Pushing strings

 I had planned on posting weekly and this is a bit early, but I will still try to post at least once per week. One of my new goals. Actually, this is an excerpt from my daily journal that I thought was worth sharing.

Bouquets

A little bit about me.

I have always loved bouquets, from formal designs to a handful of weeds given to me by one of my children. Now I have a different kind of bouquet, and I am learning to love it.

I was born with Asperger's Syndrome. Even though I wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult it was always there. I started mental health counseling when I was in first or second grade and continued with it until tenth. It did nothing to help me understand myself, but was strictly about making me fit in, putting this square peg into a round hole. The problem with that is the peg will never fit correctly and trying to make it fit only damages the peg. When I started learning about Indigo Children things started to make sense for me and I began to repair the peg. I still haven't found that square hole for me to fit in, but that's okay.

Several years ago I was diagnosed with Sjogren's Syndrome. The first real indication, for me, was the vasculitis staining on my lower legs.  Funny thing is, that is actually my most recent 'official' diagnoses. So I began treatment for Sjogren's and Lupus, because the blood tests showed a connective tissue disorder as well. Since then the Lupus has shown itself a couple of times with symptoms exclusive to that disorder, also a diagnoses of RA was also added.

This is my bouquet, and I am learning to love and embrace it. Before I have always played games with my attempts to improve my health, not I have to get serious about it. Working with diet, meditation, supplements as well as the medications that are prescribed and realizing that I need to go forward in a holistic manner. Everything needs to be addressed, mind, body and spirit.

I've quit fighting things because "what you resist, persists." By accepting my bouquet, and loving myself without judgement I know that I can keep all the symptoms at bay and have a wonderful year.

New year, new me.

On January 1^st, I decided that 2016 is going to be my best year ever.

This morning it's hard to believe I wrote that line just a few days ago. Not much has happened since I wrote it, and perhaps that is the problem. I keep thinking of things I want to write, write entire paragraphs in my mind, but never seem to have time to write them on the computer. Things I want to do that haven't gotten done. Some started and paused, others that are waiting for time and attention to even begin.

Honestly, I don't think it will be overly difficult to get back into the state I was in those few days ago. The most important thing to remember is to treat everything as a whole; mind, body, and spirit, and to that end I choose to make goals this year, not resolutions. Think of the work resolution. Re – solution. The first solution was not correct, or complete so it needs to be redone. I think I prefer goal setting.

Another reason I may have felt extremely positive several days ago, and less so now, is because I am an empath. When everyone around me is excited for the new year it tends to rub off. The last few days it has just been my daughter and myself, and my daughter is unhappy most of the time, and that tends to rub off on me as well.

In any event, this year I am making goals to set new routines. As part of this I am glad to have found Brian Tracy's 14 Days To Success challenge. I am collecting the steps so I can refer back to them throughout the year, and I accept that some of these one day challenges will take more than one day to complete, at least for me, but it is still a solid guide. https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%2314DaystoSuccess/top

Mindful vs. Mind full

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

7:41 AM

Lately I am finding I have too many 'irons in the fire' 'juggling too many balls' however you would like to phrase it.

Several weeks, months?, ago I was working on my mindfulness. I have a Zen meditation program that I was using every day and was practicing mindfulness in whatever I was doing. I don't recall the exact pebble that started the avalanche, but now that it is rolling downhill I am having a very difficult time stopping it.

I've stopped using the program in the mornings, not sure why. I find myself unable to slow my mind and become mindful at any time because I am currently too "mind full." I was mindful when I started this blog, but things started to go sideways in my life. I had already subscribed to a couple of Asperger and Autism sites/blogs, and to at least two Sjogrens groups and blogs. I was having a hard time keeping up with all of those, but then I added several mindfulness and meditation/spiritualty blogs/forums, and after a Lupus flair I joined a couple Lupus sites, and am now totally overwhelmed.

Now add to this trying to keep up with my part time job while dealing with both Aspergers and chronic illness, keeping up with the house cleaning when I am frequently too tired or sore to accomplish much of anything, and dealing with a daughter who requests a lot of my attention.

