Now that I know that nothing is important except love and the people we love, I am going to check out what I thought was a big deal.
Flashbacks From The Month Of September
September 21, 2002
*If I only had a deeper belief in myself.
*If my spirits get dampened, they get dampened by me.
September 15, 2003
*If someone asked me what dreams and desires I have that are unlived I would have to say all of them. I need to try to find out what they are and then not let them be buried. Find them and then work on making them real and know that I can only depend on myself to make them real.
September 22, 2003
*Physically I can’t freely do the things that I think I would like to do, when meanwhile when I could do them I didn’t anyway.
*Emotionally getting older makes me appreciate being younger but makes me upset that I didn’t appreciate and live fully all my days. On the other hand it tells me that life is short and there is not much time left so instead of regretting what I didn’t do at 47; when I’m 80. Do what I want because there really is only so much time and all we have is right now.
*Getting older affects me spiritually by pushing me not to just go through the motions of life, like the spinner in a wash cycle, but to consciously get the best out of each day with some emotion attached to my life. I realize that I go through life with next to no feelings. Spiritually I’m dissatisfied and I know it is my own fault.
*Valuable lessons that life has taught me is that you have to put something (emotion) into life to get back anything in return. People can give you all kinds of great feelings and positive things to say to you, but if you never had any investment in them it means absolutely nothing, even though they are giving you all of this heart-felt emotion. Their feelings were real and valuable and mine were worth nothing because they never had any feelings attached to them. I’ve wasted their time because they may as well have been praising or thanking a stone.
*Life truly is not a spectator sport. I want myself and my children to have a real life. It’s okay to get hurt, at least it is real.
*I have no age mentors and nobody’s path to maturity has inspired me, although younger people (Angelique, Nadalene, and Nathan) inspire me to be a participant in life.
September 23, 2003
*Who am I: someone who feels sorry for herself; someone who is disappointed, someone who doesn’t know how to move forward; a Mom, a member of a family, someone other than who people think I am; someone who is lonely, someone who wants no one; a slug. Who am I: someone with ideas without the stamina to follow through; someone who is too easy on herself; someone who is too hard on herself; an excellent communicator to people who don’t matter to me; a poor communicator. Who am I: a Mom; a person in a marriage where there is zero or next to zero companionship; a person who will do nothing to change it for a variety of reasons (probably none of them good enough.)
September 5, 2005
*Thank you God for giving me the ability to choose to be happy, to look at the positive; to see beauty around me; to have a good husband and to have the power to change what I don’t like about myself. To see the up-side of life.
*Bring a positive spin and not a victim spin. I definitely put a victim spin on things because it is easier than having to learn what I really want. Easier too, than having to work for anything.
*Every day, every minute is new. Choice. Making a choice is big, even if it is for the smallest thing.
*Gratitude. Appreciation. Identify – learn – act. I do clutch at joyous experiences rather than experience them. I need to be present in the moment. Be real. Breath!
September 13, 2006
*Dr. Grenier said although there were some good results on Taxotere, it was not working on my breast and underarm lymph nodes. The MRI showed cancer on the nerves and that is why my hand is numb. She has stopped chemo and Herceptin immediately. She started me on Tamoxifen today. She has referred me to Dr. Akra (radiation oncologist). I see him Wednesday. God, I am in your hands.
September 20, 2006
*Dr. Akra will be doing radiation on underarm and breast. It should be five days a week for 20 days. He does not want to do my back yet, as you can only get so much radiation in an area.
September 21, 2006
*Blood transfusion.
Flash Forward
Life is a learning experience. Life is very, very good. Make sure your heart is open and never miss the chance (and there will be many) to let someone know you care about them.
47 comments:
Wonderful post hon. I guess youth is wasted on the young - but the prize is wisdom as you get older. Barb an I were just talking about this the other day..how the power and wisdom you gain as you get older - how it starts to make sense. I wonder how much more I could have done had I had this 15 years back. But things come to us as they should, as we can handle them maybe. Wonderful post hon from someone who has helped me find my way along this bumpy path. Thanks for holding my hand hon. Here...take mine for a bit!
Love you Renee, Sarah
I can relate to quite a few of your emotions and feelings over the years Renee!
Your posts really make me think and reflect on my own life and I love you for that!
Thank you!
Darla♥
you know i admire your bravery, and also your faith, i don't have that. i'd like to tell you today how much i care abot YOU.
this post is incredible Renee , it is good to see you opening yourself this way . a real inspiration .
thanks !!
