Eric passed away.  One year and two months.  62 weeks and 1 day.  To be honest, I'm not sure some days how we got this far.  A part of me "knows" but a part of me does not. In those early days and weeks, two pieces of advice became a profound stepping stone on this journey. First, do not make any major decisions during the first year of losing a loved one. The second was "do the next thing".   I remember hearing the first one from the priest at my local Parish.  Trust me, I wanted to take my boys and run away.  To where?  I don't know.  I felt like I wanted to run and run and run.  I wanted to crawl out of my skin.  I wanted to be anywhere but here (then, in that present moment). The second piece of advice I heard at a grief support group.  One of the lovely people there was recounting the beginning days for herself and how she had heard that advice.  "Do the next thing".  If that next th...

I would have never even given a second thought that I'd still be battling depression 5 years after originally being diagnosed. I started treatment and felt great for a couple of years. Now, I *thought* I was doing well the 3 years after that.  I didn't recognize the slip again.  The slip into depression's waves and tides, the grasp it takes and slowly pulls you down, is often subtle and unnoticed until someone or something makes you take notice. This has got to be one of the hardest posts I have ever done, one of the most heartbreaking for me. There was no one moment, one day, one week where suddenly I was swimming in the depths trying to reach the top.  It was a slow dissent.  A thought here, a misread conversation there, an over analyzed look from someone, small situations, all that began eating away at simple sanity again. I wanted to believe that the first time around, the medication treatment, and the attention to it that my mind was brought to, w...

June has arrived with a hot roar.  Florida temperatures are soaring into the 90s and the end of the school year is here! It has been quite the journey this school year and the adventure continues. Aaron is doing fabulous at Babson Park Elementary.  This coming week is their final 3.5 days and it's packed with fun for the students, from a School Fair to a Fairy Tale Bowl.  He's also scheduled to attend 4 weeks [4 days a week], a 3rd grade enrichment program at the school.  It's a half day program and will begin introducing him to the third grade.  David has pretty much wrapped up his first official homeschool term.  He began at the end of April.  The 2016-17 academic year will be his first full year homeschool. He's excited about the coming year as his textbooks have begun arriving.  He was especially excited when his National Geographic Earth Science book arrived!  The biggest reason, as you all know, to homeschool is due to his health....