Now I am reading articles on how DNA fits into all of this. Sensitive people (read ASD) are more likely to develop autoimmune disorders. Having a traumatic childhood can also lead to autoimmune disorders. How the behaviors and beliefs of parents and grandparents can be passed down to children and how all of these studies can be used as excuses for current problems. I cannot keep up with everything as much as I want to. I have lost my center and don't know how to find it again.

I am trying to figure out how to slow down when a big part of me is just trying to keep up.

Done whining now.

Letting go isn't always easy.

I've been reading a lot about "letting go" lately. Actually, that is a theme that has been in my life for many years. Sometimes it is almost easy to let go of the things that have been holding me back, other times it is nearly impossible.

Think of it this way.

You are on a small ship carrying a box that holds something you believe you need to survive. Doesn't matter what it is, but you have no idea how you could manage without it. Then, in rough waters the ship capsizes and you are in deep water with your box and you realize that you can't reach the surface of the water while still holding it. Suddenly you have a choice of either sinking while holding onto the box or letting it go and making it to the surface.

This is probably more true with people in your life than with anything else. It is easy to say / hear / read that you need to let go of the negative people in your life, but it is so difficult when that person is a relative, spouse, adult child, childhood friend, or good friend you have come to rely on in some way.

I know very few read this blog, but I would love to hear anyone's opinions on this.

Weird weekend

Short post, because I feel the need to write SOMETHING.

With all the immune suppressants I'm on, I picked up a virus at work. By Saturday I was coughing a lot and Sunday decided I couldn't wait until Monday to call the doctor, so I went to urgent care. It looked like pneumonia was trying to join in, so I was sent home with a prescription for anti-biotics. Monday was a day off for both my daughter and myself, so she took care of me most of the day. Tuesday we both called off from work as I was going through a Lupus flair and she was worried about me being alone. Well, by 3:00 I was taking care of her rather than the other way around. She went into ER/urgent care about 7:00 that evening, badly dehydrated. Tests showed she had a UTI which were probably causing all of her problems.
She was told to take a couple of days off from work, and I wish I could take today off to keep taking care of her, but she will have to take care of herself while I go into work today. So, wish us both luck.

Your daily Hedghog.

This was at the bottom of an email I received from Takepart.com .

Actually, I wanted to write about diet, from the main article mentioned in the email.

On my Sjogren's support Facebook groups, everyone is claiming the benefits of their particular diet. Many have gone gluten free or dairy free. Some have gone into the AIP (Autoimmune protocol) or the less restrictive Paleo diet. There are so many 'eat this, not that' posts that many of the people following these groups get confused as to which is the Right diet to follow.

I played around with the "smoothie" diet, as I call it. Replace one meal with a nutritious green smoothie. It was very nice for a while, but I could not stick with it for one reason. Having Sjogrens and having already lost most of my molars, my emotional self wants to be able to chew foods for as long as I am able. I will be restricted to smoothies soon enough.

I then looked into the various forms of the AIP and Paleo diets, which are widely varied. Again, one plan will encourage eating a particular food that another one says to never eat. My belief is they ALL work, but none of them are 'one size fits all.'  There are so many factors in finding out which diet is right for an individual person. Some people are allergic to peanuts but not tree nuts, others are allergic to tree nuts but not peanuts. I knew of one person who was allergic to just Brazil nuts but could eat any other nut without a problem. Thus, a diet that is a perfect fit for one person could be all wrong for another.

With all this in mind I started playing games with my own diet and through trial and error discovered that I can no longer eat raw tomatoes. It was almost by accident that I discovered that almond milk was exasperating my symptoms much more than dairy milk. Walnuts also had to go.

I asked my rheumy about all of this and he said that his only dietary recommendation was to have a plant-based diet, which follows through to the reason I wrote this today. The arguments over the new dietary guidelines seem to hit a lot of points, but no-one seems to argue with the fact that the new guideline promote a plant based diet. Having not read the actual guideline, I don''t know if this means a step away from the grain based guidelines that are currently in place, which I don't follow as I have had a problem with grains for over 20 years now, or if they consider grains to be plant based.

In any event, here is the article that began my rant:

To Meat or Not to Meat