"Do what I want because there really is only so much time and all we have is right now."
Good morning, dear heart,
You know already that when you flash back, it's like I'm reading my own thoughts, up until your cancer diagnosis. I think you touch many of us with these words, because many of us feel this way about ourselves and our lives.
Isn't it shame that often a crisis (or several) needs to arise for us to open our eyes and really SEE and appreciate our lives? Your words, quoted above, are what I try to remember every day.
I know you are helping many people change how they view their lives.
I love you, dear Renee, and hope you are feeling well today. How are your dear mother and Jacquie? Is your little Dominic growing and changing daily?
Hugs and love, love, love,
xoxoxo
Angela
(Just have to tell you something, and you can make of it what you wish. On Friday night, the day of your Sheldon's memorial, my daughter woke up during the night. She noticed something on the floor of her room. A smiley face pin she has had pinned - for years - on the strap of her favorite purse had fallen off. But the closure on the back of the pin was still closed and her purse strap was not broken. The pin had just fallen off without opening. I'm telling you this because she and I had shed some tears for you and your dear Sheldon earlier that day. I had also told her that you had told me that Sheldon would have made us laugh and laugh and laugh. We couldn't help but think of your Sheldon, and that maybe he was just stopping by to say hello and leaving us with one of his beautiful smiles. My daughter is very intuitive and we both are open to all the mysteries of the Universe, so who knows?)
xoxoxo
I love your opening line ... what is it that we thought was such a big deal?
Love your flashbacks.
Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt post...you could very well be writing about me as I too often feel the same way about myself. I am 53 as well and am struggling with the changes that I see has my physical decline, not sure where to go from here.
Fabulous post dear Renee. You are my inspiration with your grace and bravery.
Love you dear one,
LuLu~*xoxo
I was touched by your comment on my blog renee and now reading more about who YOU are, I am so happy to have found each other. xoxo
Oh Lovee, I think that you are the most real person I have ever met. And the most honest. How bravely you look back and analize yourself as most of us would never have the courage to do. And it is true, in the end, only the love remains.
I keep praying that Mother Mary is there holding Jacquie up...life is supposed to go in order. Please tell her how much I love her. And you, my beloved friend. Deb
We can't hear this message enough.
I need constant reminders. Thank you Renee. I love you. xoxo
You had the wisdom to write your thoughts down and record your journey. Life is not what we want or what we find; life is what/whom we love, and how we invest ourselves in those things/people we love. You knew that, because you wrote about it.
god Renee, there's so much here I could respond to, relate to - your openness brings tears to my eyes and cracks my heart open again and again. I love you so. Karin
We're very hard on ourselves as we age aren't we? I do the same thing, chastise myself for wasting time in my youth. Hell, I give myself a hard time for wasting time yesterday. But maybe it isn't wasted. Maybe we can only live in the moment for so many hours in the day - and the rest of the time we have to live other places: the past, the future, or in our little internal cocoons. :) You are so right, all that matters is love - the rest of it is just stuff. I love you, Renee, for sharing your life with us. It makes me feel not as alone. :) And I have no doubt that you and I will meet many times, I wonder when and where? :) xoxoxoxox Pam
I learn so much from your thoughts and musings on life, Renee. You seem to have made huge transitions from the beginnings of these particular thoughts, to now. It sounds like joy & freedom have grown larger in you since those earlier thoughts, even with the ups and downs of your treatment and the rest of what is going on in life. I celebrate this freedom and joy with you! You are a great woman. XO
Thank you for putting into words so many of my thoughts toward my own mortality. We are very had on ourselves, aren't we? I think it is how women are raised - to do for everyone but themselves and then not feel that we've done enough. Yet, despite all that, our spirits rise!
Renee, You have a lot to teach me. A while back, Bonnie posted a question about why we blog. There were a myriad of answers, but seriously, I think one of mine would be this post today. I need to hear this. Thank you so much for sharing this intimacy with us. All the small stuff we fear and worry about, it's a waste of precious time when we could be using it so much more wisely. What can I do today? xoxo B
I CARE about you- just letting you know...
xxxooo
Renee,
What a heartfelt post...I can feel it in my heart...a connection. I can feel all that you have written...no I don't have cancer to battle, and my prayers go out to you along with love and light, but age befalls us all...It hard to come to the realization that I really don't have time to do all that I would have done had I truly understood how short life is...and it is just a blink in time. Today I have so little patience with wasted time. Regrets are such a drag and I have many. What I tell my daughters is to try and live their lives in away that they aren't filled with regret in their crone years....to follow their dreams...to recognize that money is not the answer, even though the world we live in tells us just the opposite, it is following our call to create a spiritual life that will shelter us in the end...
That said there is also a certain gift that comes with aging...wisdom...
You share much of it with us...thank you...you've touched my heart.
hug, hug
"It’s okay to get hurt, at least it is real." This is so true - a wisdom acquired over my life's experiences, some of which were great, some of which were torrid, but every one of which is appreciated in the end. Your post was very touching, very real.
Maybe it's those moments of despair that really sharpen our appreciation for what is good in our lives? I don't think there's anything wrong with hurting when you need to hurt. And I stay humbled by how you hurt and still see all the beauty in our lives.
This post really speaks to me today, and I thank you for it. My tightest bear hug to you.
Dearest,
This has helped me immensely. It helps to know that even the very best of us goes through a period of questioning and regret. Perhaps we need to go through it before we can re-evaluate our lives and look forward to making changes. 2005 seemed to be a pivotal year for you. I like what your wrote -- 'Bring a positive spin and not a victim spin'.
Nothing is important except love. Love for others, love and acceptance for yourself.
How are you holding up? I still keep Jacquie and all of you in my prayers and in my heart.
xoxo
You my dear a deep thinker – you should have modeled for Rodin. The wizard of Oz must have given you a ThD – Doctor of Thinkology. Ah LOVE, such a simple word with complex meaning.
I am going to do a Cesspin about happiness. I can’t remember Mother telling us to be happy. Instead I hear her tell us to achieve peace and be copasetic, freedom from wanting and needing. Peace of course meant peace of mind and heart. Melancholy and introspection was a welcome emotion for us. Even sadness and sorrow were important in the shaping of our emotional fibre. Death is a natural cycle of life. We were exposed to deaths from very early on, our friends and classmates died from diseases, accidents and calamities. We were allowed to be angry for it is a natural part of acceptance. We felt sad and we mourned and then celebrated their lives and remember their death.
At any rate, today I received one of those forwarded emails with slideshows and photographs that put me in email jail. Since it came from a very unlikely source, a man who is supposed to be making business decisions during business hours, I was surprised to receive an email about love and happiness. I opened it because he gave special instructions to save it to our desktops to get us out of email jail. He mailed it to only a handful of people including my executive so that flattered me and excited me wickedly because I want to see how my exec reacted being trapped in email jail. I figured he was sensitive enough to recognize the inconvenience he was putting us through so I went through the slides. I found one that I like:
Love and care for someone more than you need them.
BINGO! I like that. It reminded me why after a short of period of infatuation or crush or excitement from wanting or liking someone, I was able to keep my head above water with all the suitors and friends that I decided to be part of my life at a given period of time. I cared for them or loved them more than I needed them so in the end, it was their happiness that mattered and I necessarily did not desire to be married to any of them except for a couple, and I accepted the fact that we grew up differently and branched out so that parting was never painful. So that is probably why I could pick up the phone or send any of them an email and feel like we never parted. I never nagged them for visits or calls. It is interesting to note that when I talk to one of them, my heart remembers a familiar beat and it assumes the beat while I am engaged in a conversation with them. There is a gentleness and caring that gets revived with a simple hello. I of course just wanted all of them to be happy. And I am glad most of them are. Actually I would love to be wanted or needed I just don't like to do the needing and wanting, would that make me the dog or the dog owner?
One can say that I have a bohemian approach to love and friendship or simply say that I am lazy just like the song that goes:
Honey Pie,
You are driving me crazy
I’m in love but I’m lazy
So won’t you please come home…
Okay, back to labor!
Tsupa Tsupa Uggah Buggah Mwah!
I like what Deborah relayed to me yesterday:
Friendship isn't about who you have known the longest.
...but about who came and never left your side.
So much love, I am turning purple from all the hugs.
Oh and one last thing. I think I love you!
I need to print this out and put it in my pocket.
*Physically I can’t freely do the things that I think I would like to do, when meanwhile when I could do them I didn’t anyway.
This is one of my great fears that I'll retire and not be fit enough to fulfill my dreams. I can't fulfill them all now but resolving to 'do something' each Sunday means I can tackle some of the smaller ones. And yes, life is generally very good! Appreciate it.
Dear Renee,
Everything you wrote shows an open heart searching for answers. Even what you look past now shows someone who must never give up searching and understanding.
Thank you for sharing all the parts of you and reminding us how we need to grow. I love you, xxx.
Renee, you inspire me with your courage and determination! I ride this journey along with you via my sister Renee. We are also going through another round of chemo and there will be surgery at the end of October. We stay faithful and always hopeful. I adore you and send you blessings through my prayers, daily. Hugs!
Consciousness makes it all possible.
Renee, may your hopes me possible, and spring forth from the heart that so tenderly wants to open.
I agree... nothing is important except love and the people we love. And as you said - we need to take the opportunites when we can to tell those special people what they mean to us.
Renee - I am so glad to have found you and share our frindship. I love your passion and your honesty and your compassion. You are a gem.
I love you.
what may seem like the end can really be a gift, no? you are so very wise
I cried at your post today! I don't know but I think i'm relating to a lot of it!
thank you my dear friend!!
love,
manon
xoxo
Beautiful post dear Renee.
You are such an inspirational and great teacher and we are all so lucky to know you and that you have shared your love and wisdom, with us.
Thinking of you, Jacquie and your Family and sending love and hugs
Carolyn xo
Hi Lovey..."No What If's"
xoxoxoox
What a powerful post!
May God be with you, you will be in my prayers.
god, renee. you share yourself in unexpected ways. i am sending you that book afterall. you will either love it or figure out quickly you could have written it.
i haven't much problem with emotion. i feel deeply and feel my way much of the time. but that leaves me pretty vulnerable, and in the wrong hands i'm in trouble. when i realize the only right hands are my own, i can let my hopes lead the way. go for it, renee. i mean it. go for it. not just here in the blogs.
love always,
kj
A beautiful and heartfelt post, Renee. You write the most amazing things. You are a bright and beautiful inspiration to me and I know, to so many more in the blogging community, and I am sure, your own home neighborhood.
I have been thinking about exactly what you have been talking about here. I am making it a point to tell people that I love, that I love them, and to show my love as much as I can. Every day is a gift to us and I don't want to have regrets.
So Renee, you beautiful soul, thank you for being You!
Love and Hugs to You!
Kelly
I am going to have to write you a long email....
Love xoxox Pattee
Thanks for sharing your wisdom and journey Renee! Family is certainly what matters most in life. You are an inspiration. Hope you, Jacquie and all the family are doing OK. Take care, Lisa
Great post Renee. I think Sarah said it right . . . youth is wasted on the young! If I'd only known then the things I know now! Sending hugs and love and prayers. xxoo
'Physically I can’t freely do the things that I think I would like to do, when meanwhile when I could do them I didn’t anyway.'
Isn't that one of life's greatest misteries? I can empathise with you 100%. Many thanks.
Greetings from London.
wow, this is very good writing, very inspirational. I like posts like this when someone sees the better side of things instead of wallowing at the things we cannot really bring back. Time can only go by so fast, that's why we must make an effort to spend time with the people we love and cares too about us.
PS. Help is flooding in Manila, that's the flood we want at this difficult time. Thanks for the prayers Renee, God is good. All the time!
'much love,
Sassy
love you Renee x
you are a wonderful teacher
REnee, that first line was one to live by, and so good I had to quote you and link back to your blog if that's OK.
You'll find it here: http://lookyhereu.blogspot.com/
Thank you for sharing ALL of your thoughts, from Past to Present, Renee, since I feel WE ALL relate to ALL of your feelings. One moment one day we write our low feelings, anther day our thanks to God.
Favorite Renee quote of today:
Life is a learning experience. Life is very, very good. Make sure your heart is open and never miss the chance (and there will be many) to let someone know you care about them.
AMEN SISTA!!
Love YOU !!
Constance
sending you a special smile!
Hi to Wahid and thumbs up to Jacquie the Wonderful!
So many things you say apply to all of us..the universe...you are indeed wise and much loved, my dear. To know that we are not alone in life...many times we are on our own..but not alone...is a comfort for our souls.
Just stopping by to say I love this post and that I am so glad my life has been touched by you.
Much love,
Cindy
What a superb post, Renee. You were so tough on yourself at times, weren't you? I like to see the positive Renee. That is what you are now I feel. You are a wonderful person, as you must be able to see from all these loving comments. Your words really made me think about myself.
Post a Comment